Thanksgiving Crafts Made Easy - Recycling Thankfulness

Usually, we spend the last couple of days of October, or the first few days of November, making 20-some hand print turkeys - one for each day, from the 1st of November through to Thanksgiving.

Then, each day from November 1st on, we take turns picking a turkey, writing something we're thankful for, and sticking it to our fall leaf-list tree...

...transforming it into a Peanuts inspired turkey tree - you know...like from a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving...



I have to admit that this year, with the move, and dealing with teenage jobs, driving, and college prep, I was feeling a lot like Sally, when I realized hand print turkey time had rolled around again, already.

But, then it dawned on me - one of the nice things about a tradition, like our hand print turkeys - is that you don't have to do all the work fresh each year, because you already did most of it last year, or the year before, or even the year before that.  We have photo albums full of hand print turkeys, carefully removed from their trees, all preserved, and ready to be used again.

So this year, instead of spending hours crafting new turkeys, we're dipping into our piles from the past.

Instead of writing something new each day that we are thankful for, we're reading what we were thankful for last year, and discussing, and discovering old and new ways we're thankful for the same things again this year, as life and circumstances are changing around us.

Remembering what we have been thankful for in the past, reminds us of what we really, and truly are thankful for in the present.  I'm thankful for traditions...

I'm thankful for memories...

...and I'm thankful for recycling.

  It's great to be a homeschooler.