November Thankfulness Tree

I've mentioned briefly before our weekly family devotionals, but haven't talked much about it.  Basically every Sunday afternoon we introduce our song of the week (a random assortment of hymns and contemporary praise songs) and then read a book or a story from the Bible.  And then we sing the song throughout the week at bedtime and naptime and other random times of the day.  We made a list of songs to get us through January-November (and then in December we'll do our song a day for Advent) and then I organized them and came up with what story or other thing to do with each one.  Most of them are just on random weeks, but I did organize some of the more crucifixion/resurrection related songs around Easter season and then some about thankfulness in November.

For November's extra activity we've been doing some different thankfulness activities.  I like the idea of adding different things you're thankful for all month long, but Cooper's not quite there yet so I found a few other things I liked as well.  I made a tree in our dining room and we've added to it each Sunday.

I made the tree out of a Trader Joe's grocery sack that I cut up, crinkled, and then taped to the wall.  And the leaves are cut from this cut file

The first Sunday in November, we loosely followed this plan and read Psalm 136.  Then we said the phrase "Give thanks to the Lord for he is...." several times and filled in several leaves with different attributes of God.  Faithful.  Loving.  Good.  Powerful. Forgiving. Creator. King. And Cooper supplied "Jesus" when we let him answer :)  

Then Cooper helped us put the leaves on the tree.  Our song for this week was Great is Thy Faithfulness and Cooper loved saying "me" at the end of every chorus.

Week two our song was Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.  And we used this list of a few different verses from Psalms about being thankful to God.  I wrote them on the leaves and then we read them outloud together.

And week 3 we added what we were thankful for to the tree.   Our song is "This is My Father's World" and as we talked about what we're thankful for, we talked about how God made all those things and provides them for us.  The "leaves" were made of our handprints.  We each traced our hands and then I cut out 4 leaves for each of us.  And we went around and wrote down things we were thankful for.  I wrote down David & Cooper, The Heights, Health, and Podcasts.  David said Me & Cooper, Our Small Groups/New Friends, Our House, and A stable job with good benefits.  And Cooper is thankful for Fruit (we were eating while we did it so he kept asking for more fruit), Mommy & Daddy, Lily, and Friends (we may have helped him a little to come up with 4 things, but he does love all these things!)

As we hung them up we read them again, so Cooper kept pointing to different ones saying "Lily" and "Mama, Daddy."

Our little family tree with an assortment of things we're thankful for and reminders about the Provider of all good things :)  It was a fun little activity and a good reminder throughout the month leading up to Thanksgiving.  It's hard to believe that next week we'll be ready to decorate for Christmas and then starting our Advent songs!  But we are looking forward to a week of intentionally remembering all we have to be thankful for right now and spending time with family!