Fall is a beautiful time to take a walk with your children. Playgrounds are often in some type of “park like” setting. After having a few hours of running and jumping it is sometimes fun to take a short stroll and look at the beautiful colored leaves. My girls loved picking up the most colorful and bringing them home to make some type of arrangement or an “indoor” tree, usually on our wall.
Over time, I thought I became a bit more creative and we preserved our “leaves” by pressing them between book pages, and then taking a piece of clear sticky sheets and sealing them so to speak and adhering them to the wall with a 3-m product that was easy to remove when the time came.
One day one of my friends came over and commented on our “annual tree” at how beautiful the leaves were and what a great seasonal display it was. She then shared an idea, “why not use the leaves, and write something on them about the year, what was the best memory of that year? Or perhaps there was a milestone and a date.” This was a great idea, now the beautiful leaves had a “purpose."
My oldest daughter loved the book “the giving tree” by Shel Silverstein. She loved the story of the tree who gave so much to his “friend” the boy. And she dubbed this “our giving tree.”
Now every year we add to our “giving tree” and look back as we assemble it at all the wonderful things we have to be “thankful” for…
What a great idea! We are working on a thankfulness chain each morning.Here is my link: http://www.jdaniel4smom.com/2009/11/mommyhood-tip-counting-up-to.html.
ReplyDeleteOh! Twittered it. I found you on Twitter Moms.
What an awesome idea! My son loves leaves and I never know what to do with them all!
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