Tory's Thankful Tree

One of the greatest things about preschoolers, in my opinion, is their beginning level of understanding. At age three, Tory is starting to grasp the meaning of holidays, and it makes celebrations all the more fun. I'm trying to be intentional about explaining the message behind events on the calendar -- most recently, Halloween, Election Day and Thanksgiving so she comprehends why we do the things we do.

I've thought about making a Thanksgiving "thankful tree" with Tory for some time now, but it wasn't until this year (Age 3) that it truly made sense. This week, we finally had time to sit down and talk about the meaning of Thanksgiving and the people/places/things we're thankful for.

For our activity, I free-handed a tree trunk from brown construction paper and used this template to trace and cut out red, orange, yellow and green leaves. Tory recently learned to cut with a scissors, so I gave her a piece of paper leaves to cut out as well, though she obviously wasn't able to follow along the black outlines just yet. 

I think it's adorable they way she cut straight lines along the edge of the paper. No one probably cares about this milestone but myself, but I'm half-tempted to save the "scissor work" in her box of artwork. Working with scissors takes practice! It's one of those things as an adult you take for granted until you see how challenging it is for a three-year-old to master.

Anyway, while we cut out leaves together we discussed the meaning of Thanksgiving and all the things we're thankful for. 

I wanted to jot down Tory's answers so I'll have record of them forever:

Tory's Thankful Tree 

Age 3

Aden 

Dad

Mama

Tory (herself??)

Grandma

Sandwiches

Chloe

My house

Cameras (mine was sitting on the counter nearby...)

Paper (I think because we were cutting with paper and scissors at the time)

Friends at school

Lindsay's wedding / being a flower girl (the highlight of her year - seriously!)

The sun

My whole town

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Tory also wanted to include things Aden's thankful for on her tree. She said Aden's thankful for:

Crawling

Playing 

Balls

Too cute...