The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere (Free Ebook and Thanksgiving Printables)

Update November 2014: We have updated The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere, a family devotional for Thanksgiving, as well as the accompanying printables and are now making our family devotionals available through our educational website Greenfield Education.

We are giving away The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere until the end of November 2014.

See details on the Greenfield Education blog.

Thanks for reading!

With the holidays approaching fast, we have been working on ways to teach our values to our children. We wanted to create something that could become a tradition in our family and put Bible reading, singing, discussion questions, and activities all together.

We decided to create books that would encompass all of these things and be suitable for a wide range of ages so the whole family could participate. And we thought perhaps other peope might be searching for something similar.

For our Thanksgiving study, we chose a thankful tree theme, and put together a book called The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere. We intend to use it Thanksgiving week.

Here is the Introduction:

It is easy to go through life and miss the blessings all around us. Often we are focused on the things we don’t like and wish were different in our lives, rather than thanking God for blessing us abundantly above anything we can ask or think.

If I don’t have enough chocolate, I wish for more. If I do, I wish for less (pounds on the scale, that is). If we live in a house with central heat, we don’t like the heating bill. If we don’t, we don’t like the cold. If we don’t have enough time with our family, we wish for more. If we do, sometimes we wish for alone time.

Or we can try to change our attitude and tune our hearts toward God. Then we might find things to be thankful for all around us.

In our current house, if we look out our living room windows, we can see an ugly factory. But we can also see beautiful mountains. Which will we choose to focus on, in this life the beauty or the beastly.

Even if nothing seems to be going right in this world, if we truly know Christ, we know this world is not our home. Our true treasures lie elsewhere, and we can be thankful even if all we have is unseen blessings.

What's Included:

This book is divided into seven sections each with a scripture reading, thoughts on thankfulness, discussion questions, and suggested hymns and activities.

We tried to include a variety of levels for the questions and activities so that this book would be applicable for a wide range of ages.

We have also included a variety of printable resources to go along with this short book. There are a Thanks Giving Tree, Individual Leaves, other Decorative Printables, and Thank You Cards. You can use these to complete some of the activities if you like.

This PDF ebook is completely free for you to download. Our thanks to you for reading here at The Do-It-Yourself Mom.

If you like this short one week long study, we hope you'll consider using our similarly patterned Christmas book as well. A Jesse Tree style study The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas is a book and accompanying printables designed to be used for the whole month of December. Learn more about The Tree of Life: Seeking the Son This Christmas here.

Find out more about The Thanks Giving Tree: Seeing Blessings Everywhere.
Find out more about The Tree Of Life: Seeking The Son This Christmas.

Thanks for reading. I'll be sharing more things I'm thankful for all Thanksgiving week.

DIY Pumpkin Veggie Platter

Here is s super simple and fun way to display your veggies for fall. Just wash, peel, and chop your orange and green veggies and arrange them into the shape of a pumpkin!

My kids thought this was a fun way to eat veggies and it would be great for a holiday gathering as well.

Preschool Fall Craft: Handprint Turkey

Here is another super simple painting project to celebrate fall with small children. Like the fingerprint pumpkin and tree, this turkey handprint picture is a great way to gear up for the holidays and remember how small the kids really are for years to come.

Preschool Fall Craft: Handprint Turkey

• Paint in fall colors
• Brushes
• Paint smocks if desired
• Paper

1. Help the child to cover their hand in brown paint and spread out their fingers to paint the base of the turkey.
2.  The child can then make different colored fingerprints on top for feathers and one red fingerprint on the turkey's neck for it's waddle.

Mandarin Monday: Intrinsic Impli ation Character of Briefness Can Give Birtm to Wigdom (The Chinglish Files)

DIY Caramel Candy Corn and Pumpkins

I don't really like store bought candy corn. Or at least I didn't when we were in America, American candy corn might seem better here. Here is China they have candy that looks like a corn cob and it actually tastes like corn. They have popsicles like that too. But I don't like either of those at all.

What I do like, a lot, is homemade caramel. So I made some caramel candy corn, pumpkins, and these cute turkeys I showed you before.

I used homemade caramel to make these, but I imagine a number of other options would work well also. Homemade chocolate ganache could work, as well as homemade edible play dough. I imagine store bought caramel, frosting and extra powdered sugar, or fondant would all work well too.

Homemade Caramel Candy Corn and Pumpkins Recipe

• Caramels (homemade, store bought, or see other options above)
• Sprinkles
• Chocolate chips

1.  For the candy corn, knead caramel and form into an elongated oval. Press yellow and green sprinkles on.
2. For the candy pumpkin, knead caramel and roll into a small ball. Mark lines with a toothpick and top with a chocolate chip or green sprinkles.
3. Allow to harden in the refrigerator before serving or storing in an airtight container.

Preschool Fall Craft: Fingerprint Pumpkin and Tree

This simple painting project is lots of fun for small children and a great way to decorate a classroom for fall.

Preschool Fall Craft: Fingerprint Pumpkin and Tree

• Paint in fall colors
• Brushes
• Paint smocks if desired
• Paper
• Pencil

1. Draw an outline of a pumpkin and/or a tree trunk. (You may also want to paint the tree trunk ahead of time so that it can dry).
2. Have the child fill in the pumpkin with orange fingerprints. Use any fall colors for the falling leaves on the tree.
3. For the pumpkin help the child dip their hand in green paint and use a handprint for the top of the pumpkin.