Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Our Thankful Leaf Project

Sadie is very proud of our latest craft project. She is currently going through a phase where she loves the fall leaves. This picture that I snapped on our walk on veterans day shows why:


When we go on walks she absolutely has to have a couple of leaves in her hand (or at least, things go much smoother when she does... I need to stop forgetting that!). She holds them and shreds them while I walk the mile and a half across town pushing her and carrying Maggie in the Moby, and then gets two more leaves (if we can find any on that side of town) and shreds them on the way back.

So I got the idea to pick up a few of the prettiest leaves I could find. I managed to protect them from her little tearing fingers all the way home. Then I traced them (while she did her best to steal them from me) and cut out a bunch.

This led to a conversation about what was trash and what wasn't trash, because one of Sadie's other passions at the moment is throwing things away and the leaves I was cutting out apparently looked a little too much like garbage to Sadie. By the end of the first day (with her limited crafting attention span this took several days to put together) Sadie had learned which pieces of paper were leaves, and she'd started putting the leaves in piles and stacking them over and over again.

After the leaves were cut out we talked about what we were thankful for. And we read this book.

The next step was writing down what we're thankful for. We started with family and friends, God and Church. Then things got a little silly. Sadie repeated "Nemo" about fifty times when asked what she was thankful for and then added in "Dora!" She was also thankful for mud puddles, the trundle bed (at Nani's house), the window bed (a futon at Nani's house), flag poles (she points out pretty much every flag pole in town when we go on walks... and since our town looks like the picture below on holidays, that can really slow us down...), weather vanes and puddle stomping.


Once we wrote down many of the things that we're thankful for (we added some for Maggie too) we pasted all of he leaves together. Here's how it turned out:


And here is Sadie, when asked to show me where the leaves are. She showed it to Nani tonight too and is very pleased with herself.


And there is Sadie in her self styled outfit. She is wearing her Cars pajamas with a pink American Flag Tractor Supply Store t-shirt over it. When I met her and Paul at the park after working in the office at the Church this morning she was wearing the layered top with hot pink pants, pink and white rubber boots and crazy unbrushed curls. She's quite the character. And that is another thing that I am thankful for! My little tractor loving princess (and her quiet, nap taking little sister!).

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