Our Gratitude Tree

November is upon us and that just puts the holiday feeling in the air! I love the holidays and Christmas, but we also love to slow down in November and enjoy focusing on Thanksgiving and gratitude.

One of my favorite traditions that we have in November is our gratitude tree. We started this tradition years ago when we only had two children old enough to really participate and every year, we all love doing it.

The tradition is that every person gets to add a "grateful leaf" to our gratitude tree everyday during the month of November. By the end of the month, our tree is full of all the things we are grateful for!

I start by making a tree. I've made it out of brown construction paper before, peicing it together, but I wasn't very happy with how it would turn out (it did not look very tree-like). What we do now is buy a roll of brown paper from Walmart and my husband draws a tree on it. I cut out the tree and hang it on the wall.

For the leaves, I let every person pick a different color of construction paper. We try to stick with colors that leaves would actually be (green, orange, yellow, etc). One year we had extra people staying in our house, so we got creative with it and added in colors like pink and purple.

I cut the construction paper down to the size of printer paper and then I print leaves onto with this free printable I got off Pinterest. I do the smallest size of the simple leaf (simple leaf because it's easiest to cut out and I'm already cutting out a million) and print enough for each day of the month for each person. Then I cut out the leaves and stick them in a baggie so they are ready for all the things we are grateful for!

I like to have a key, showing which person has which color. This year I also printed out a page of one size bigger of the simple leaves onto white paper and used colored pencils to write each person's name on one in their color. I've put each person's name on a leaf of their color before, but it was always confusing to tell which was the key and which was something people were grateful for, since we often will do people as our grateful thing that day.

Then each night at bedtime, each person tells me one thing they are grateful for and I write it down on a leaf and tape the leaf to the tree. And all month long, we get to think about all we have to be grateful for and watch our tree fill up!

I love the focus of gratitude in November. What are some ways you and your family focus on gratitude at Thanksgiving time? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!