Countdown to Thanksgiving

I love crafts. Always have. When I pictured myself as a mom I pictured lots of hands on crafts with my kids. So when my oldest boys were big enough to sit at the table I started planning all of these fun projects to do. I quickly realized just how hard it is to complete a project with two toddlers! Needless to say, it started to be fewer and further between that I let my boys in on my crafts because it just felt more like work then fun. But now that they are 4 and 5 I really want to make more of an effort to get hands on with them. And thanks to Pinterest, I have a LOT of ideas to choose from!

The holiday season is a great time for crafts. There is so much inspiration to draw from. We decided to start with a Countdown To Thanksgiving craft (thanks to Make and Takes for the inspiration) that will help us get excited for the big feast as well as remember what we are thankful for each day. This was a great project to do with my kids because it only involved a handful of supplies and they were able to help with each step.

I started by cutting out the body, the head, the facial features and the strips for the feathers. Jordan got to draw on the eyes and glue on the beak, waddle, and legs.

Nathan got to write Happy Thanksgiving on the body.

They both got to trim the strips of paper into feathers.

 Now I have seen this project where you start with all of the feathers and then take one off for each day as a countdown to Thanksgiving. I liked the idea of adding a feather a day so that you end with a full bird so we are going to do it that way. Each day I am going to ask each of my boys what they are thankful for and write it on the feather before adding it to the body. At the end we will have a nice keepsake to look back on:)

Since we didn't start this until November 5th, we had 5 feathers to catch up on. It was sweet listening to my 4 year old say first that he was thankful that God and Jesus loved him and my 5 year old list his brothers as what he is most thankful for. I look forward to the next 19 days not only because that means Thanksgiving is here and we get to celebrate with loved ones, but also to hear each day what my little guys are thankful for in their life.