Fall Friend Tree

Each day, I try to come up with some "activity" for my kids to do. It varies from playdoh to watercolors to puzzles. One afternoon, I had (what I thought) a great idea for an activity. I don't remember what it was, but when my son asked me, he curled up his nose and said, "I don't like that activity!"

Not to be so easily put off by my son, I searched the internet for preschool activities. One of the sites suggested making a tree with blessings. While I'm all for that, I tweaked it some and turned it into a "FALL FRIEND TREE" - a tree that shows us just how many friends we have not only in our hometown, but all over the country...even the world.

At one of our recent playdates, we put our plan into action. Since our fall tree was bare, we decided to start adding fall leaves to fill it out. We traced the hands - both adults and children - of those in attendance, wrote the name of the owner and added them to the tree.

The kids were so excited to see the leaves (hands) up on the tree and started asking when, where and how we'd "grow" more leaves for our tree. Well, again, not to be outdone by my son - who is afraid we've grown all we can - I decided to take the challenge to the net.

We have friends and family all over and we'd love to add your leaf (hand) to our tree. If you want to participate, please trace your hand, write your name and where you hail from, and send it to my kids. We'd love to fill out the tree...make it so full that it looks more like a tree in the spring rather than the fall. If you don't have our address, please comment or contact and I'll get the information to you. (I'm not foolish enough to just put our home address on the net...I know what kind of scaries are out there!).

I hope you will consider participating. What a great lesson in kindness as well as geography for the kids - and showing my son that I CAN make things happen.