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Okay, back to your regularly scheduled program here at Doodles’ Place. I LOVE fall, and I especially love fall craft projects. I’m not sure whether it’s because there are so many great options for preschoolers or maybe just because they reflect my favorite season, but either way, I love them!

I’m going to cheat and post some from last year later this afternoon or tomorrow in case anyone’s looking for some ideas, but first, here’s my absolutely FAVORITE project – and one we do every year – that we did earlier this week:

I love these fall thankful trees, especially as my girls get older and are able to express what they’re thankful for, and they’re SO easy too!

To make, start with a blue piece of construction paper.

Cut a piece of green construction paper to look like a grassy hill (okay, it took everything in me not to type “grassy knoll” there, but I thought that might reveal a little too much of my cheesiness!).

Next, cut out a tree trunk with branches from a brown piece of paper. Your branches will most be covered up, so they don’t need to be perfect *at all*, but I do like to include them.

Finally, trace and cut out your child’s handprints. I do this by stacking three sheets of paper together, tracing the handprint on the first one and then cutting them all out together and then repeating. I think six is probably too much to do at once, but you could try.

We glued our grass and tree trunk to the blue background and then talked about the things we were thankful for and wrote them on each hand. I prompted Sweet Doodle a little, but Pumpkin Doodle thought of them all on her own. It was so cute because she finished and said, “I forgot God!” Since we were out of hands, we wrote “God” on the trunk, and then Sweet Doodle wanted “God” on her trunk to.

I’ve seen some other really cute versions of the thankful tree that include hanging paper leaves from a real tree, which I LOVE, but the thing I like about this one is it’s a great keepsake to save each year. I don’t save many projects, but I do keep these.