Thanksgiving Gratitude Lanterns

 With Thanksgiving approaching we have been talking a lot about the things we are thankful for. I wanted to somehow capture my children's sweet answers and also to sit and create with them while talking is always a great way to feel connected as a family.

 I wrapped a piece of wire around a basic jar making a loop on one end and leaving the other end long for beading.

 The kids added beads to their lantern handle. If you are using plastic beads I would suggest only adding beads to the sides since you will be placing candles in these lanterns. Once we added a few beads, I slipped the wire end through the loop and twisted it close.

 On small pieces of lightweight paper we wrote down things we are grateful for. We set these aside while we got a mixture of school glue and water together. I also pulled out a bag of tissue paper squares to add to our lanterns.

 We chose some pretty fall colored tissue paper for this. Any color you have on hand will look beautiful. Just cut the tissue into small squares. We gave our jars a good coating of the glue mixture using a foam brush and started adding the colorful squares.

 Lastly we added our words right on top of the tissue with some more glue. These took a couple of hours to dry.

Once our lanterns were completely dry we added candles and went on an early Thanksgiving lantern walk. The kids love going on lantern walks and I have to say I might enjoy this special tradition even more than they do! There is something about walking as a family and singing songs while holding our beautiful lit up creations that makes you feel a little magical.