Four Family Crafts To Teach Your Children About Gratitude

As red, gold and orange leaves are falling delicately to the ground and nature begins its transition into the colder months, it’s clear that the holiday season is upon us and like many, it’s my favorite time of the year. I’m like obsessed with it. I start gathering new recipe’s and digging out the old ones in preparation for Thanksgiving EARLY in November honey. It’s really not a game.

Who doesn’t love turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, macaroni, dressing, all kinds of veggies, rolls, pies and cakes. I hit my dougie every time I start thinking about all that smothered goodness we’ll partake in on Thanksgiving day. But it’s not the food or even the Black Friday shopping sales that we should put our attention on.

Thanksgiving is about gratitude.

It’s about understanding and recognizing those things that you are thankful for, appreciating the past, looking to the future and having those people you love the most the closest to you while you do it. I know you’re probably like, “It’s not that deep,” but since I’ve become a mom everything has greater meaning. I’m trying to shape these little people to walk in their full life potential and being gracious is a huge part of that.

It goes beyond just saying thank you, so I’m really taking the extra effort this year to help my children understand the premise behind being thankful. Mostly because I understand that it’s not an inherent thing for kids to grasp the idea of gratitude—especially if they get majority of the things they ask for and don’t know what it’s like to go without. I want my children to grow up to be giving, compassionate adults who care about the needs of others and I’ve been trying to come up a few crafts/activities we can do to learn together about gratitude as a family.

I spent some time looking around on my friend The Google and found a few things that I think we’ll enjoy doing together to help drive the gratitude point home.

Everyday before bed, we’ll each be writing down one thing that we are thankful for that day, putting in our Thankful Jar and reading them aloud as a family at the end of each week. As they go about their day, it will help them to think about being thankful for the littlest of things, and even though this one is specifically for Thanksgiving I think we’ll be doing it until New Years.

 

We’ll also as a family be making a Turkey Handprint keepsake, where we’ll each paint our hands with varying colors making “turkey’s”, stamp them on a canvas and coming up with all the things we’re thankful as a family. I know this year, my 2-yr old will be thankful for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and waffles for breakfast, but when he’s 12 it’ll be vastly different and oh so cute to look back on his years of growth.

In addition, I’ll be making gratitude cookies that’ll contain a gratitude affirmation that I’ll serve at least once a week beginning the week of Thanksgiving and ending at the new year. Now that my 6-year-old can read, it’s all the better and will be something fun we can all do and discuss at dinnertime.

I also love to bake and am itching to make word cookies similar to these that we can bake together. Each cookie will have one word on it saying what each of us is thankful for.

It’s a lot of extra work on my part to coordinate all these activities and things but at the end of the day, I love them and I willing to do it to help them understand this whole thing about giving, being gracious for what they have and being thankful for all they’ll receive. After all, their Dad and I work so hard for them to live how they do and even though they don’t necessarily need to know all that we give and sacrifice to make that happen, I want them to be able to say thank you… and really mean it.

How do you teach your children about gratitude? Do you do any special activities or crafts with them during the holidays that teach them about giving and being thankful?