Homeschool At Thanksgiving: Teaching Gratitude To Little Kids

I try to guide them with questions, like “What did you eat today?”  “What did we do today?”  But even then, they can’t always put it into words.  I’ve talked previously about how I try to pray specifically for something I’m thankful for about my husband and each kid before bed at night.  Some days it’s hard.  Some days I fall back on things I’ve already mentioned, which is okay, but it also serves as a reminder to look for different things as well.

So even though we didn’t have any actual school time this week (it’s one of our pre-scheduled break weeks), I wanted to do a few projects and activities to remind them of how blessed we are, and to have fun with a few turkey themed things as well.

We made turkey hats, tracing their hands and cutting them out.  Jonah did most of his on his own.  Matthew needed help cutting out his hands, and I did pretty much all of Hannah’s.  But this was a good project for a wide age range.

Tuesday we made a thankful tree.  I used painters’ tape to put this right on the wall next to our calendar.  There were a few repeats, but we had a good variety of things that the boys thought of that they were thankful for.  Again, this took a bit of prodding at first, but eventually they started coming up with their own ideas.

They each chose one of their thankful items to draw a picture.  In case you can’t tell, Matthew drew a Lego book with a police car on it (left), and Jonah drew a turkey (right).

Yesterday, we finished off with a few more fun worksheets.  My kids love color-by-number (or letter) sheets and word searches, so I knew they’d enjoy these.

Worksheets can be found here:

• I Am Thankful For… worksheet
• Turkey Color By Letter worksheet
• Pilgrim Lady Color By Number worksheet

Happy Thanksgiving from our family!