Ideas to Grow Thankfulness in Your Family

It is Thanksgiving season and like most good moms, you are trying to think of ideas to grow thankfulness in your family!  Me too!  In the world we live in, it is easy for our kids to see a “me first” attitude, but seeing genuine thankfulness is much harder to find!  And honestly, it doesn’t come naturally to most of us.  But it is something I believe we all (parents included!) can intentionally grow in.  I am going to share a few of the ways we have found useful as a family, but I would truly love to hear your ideas too!!

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Thankful Turkey or Pumpkin

We have done this activity for several years!  I saw it on Pinterest when my oldest was little so it has been around for quite a while!  The idea is that you make the body of a turkey out of brown construction paper and then each day you add a feather to the turkey with the words of something you are thankful for on it.  We like to have each kid have their own feather color so we can see what everyone is thankful for!  Here is a pin with a visual if that help you! 

Another variation of this I have seen is to use an actual pumpkin and write something on the pumpkin with a Sharpie marker each day.  I think this would be ideal for the older elementary and up age group. Here is a picture of what I am talking about.

 Thankful Walk

If it is too cold in your area to walk outside right now, you may want to keep this one in your back pocket until spring.  One of our favorite ways to cultivate thankfulness is to take a thankful walk.  We do this often in the summer when we are walking to the park.  It started on a whim when my kids were fighting and grumpy.  I decided we needed something to turn our attitudes around!  So as we walked to the park we took turns and each person said something they were thankful for.  We kept going until we made it to the park.  Honestly, our attitudes were so different by the time we got to the park. 

You have probably heard the research with adults about how gratitude is a great way to change your attitude.  Guess what?  The same is true for our kids!  It was fun to acknowledge the big things (family) and the small things (the grass) that God had given us!

Table Conversations

There are a few different ways you could incorporate thankfulness into your dinner table conversations.  I like to be intentional with our dinner conversations when I can.  Simple conversation starters help my kids build skills in being good listeners as well as sharing their thoughts and experiences.  You could easily have everyone go around the table and share one thing they were thankful for that day. 

Another idea we have used for actual Thanksgiving dinner is to use a thankful tablecloth.  Each year, everyone uses fabric markers to write one thing they are thankful for from the last year.  Then we go around the table and share.  It is fun to see what people have written in past years too.  We started this tradition on what would end up being my dad’s last Thanksgiving.  He died suddenly the next month, but I am so thankful we started this tradition and I have his handwriting on our tablecloth.

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