Thanksgiving Traditions: We Are Thankful

Thanksgiving traditions add a special meaning to the holidays.   This cute We Are Thankful activity gets kids as well as adults thinking about all that they have to be grateful for.   Kids Activities Blog hopes you find some time to make a special Thanksgiving tradition like this in your family.

Thanksgiving Traditions

Thanksgiving is such a wonderful holiday.  It’s a great time to get together with family, eat yummy food, travel “over the river & through the woods”, play fun games, and maybe even start your Christmas lists.  And hopefully, among all there is to do to prepare & enjoy Thanksgiving, you can find time to focus on more than creating a big meal. Each year, our family spends the weeks leading up to the holiday, asking our friends & family what they are most thankful for.  We display it in a creative way, so that we are constantly reminded of all the amazing blessings we have been provided.

We Are Thankful

Step 1: Gather the Blessings  – Each year we decide who we want to ask to be a part of our tradition.  Some years, we ask our friends & neighbors, or our family members, or even just our immediate family.  We send out a quick email explaining our project: “Dear Loved One – Each Thanksgiving, as a family, we like to focus on all we have to be thankful for.  This year we are creating a Thankful Turkey and would like you to be a part of our project.  Would you mind asking all the members of your family what they are thankful for this year and emailing their responses back to us?  Thank you for being a huge part of our Thankful Turkey and allowing us to be reminded of your blessings!” Step 2: Create a Blessings Display – This is our favorite part!  We love to come up with fun ways to display our blessings.  One year, each person we asked got a feather on our turkey.  Another year, we filled a cornucopia with thankful fruits and veggies.  We have had a tree with each of us having our own branches to fill with thankful leaves.  And last year, we found a fun “We Are Thankful” sign to hang on our pantry door and added a long sheet of paper to “graffiti” our thanks onto. Step 3: Display it & Discuss! – As the blessings come in via email and word of mouth, add feathers/leaves/veggies to your display. Make sure it is hanging in a central location in your house (ours is on our pantry door) and invite visitors to add to it when they are over.  At dinner, we discussed what “blessings” we had received that day to add to our display.  These discussions always triggered more additions, as my children began to see more and more things they were thankful for. A few reminders:

• Don’t limit your children’s “blessings”, instead, allow them to add as many as they wanted, whenever they wanted.
• Rejoice in every blessing, even ones for fruit snacks, Elmo, or blankies.  Sometimes the simplest things are the most abundant blessings.
• Don’t forget about the project – It can get easy to put it by the wayside when life gets busy – just pick it back up again at the next family dinner.
• Let your kiddos create the display – as my children got older, they wanted to do the work.  This momma likes everything nice and pretty, but I realized the importance in letting them have creative control.
• It’s easy to say “family, my children, my spouse”, as those are wonderful things we are thankful for, but try to think of a few things that you really are thankful for.  Especially the small things – my pumpkin spice latte creamer will be making the list this year!

More Kids Activities

Thanksgiving traditions don’t need to be elaborate.   This simple We Are Thankful activity is cheap and easy to make and it can include as many or as few people as you like.   Please take a look at these other kids activities to celebrate Thanksgiving:

• We are thankful for cute November coloring sheets!
• Start a Thanksgiving tradition with one of these great November kids activities
• How to Make a Headband for Thanksgiving