“Praise the LORD. Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.” Psalm 106:1
As the name indicates, Thanksgiving is a time for us all to pause and give God thanks for the blessings we have received in the past year.
Each one of us on the Children of Hope staff is blessed by the precious little ones you bring to this school. We are thankful for them, and for all of you — parents and caregivers — for giving us the opportunity to teach them the basics they’ll need for Kindergarten, but more importantly, about Jesus.
This issue of “Hope @ Home” is simply an assortment of ideas for you to use or be inspired by to praise to the Lord for His goodness, and to help teach our children to do the same.
Thanksgiving Thank You Note
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to show others how much they’re appreciated. With a little help, preschoolers will enjoy writing thank you notes to special family members and friends this holiday season. The Thanksgiving thank you note activity is a wonderful exercise to help preschoolers take stock of the blessings in their life and is certain to become a cherished holiday tradition for both the thank you note writer and the recipient.
Thanksgiving Tablecloth Family Activity
Give thanks as a family this holiday season by creating a uniquely personal tablecloth for your Thanksgiving table. For this family activity, invite family members young and old to preserve festive drawings and sentiments of thanks with crayons on a paper tablecloth, prior to sitting down to your Thanksgiving meal. This activity could also be done using paper placemats instead of a paper tablecloth.
Activity: Make a Thankfulness Turkey
Materials:
Several sheets of construction paper in fall colors (brown, orange, red, & yellow) Black marker
Scissors
Glue
Pinking shears or decorative scissors (optional) Directions:
Trace your child’s foot on a brown piece of paper and cut each one out. This part will be the head and body of your turkey — the heel is the head and the toes are the belly.
Draw on the eyes with the marker. Write on the body “(child’s name) is thankful for...”
Using the pinking shears, decorative scissors, or regular scissors, cut out 5-6 “feathers” from the additional construction paper. It seems to be easiest make them “football” shaped and each one should be about the same length as the body.
Cut out the red “waddle” and an orange triangle for the beak from the scrap paper, and glue them on the face.
Help your child write one thing on each feather that he is thankful for. Glue one end of each feather to the back side of the body so you can see the writing from the front.
This makes a great decoration for Thanksgiving, as well as allows us to think about all the things with which God has blessed us.
