Practicing Thankfulness
The store departments would lead me to believe that we were going right from Halloween directly into Christmas. Somehow the Thanksgiving feast seems to get overlooked in the mass consumerism of the Christmas shopping.
As a frugal girl, Thanksgiving happens to be my favorite holiday. What other holiday does not require me to buy a gift for someone or encourage me to make a trip to the card store? Thanksgiving is the one time where you can just focus on being thankful for what you ALREADY have in your possession instead of what you don't have.
Teaching my children to be thankful has always been important to me. It was always required of us, even as children, to send thank you notes for the things we received and we were always encouraged to write our family who lived far away letters to show how much we appreciate them. These fundamentals of thankfulness are just important to me and are something that I am trying to teach my kids every single day.
One of the ways that I am trying to teach my children thankfulness is just by creating holiday memories that they can be thankful for. I have found great ways to implement traditions into creating Christmas memories, but I am still trying to discover a good way to implement fun traditions and sweet reminders of all that we already have in honor of Thanksgiving.
Instead of offering my own advice for creating Thanksgiving memories, I am asking you what special things you do for Thanksgiving Day or in honor of this wonderful holiday? I am looking for traditions and entertaining ideas for my kids that will add another dimension to our holiday this season.
Please share!!
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6 Responses to “Practicing Thankfulness”
November 6th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I like to send Thank you notes out at Thanksgiving to my friends and family. I try to make them personal and sometimes they relate to childhood memories. For instance, last year I thanked my brother for never telling our parents that I helped tie dye our white husky with food coloring. I get a good response every year and every now and then I get one in return. In addition to this, this year I am starting a thankful tablecloth where we each add some special event (like a birth or marriage) that we are thankful for to our Thanksgiving tablecloth. I think it will make a nice heirloom one day. I am having it embroidered, but you could use fabric markers.
November 6th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
as a canadian, we celebrated mid october, but I love your comment……the only holiday that celebrates WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
now that is food for thought..thank you
November 6th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
I posted our tradition about our Thanks and Giving Trees last week here:
http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.com/2007/10/thanks-giving-trees.html
It’s a simple but oh so meaningful tradition at our house.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:09 am
Last year my children made homemade placemats for all our family to use on Thanksgiving. We cut out photos, pictures, magazines, etc and made them collage-like. Each one was personalized for each person at the feast.
They were easy to do, a fun school project, and went over VERY WELL with the relatives. (by the way, most of my relatives are public school teachers who are more and more being sold on my kids being homeschooled!)
November 7th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
My daughter tells me that any day now they’re going to come up with some magic turkey who leaves gifts the night before Thanksgiving. I think she’s probably right, so let’s enjoy the peace while we can.
November 8th, 2007 at 6:25 am
Amy – I have an idea posted today that my family always did growing up. We make a list of the ABC’s and write things on it all month that we are thankful for starting with each letter!
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