There are so many simple ways to teach kids about gratitude during the month of November!
We always try and kick off the month with a family gratitude activity that is fun and gets the kids thinking a bit.
How do you help toddlers understand gratitude?
Gratitude is a pretty complex thing for toddlers to understand. In our family, we start by talking about things or people the kids like or love. That makes a little bit more sense to them. Typically, those things that we like or love are also things that we are grateful for.
Once we've talked about the people or things we love, we can dive deeper and try and talk about the WHY. What does that person do for us that we love? Why is that thing important to us? For example, a toddler might love his dad because he reads him books or jumps on the trampoline with him.
Making a list of the things we are grateful for, or writing them down on cute turkey feathers helps kids think a bit more about those special people or things.
How do you make a gratitude turkey pumpkin?
First you need to find a pumpkin and collect your materials.
To make a gratitude turkey pumpkin you need the following things:
- pumpkin
- brown paper for the body
- scissors
- red and orange paper for the beak and gobbler
- multi-colored paper for the feathers
- markers
- wooden skewers
- googly eyes
- clear tape
The directions for making a gratitude turkey pumpkin are pretty simple. Here's what you do:
First you need to cut a turkey body out of brown paper and stick it onto your pumpkin. Use clear tape so that you can't see it.
Next, add eyes, a mouth and a gobbler. We cut our beak out of orange paper and our gobbler out of red paper. If the adult cuts the paper, the child can stick it on with tape.
After that, cut out several feathers out of paper. Have your child tell you things they like or love (or are grateful for). Write each thing that they say down on a feather.
Finally, tape the feathers to the skewers and stick them into the pumpkin. If the adult makes some holes with the skewers first, then the child can take the skewer and push it into the hole to secure it.
Each of the kids in our family wanted to make their own gratitude turkey pumpkin. I loved how each of them got into it in a different way.
My kids are ages 10,7,6, and 2 right now. The 2 year old helped stick things on with tape and then dictated the things she was grateful for to me. She was especially grateful for her two doggies that she sleeps with at night and all of her Halloween candy!
What do you do with the gratitude turkey pumpkins when you are done?
After you finish your pumpkins, you can display them on your mantle, put them outside your house, or even save them to be used as a centerpiece on the kids table at Thanksgiving dinner! As the month continues you can keep adding more and more thankful feathers onto your pumpkin.
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