With chilly weather nipping at your door and Christmas music echoing in your ears long after you leave the department store it’s hard not to want to skip Thanksgiving and go straight into the merry and festive Christmas holiday.
Though skipping Thanksgiving Fall fun is very tempting it’s not really an option here especially when the month starts with our Thankful Pumpkin Family Activity. I must admit though that I did contemplate it.
Embracing Thankfulness as a Family – One of the values we want to instill in our kids is thankfulness. We try to find ways to incorporate it into our daily life but it get’s the spotlight on our Thanksgiving month.
Thankful Pumpkin Activity- I used 3d Craft paint and painted Be Thankful on a large pumpkin. Last year it said Count Your Blessings. Every day at dinner time we talk about what were thankful for and then I write it on the pumpkin and trace it with a bronze 3d paint.
As a child, my family engrained in us through their example a heart of service and giving. Here are some of the things we did and other ideas that we wanted to do:
- Volunteer at your local shelter to help feed the homeless on Thanksgiving.
- Go to a nearby poverty-stricken community and give out baskets of non-perishable foods.
- Invite your neighbors that don’t have anywhere to go to your thanksgiving meal.
- Make Thankful Rolls - Mix up your favorite roll recipe then write a thankful note and insert it in the roll and bake.
- Visit your local home for Senior Citizens and have your children color with them.
- Thankful Tree- Cut some small tree limbs and insert them in a face. Cut out leaves using scrap paper and tie them on letting guest fill them out and place back on tree.
- Make a I am Thankful Cards- Grab a binder clip and notecards with one end hole punched to keep them together and pull them out each year for your family to recall. On each notecard have your family write either weekly or on T-giving day what they are thankful for. If you have little ones that can’t write have them draw a picture and then you can write below it what it is if it’s not regonizable.
What are some of your Family Thanksgiving Traditions?
Thanks for sharing! I love that you all take a day to read them together.
For the thankful rolls do you actually write a note on paper & put it in the dough & bake? I’d love to know how to do that.
Yea, you just use a piece of notebook paper and put it in the dough. It has to be dough that you roll out it can’t be liquid. So once you roll out the dough, roll up your note and insert it in the middle and bake.
What a bunch of lovely ideas! Thank you so much for sharing at Taking A Timeout Thursday! Hope to see you again tomorrow
-Trish @ Mom On Timeout
http://www.MomOnTimeout.com
Thanks Trish!