Top
ENGAGING ACTIVITIES YOUR STUDENTS WILL LOVE!

Teaching Thankfulness

We love recommending my favorite classroom resources to you! We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. But don't worry - we never recommend for that purpose. If we don't love it, we won't recommend it here. Click to read full terms

I {heart} Thanksgiving.  No, I really {big, puffy heart} Thanksgiving.  I am sure that some of my love of Thanksgiving has come with age as I have learned the importance of being thankful.  So this time of year I always incorporate some activity in my classroom that focuses on thanking others.  Project Thankfulness usually takes about 2 weeks and we give a few minutes each day to thinking about others and why we are thankful for them. 

This year as we started Project Thankfulness I had the kids brainstorm people they were thankful for.  Parents were at the top of the list so I gave the kids some homework.  I asked the kids to think about why they were thankful for their parents.  That night they were to go home and tell their parents thank you and explain why they were thankful for them.  The next day we shared how the parents reacted.  It was so fun to hear the stories from home, filled with hugs, kisses and more thank yous. 

Next step in Project Thankfulness is to think of people at school we are thankful for.  This year I decided we would open our own Post Office for Project Thankfulness.  Nothing fancy, I promise.  We added our thankfulness lesson to shared writing time and created giant letters to send to the people we are thankful for.  We did the first few letters whole class.

We started with a large piece of chart paper.  I added a rectangle at the top for our picture so it would resemble our writer’s workshop paper.  We followed our writing rules by thinking first.  We thought of who we were thankful for and why.  Then we decided on the picture we would draw to go with our letter.  The kids came up 2 at a time to add details to the picture.  Then it was time to start writing.  We learned about the format for writing a letter and then started our letter. 

The rule in my classroom is that if the word can be found in the room it must be spelled correctly.  We went through word by word as a class and either found the word in the room or stretched out the word together as a volunteer added it to our letter.

When we were done we folded it up like an envelope and added the address and a stamp.  Then I allowed a couple people to play mailman and go deliver the letter.  They loved it and were so proud of their work!  Here’s our first letter:



November 13, 2013
Dear Miss Taylor,
We are thankful for you.  Thank you for dancing
with us.  Thank you for helping us with centers.
Mrs. Biddison’s Class

We repeated the process the next day whole group.  Then I decided to break them down into small groups and let them try it out themselves.  We had just too many people to thank to do it one at a time!

A couple groups were able to repeat the process without any help at all.  A couple groups made some very valiant attempts, and I worked closely with one group to complete their letter.  The groups that had a harder time with stretching out the words we will work on next week whole group.  Here’s another one of our final letters.
November 15, 2013
Dear Mr. Trevino,
We are thankful for you. You help us
get our of our cars.  Thank you.
Mrs. Biddison’s Class

Not only have I loved the opportunity to teach my kids to look at the things that others do, but this has been a great activity to review all the writing things we have been working on.

Last year, Project Thankfulness was a little different.  After having every student bring in a pumpkin for our pumpkin math and science, we had quite a few left over.  So we decided to turn the pumpkins into turkeys and hand them out to people that we were thankful for.  The students colored and cut out lots of turkey parts (heads and feathers).  We mixed them all up so that there was little bit of all of us in each turkey.  Then we did a whole class writing on our interactive board to create a card.  I printed the card multiple times and then we attached it to the turkey.  Each day we chose one or two people to deliver a turkey to.

When I taught third grade, the students would make cards and write letters to their old teachers and other people on campus that they were thankful for.  I just love having the opportunity to teach this to my students each year.  It’s also a great reminder for me of all the people I am thankful for. 

I would love to know how you teach your kids about being thankful.  Please leave a comment and share with us!


This post was shared with HoJo’s Teaching Tuesday Linky!  Check it our for more great ideas!

Comments

  1. Holly says

    Love your Project Thankfulness! 🙂 We are doing a food drive this year to collect food for families in need. We are using the book "How Do You Feed A Hungry Giant" as inspiration. We also have a "Friends and Family" Day where every kiddo in school invites special visitors to school for an afternoon of classroom visits, kid entertainment and a special chapel. Have a great Thanksgiving Amy! Have you registered for Vegas I Teach K yet? 🙂

  2. Holly says

    Love your Project Thankfulness! 🙂 We are doing a food drive this year to collect food for families in need. We are using the book "How Do You Feed A Hungry Giant" as inspiration. We also have a "Friends and Family" Day where every kiddo in school invites special visitors to school for an afternoon of classroom visits, kid entertainment and a special chapel. Have a great Thanksgiving Amy! Have you registered for Vegas I Teach K yet? 🙂

  3. Christa Joy says

    Thanks for this post. I love to see how other teachers celebrate thankfulness. So cute. I have taught in a special ed environment that serves the 1% population. It is hard to help these kids understand this concept. My favorite activity, however, was to do our own Gratitude Dance. We would watch the youtube video and the kids would just bounce and dance around. They loved it. Here is the link to the video: https://youtu.be/QeLbrGspigg

  4. Christa Joy says

    Thanks for this post. I love to see how other teachers celebrate thankfulness. So cute. I have taught in a special ed environment that serves the 1% population. It is hard to help these kids understand this concept. My favorite activity, however, was to do our own Gratitude Dance. We would watch the youtube video and the kids would just bounce and dance around. They loved it. Here is the link to the video: https://youtu.be/QeLbrGspigg

  5. Heather W says

    I LOVE this idea! Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday, but since it falls around my birthday it does hold a special place in my heart. I love this Thankfulness idea! Thank you for sharing! I'm sharing it across my networks. I guess the way I share gratefulness with my students is by modeling it throughout the year. I've done other things, but this works best for me.
    ~Heather aka HoJo~

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Join

the Conversation

Teacher collaboration is unlike any other profession. Come join the conversation on Facebook and Instagram! On our own we can do great things - but together we are even better! Come share your thoughts and ideas. Come learn from others. Everyone is welcome and together we will be better!
Join the Conversation