This year our Thanksgiving craft is a gratitude chain. Each year my daughter’s preschool class creates a kindness chain and each day at school there’s the opportunity to write down a time when a child showed kindness to another. I absolutely love this idea and so is my daughter. She asked if we could create such a chain at home. Instead of a kindness chain, I explained my idea for a gratitude chain to celebrate Thanksgiving and as a way to practice giving thanks. She loved it and so did our entire family.
What You’ll Need
- Paper
cut into one-inch thick strips
- Pen
- Stapler
- Thumb tacks or tape
cut into one-inch thick strips
Putting It Together
- Have each family member write down something they are thankful for. If they do not know how to write, they can draw a picture of what they are grateful for. Encourage your family to write on multiple slips of paper. You can start this step before Thanksgiving and collect the slips in a jar, then read each slip at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Or you can wait until Thanksgiving day and pass around the slips of paper when people sit down, making it the first action you all do as a community. We did not want until Thanksgiving but chose to do this fun activity the week before Thanksgiving. It was the perfect opportunity to start the discussion about how the focus of Thanksgiving should be on being thankful.
2. After the first slip is read, curl the slip of paper into a circle and staple the ends together.
3. After each subsequent message of thanksgiving is read, curl the paper around the circled paper before it and staple the ends together, creating a chain of gratitude.
4. Once all messages of gratitude are read and the chain is complete, hang the chain in a special place so that your entire family can remember all the many things they are thankful for.
Finished and Loving It
I felt like this activity filled our whole family with love as we worked on this project together. And I absolutely love seeing the chain hanging on our “display wall” behind our dining table. During all our meals, and every time we pass by the kitchen, it reminds us of all that for which we are grateful.
Do you have a favorite gratitude practice that you do at Thanksgiving?
Would you like to learn more about teaching Jewish gratitude at Thanksgiving? Check out my post on 3 Ways to Teach Jewish Gratitude at Thanksgiving!
