Thanksgiving Theme: Some Of Our Favorite Things

These fun little craft stick puppets make a festive addition to
one of our favorite Thanksgiving themed fingerplays,
 "Five Little Turkeys" (printed below)

We do not have a "traditional" Thanksgiving in our home since we already have a Thanksgiving-sized meal every Friday night for Shabbos, but both my husband and I have fond childhood memories of Thanksgiving traditions and have created our own family traditions around the holiday. My husband's birthday is also very close to Thanksgiving and he is a huge fan of the all-American turkey dinner, so we usually have one over a weekend prior to or after Thanksgiving. We also take an annual family getaway over Thanksgiving weekend. While I remember vividly the stories I learned in school about the history of Thanksgiving and the many adorable projects and crafts centered around that, I take issue with teaching misinformation to my own little one and rather focus on some of the kinder aspects of this celebration. Gratitude is something that I feel must be taught and modeled from a young age. I also feel that it is a gift that keeps on giving. Feeling genuine gratitude is by and far one of the key factors that I feel leads to a positive outlook throughout life and an overall sense of resiliency. The ability to tap into feelings of satisfaction with what we already have within and around us is the very best tool to mitigate feelings of anxiety, depression and hopelessness. This, of course, encompasses teaching little ones manners and how to say "please" and "thank-you," but it goes deeper as well. There is a great article here on teaching gratitude to children in age-appropriate ways. In addition to modeling and teaching these concepts this time of year and all year round, Thanksgiving is also an opportunity for us to make cute turkey crafts, sing fun songs and action rhymes and learn through play about the many fun traditions that bring us such nostalgia for our own childhoods this time of year. Here's a peek at a few of our favorites:

We up-cycled some of our old artwork and
a brown paper shopping bag along with some
construction paper scraps to make our family
Thankfulness Turkey. Everyone is in on the
fun of adding feathers to our friend!

When I was still in high school, I volunteered in a preschool summer camp where every Friday morning, the director sang a song about thankfulness with the students. She invited each student to share one thing they were thankful for and incorporated it into the song. Fast forward about 15 years and I adapted the song into my own classroom along with this Thankfulness Jar that the children could write/dictate their thankful feelings on in the morning before stuffing our jar with gratitude. I initially did the activity around Thanksgiving, but it was such a hit that I began to do it every week on Friday mornings and often saved the beautiful sentiments the children had to send home collectively at the end of the school year. My son loves the act of folding up a paper turkey feather for our Thankfulness Turkey and stuffing it in the jar so much that he asked to write more thankfulness notes just to be able to do it again! So at two years old he may not fully have grasped the depth of gratitude that we would eventually aim for (one of his messages was how thankful he feels for the thankfulness jar!) but practice makes perfect and I'm glad he wants to practice. You can sing along, too:

We Are Thankful/Todah Raba

t.t.t.o.: Are You Sleeping

We are thankful, we are thankful

For our friends, for our friends

We are thankful we are thankful

For our friends, for our friends

[and in Hebrew]

Todah Raba, Todah Raba

L'chaverim, L'chaverim

Todah Raba, Todah Raba

L'chaverim, L'chaverim

After we sing the two verses (and I also incorporate sign language for the words "thank you" and "friends" into the song) you can invite your little one(s) one to share thing they feel thankful for and sing about that!

Check out this website for more on this action rhyme
and other fun Thanksgiving activities

This is an activity I prepared last year that survived classroom and toddler use well into this year! For little ones, it's a great way to practice those fine motor skills. My toddler is also at the point where we can make a matching game out of calling a color name and even older kids can enjoy practicing patterns as well.

We are having a lot of fun playing and learning about some of the themes around the Thanksgiving holiday. Stay tuned for more in the days to come and, as always, happy playing!