Thanksgiving Theme: A Second Helping

Welcome back to our Thanksgiving themed smorgasbord! As I mentioned before, we do not celebrate Thanksgiving quite in the typical way, but we do have family traditions around it that we look forward to each year. I feel strongly that meaningful celebrations and connections are the most important ingredient on the Thanksgiving menu! One thing we look forward to each year is our family getaway to a favorite location in central, VA. We love countdowns here and this year to count down the days until our upcoming trip, I used a collection of postcards and photographs from our Thanksgiving trip over the past few years. My son is so excited each morning to turn over another picture as we get closer and closer to traveling day! And there is a lot to learn, play about and do together while we wait...

Thankfulness is such a key concept to this holiday. While Thanksgiving pushes thoughts and feelings of gratitude to the forefront of our minds once each year, Judaism teaches us daily to feel and express gratitude. We begin each and every morning with a declaration of gratitude to G-d for restoring our soul into our bodies for yet another day. The Modeh Ani is one of the first prayers children learn to say. We also make special blessings over different types of foods before eating. Thereby, we are reminded throughout the day--even in the most menial and physical of routines like waking up and eating--that we have all that we need and we need all that we have, thank G-d. Our Thanksgiving unit seemed like an extra special time to learn and play a bit more about the special blessings over foods. As he gets more and more verbal, my son loves to say his own brachos and will even remind me to do so with him if I forget! He loved this sorting activity this morning:

I brought a basket of toy foods and props from his dramatic play area over to the rug in a basket. I was given this set of posters as a gift when I left a teaching job before I was married. The school was cleaning out its Jewish books and materials closet and someone thought I might have a use for them in the future. I remember kind of chuckling to myself because I didn't know if I'd go back to teaching after I was married or not and wondered to myself what I would possibly need them for if not. Nonetheless, they made the move from New York to Virginia and have gotten a lot of use both in my classrooms and home ever since! One at a time, he selected an item from the basket and we decided together (or sometimes he did so independently) which poster to place it on. Beginners to learning brachos over foods would do best to be introduced only two or three different food groups at a time. I was actually quite amazed at how well my son did with this activity and that he actually wanted to keep playing after we had completed the game!

 Thanksgiving is also a great time to explore the concept of table manners, trying new foods and even practical life skills like setting the table and folding napkins. Writing skills can come into play if you involve children in making place cards for guests or family members. You can use pictures of traditional Thanksgiving foods cut from magazines or newspaper grocery adds to glue onto paper plates to play your own game of "Yes, please, No thank you!" Kids can definitely be included in creating this activity and older ones can practice cutting skills as well. 

There are oh so many cute and adorable Thanksgiving arts and crafts projects out there. I try to balance craft projects with process art opportunities and some fun with mixing Autumn colors and painting seemed like a great way to include some more process art into the menu.

We love painting on bubble wrap! It's a fun sensation with a paintbrush and, of course, with hands as well. The prints come out beautifully when you press paper over the top. We will use the dried prints later on to make this adorable "I is for Indian Corn" alphabet craft.

After covering the bubble wrap with gorgeous shades of red, orange, yellow and brown, my little artist still wanted to paint some more on paper. I offered some paper and some "turkey" feathers to use as a paintbrush. He LOVED "tickling" the paper with the paint-dipped feathers.

And in between all of the games and arts and crafts, we're still making time for snuggling up and reading. PJ Library is a wonderful organization that provides free books for Jewish children and families nationwide. I was so excited to be a part of this great program in my own community that I actually attempted signing up my firstborn while I was at the hospital and in labor. Long story short, I needed to know the gender, name and birth date of my child and none of those were yet confirmed at the time! So I signed up as soon as we were home from the hospital. Our first book arrived right around the time he was 6 months old and we've looked forward to the wonderful gift of building up our Jewish family library each and every month since. 

He were are almost two years ago with that very first book, Todah by Kyra Teis. Todah is the Hebrew word for "thank you," and the beautifully illustrated story takes the reader page by page through the many things a little baby might feel thankful for throughout the day. I started putting the sweet, lyrical poem to music back then and we would sing our way through the book again and again. Today he was so excited to find it inside his school bag since we had not read it together for quite a while. He chimed in with "todah" each time my finger pointed to the word. 

Holidays here are all about creating new family traditions together and revisiting and nurturing old ones. Whether you're building a menu for next week or just building with blocks, know that the times we spend in connection together are by and far the most meaningful and memorable ones our children will have. Happy connecting, happy creating and happy playing!

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!