P1 – Thanksgiving

Well the season is here again…THANKSGIVING! While we always try to point our kids towards gratitude throughout the year, we make it an extra focus through the whole month of November. We change up what we do each year and then journal/scrapbook what everyone said at the end of the month. This year, some of our kids have been struggling with worry and doubt, and I was shown the Hand2Mind Filling My Jars interactive journal.

I was impressed and bought one kit to have a hands on look. I loved the concepts, but needed to adapt a.) to make it large enough scale for our whole family to participate without breaking the bank, and b.) to put a larger focus on the gratitude and affirmations, and separate them as focal points, leaving the worries to be acknowledged, but not the focus. Here are the adaptations we made for our family’s month of gratitude!

1.     We have one jar for worries, and each person in our family has a different colored sticky note to write their worries on. We used these smaller sized post-it notes. Then we roll the worry up using the sticky portion of the note to keep it closed, and everyone uses the same jar.

2.     For our thoughts of gratitude I purchased pre-cut hearts found here. Everyone writes one thing they are grateful for per heart (at least one a day) and their name and date on the back. We have challenged our oldest two children (both older than 8) to dig a little deeper in their gratitude than they have in the past. Instead of “I’m grateful mom made dinner.” What was it about mom or the dinner that you specifically are grateful for today?

3.     Affirmations are done the same way as the gratitude hearts except we have pre-cut stars found here. Each person writes one affirmative statement about themselves (again, at least one per day).

4.     The worry jar sits on the fireplace next to a basket full of all our supplies (don’t forget to add colored pencils or some fun pens to your supply basket)! The stars and hearts are hung from jute twine using these fun clothespins.

I felt that for our kiddos and the specific needs they have this year, that drawing our focus to gratitude and affirmations, by having them displayed in our home for the month would help them develop healthy ways to acknowledge worries they have but not obsess over them.