Today I am going to share a couple of crafts that you can do with your students or your children at home that will help them recognize the blessings in their lives! 

After our lesson, “Thankfulness and the Secret Something Bag,” I had the students go to the table and think about at least three things they were thankful for. Have the student write what they are thankful for on the paper feathers. If the children are too young to write, it would be easy for you or a parent helper to write the words for the kids.

Then have your students glue the feathers to the back of their ice cream spoon. If you don’t want to deal with glue, you can use Glue Dots which eliminates the mess. Viola! You have a very thankful turkey!

You can use a hot glue gun to adhere and string on the back so they can hang it up at home. Or you can adhere a magnet to the back so it can go on the fridge. Don’t forget to have the students put the date on the back, so they can always remember when they made this keepsake!! 🙂

Originally, I had wanted to make a pinecone turkey but it would require using a glue gun or tons of school glue that would not be dry by the time class was over. If you are crafty, this might be a fun activity to do with your own kiddos! My daughters loved doing it and they thought the turkey looked so funny with the huge googly eyes!!

Last but not least, I wanted to use the fall scented playdough I made a couple of weeks ago.One of the girls in class asks about playdough every week, so I try to think about ways to incorporate it into a lesson! 🙂 Playdough is an important learning tool. A lot of children are calmed by the kneading of the dough. It helps strengthen their hand muscles and fine motor skills, which are necessary for writing. It also encourages children to communicate, share tools and fosters their creativity and imagination.

Before we went to centers, I showed the kids how to roll a ball and had them rub their hands together so they would know how to make a ball at the center.

While this is fun, I also wanted it to relate to the lesson objective, so I had some colored popcicle sticks that reminded me of feathers. If the students are able, they could write what they are thankful for on them. Or you could have some with words already written on them, if the children can read. Another option, that I didn’t have time to do is to cut out pictures from magazines and glue them to the sticks. This is good for the young ones that are unable to read. And you can always have some parent helpers write words on the sticks for the kids. Use whichever option is best for your students!

Even though we are teaching our children about being thankful, don’t forget to think about the blessings in your life too! There are so many things that we have been blessed with and sometimes those things can be taken for granted. I’m going to leave you with this quote from the Divine Liturgy:

“You brought us into being out of nothing, and when we fell, You raised us up again. You did not cease doing everything until You led us to heaven and granted us Your kingdom to come. For all these things we thank You and Your only begotten Son and Your Holy Spirit; for all things that we know and do not know, for blessings seen and unseen that have been bestowed upon us.” – Divine Liturgy, Prayer of Thanksgiving