Thanksgiving Placemats

Here's a fun little thing to keep the kids in the thanksgiving spirit while you're getting the food on the table. I made my own Thanksgiving place mats to help keep them busy while I'm busy too.

I just took some of our spangles and tossed them about, so she could count them later. I also had her make the thumb print turkey. I have a few plastic templates so I just traced one out for her. I laminated the entire thing and that way she can use a dry erase marker to dress the girl.

To make my work last longer I did a separate page for Christmas.

I put a simple word list on one side and counting by 10's on the other. Because we live so far from our cousins I put a little snowman for each cousin with their name. I just used my scrapbook circle cutter to make them. Also, Big Sister can make word families with the endings just under her name.

I put the pages back to back and laminated them for all season long fun!

Thankful Strips

So, Halloween is over and the season of Thanks abounds. Well, at least it's supposed to. To help us remember this each day I've come up with a little craft we work on. Our family has been writing on Thankful Strips for several years now. We start the day after Halloween and finish on Thanksgiving. Sounds like too much work, but it's really just a five minute discussion each night at the dinner table.

First of all I prepare the paper so that we only have to write on them each night. Just take construction paper, cut them into strips and presto- you have your Thankful Strips. We keep them in an empty Oatmeal container.

In the years past I'll cover the Oatmeal container with paper and let the kids decorate it. We haven't gotten that far yet this year.

Each night at dinner (maybe breakfast if time didn't allow for it) we'll ask the kids what they were thankful for that day. We be sure to record exactly what they say and the date. Try to get them to be specific. The older they are the more adjectives you should encourage them to use.

On Thanksgiving we pick a few completed Thankful strips and read them during the course of dinner. It helps us remember the blessings God has given us throughout the month.

The day after Thanksgiving we help the kids create a paper chain with all the strips and put the chain up in their room as the first Christmas decoration. That's why we use green and red paper. When we look at it throughout the month we remember all of God's goodness to our family. We now call it our Thankful Chain.

In years past when we only had one kid, or only one kid who talked, we mailed out strips to family and friends and asked them to complete some. Have them mail it back to you before Thanksgiving so you can add it to your special dinner!