Thanksgiving Activities For Students
The month of November is the time of year, where we celebrate everything that we are thankful for and for all the things that we have been given. Not everyone has everything that we each want, but knowing how to be grateful with the whole family member is a great start. Some will have Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving Day or during the Thanksgiving season to show their expressions of gratitude.
The holiday season is a great time to have the attitude of gratitude and a grateful heart. A thanksgiving table filled with good things like turkey, gravy, mash potatoes, and cranberries. Of course a Thanksgiving dinner can’t be complete without the pumpkin pie.
Fun Thanksgiving Activities
Gratitude Journal is a great way to express gratitude with the use of sticky notes as well to emphasize the important dates or quotes that you might use. This can be used by kids of all ages from younger students to older students.
One great activity or a powerful tool is having a gratitude jar in the classroom or even in the house too. This can be filled with positive emotions and page of pictures which is a great opportunity and a thoughtful way to share your gratitude with the people you love and/or care about.
Classroom gratitude book is a fun writing activity to have during the Thanksgiving season for older kids too. It’s an easy way to showcase positive thinking into words so that everyone can engage in a fun activity without the pressure of worrying about the next person. This book can be something that the kids can take turns writing whenever they feel like as part of their thanksgiving activities.
Thankful turkey craft is a great way to create fun thanksgiving activities for younger children. It can be a coloring, cutting and pasting, or using construction paper to create a turkey figure too. You can use a roll of toilet paper to create a standing turkey, or use a pumpkin to decorate for the classroom too.
Thanksgiving activities are a big hit during the school year too. Classroom community is built through the classroom gratitude bulletin board where all the thanksgiving activities and fall season is displayed. You’ll see strips of paper and large piece of paper used to create a thankful tree, thankful banners, and even gratitude garlands too.
Board games or thanksgiving games are always a fun way to keep busy, especially during the Thanksgiving break for the kids. Creating a Thanksgiving spirit through a fun game is a better way to spend quality time with the family.
Gratitude exercises like the gratitude circle builds a stronger relationship in the classroom. Everyone does it differently but usually it starts by getting everyone in a circle. Then you take turns expressing your gratitude towards another person in the circle. This also can assist in building a stronger mental health because listening to positive words from your peers is heart warming in so many ways.
Benefits of gratitude or regular gratitude practice teaches kids how to not take things for granted. It allows the good feelings to be present through simple activities. Children can learn to positively express their grateful thoughts in ways that they might normally not do. So often we see ourselves in a way to forget how to appreciate the good things or the little things in life.
Gratitude books can be added as part of the thanksgiving activities for students by having them create their own or by reading the books. There are so many great books that emphasizes on showing grateful feelings and expressing them. The following are some of the favorites and top picks.
Great Books of Thanksgiving
How to Catch a Turkey
Pete the Cat: Trick or Pete
Turkey Trouble
I Am Thankful: A Thanksgiving Book for Kids
Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade
The Night Before Thanksgiving
Baby’s First Thanksgiving
Gratitude is My Superpower: A children’s book about Giving Thanks and Practicing Positivity
I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie
Thanksgiving on Thursday (Magic Tree House #27)
Thanksgiving and Gratitude Quotes
- “Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
- “I count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul rememb’ring my good friends.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness … all the good things.” ~ Maya Angelou
- “This is part of what a family is about, not just love. It’s knowing that your family will be there watching out for you. Nothing else will give you that. Not money. Not fame. Not work.” ~ Mitch Albom
- “What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
- “Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.” ~ Henry Van Dyke
- “Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude.” ~ Deepak Chopra
- “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.”~ Alfred North Whitehead
- “There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues … are created, strengthened and maintained.” ~ Winston Churchill
- “We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.” ~ John F. Kennedy
- “Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” ~ Charles Dickens
- “It’s never too late. Don’t focus on what was taken away. Find something to replace it, and acknowledge the blessing you have.” ~ Drew Barrymore
- “Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.” ~ Lilo & Stitch
- “Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” ~ Michael J. Fox
- “What I love about Thanksgiving is that it’s purely about getting together with friends or family and enjoying food. It’s really for everybody, and it doesn’t matter where you’re from.” ~ Daniel Humm
- “Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” ~ Melody Beattie
Thanksgiving activities are filled with so many different ways to get children and their families involved.