Thanksgiving Traditions

Better late than never, right?
This year we started a new Thanksgiving tradition with our kids, and we liked it enough to keep it on deck for next year.  I printed out these free booklets from A Holy Experience: 7 Gifts: Good and Perfect.  Since the little booklet has a page for each day of the week, we gathered our children on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  (Ok, actually we put the baby to bed so we'd have some hope of getting through our time peacefully.)

Grant read through Acts 16, and we talked about Paul and Silas praising God even though they were in prison. We also read 1 Thessalonians 5:18, and then wrote it out on a card to memorize during the week.  Then we all took our booklets and recorded seven things we were thankful for.  Writing help was provided as necessary.

For the rest of the week, my plan was to read some of the books off of this list to help the children understand how much more they have than most people in the world, and record more thankfulness each night.  We did this most evenings, except for the two my kids spent at their cousin's house.  We also read some Thanksgiving books from the library and practiced our memory verse.  Ava and I had great conversations about why people would even live in a house that had a dirt floor and was overrun with flies.

I will put the little booklets into the journals I keep for each kid, so they can see them next year.  Short, simple, sweet.  Meaningful and memorable.  We will definitely do this again next year.