Some more great ideas for teaching your children about Thanksgiving:

1.  Show a picture of The President and talk about what a President does.

2. Ask your child(ren) why the President issues a Thanksgiving Proclamation each year.  Suggested answer: It has been a tradition since the founding of our country that Presidents ask Americans to thank God for the blessings we have received as a nation in the previous twelve months.

3. Vocabulary Race. (You may want to gather some fellow homeschoolers for this one).  Have your children divide into two groups. Have each group make a list of vocabulary words from one of the proclamations and exchange the list with the other group. The lists of words should be equal to two words per student in the group. At your signal, each group works as a team to find and write the appropriate definitions of the words. The first group finished is the winner. The group must read aloud its definitions to prove they are correct.

4. Read the closing paragraph(s) of a recent proclamation to your children and ask them to list the things the President asked Americans to do on Thanksgiving Day.

5. Ask them how they can each do the things the President asked them to do.

6. Have your child(ren) create a “found poem.”  Have them read the proclamation and underline phrases (not sentences) they think are most important.  Have each child choose only two phrases as the most important and write each phrase on a separate strip of paper (If its just you and one child, be sure to participate and write a minimum of four phrases each). Arrange the strips of paper to create a free-verse poem. Have one of your children read the poem to the rest.

7. We often speak of “owing” someone a debt of gratitude. Have your children list things they have for which they are thankful (possessions, experiences, special events, opportunities given) and to whom they can be thankful for providing them.

8. Teach children the social skill of expressing gratitude. Have them create a hypothetical situation in which one person gives a thing or an opportunity to another person.  Discuss and list three or four steps to showing gratitude. For example: (1) face the person, (2) look the person in the eye, (3) say “Thank you,” (4) continue by saying “I appreciate that you ____________” and explain why you are grateful.

9. The Roman lawyer Cicero once wrote, “A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, it is the parent of all other virtues.” Discuss what your children think he meant. Have them brainstorm a list of virtues as you write them down. Why is gratitude the basis for those virtues? Can they give examples?

Taken from Gatewayspartners.org

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