T is for Thanksgiving! (Day 1)

November 1st dawns with cool air, sunshine, and runny noses. But no fear!  I don't have to take the kids out of school- just another perk of teaching at home (although we did have to cancel a play date with our neighbors down the street, bummer).

During this month we all tend to turn our hearts towards thanksgiving. One of the Character Traits we want to instill in our children is a heart of thankfulness. We teach them to share so they do not become stingy (a generous heart is a sign of thankfulness), as well as saying "thank you" whenever given help or a gift. Manners matter. So we try to model them and instruct our kids in them.

So I turn to our new theme: T is for Thanksgiving.

Daily Thankful Theme: Thank you, God, for your Son (Jesus Christ)
Scripture: John 3:16; Proverbs 1:1-7
Memory: "In everything, give thanks" (1 Thess. 5:18)
Prayer: "Thank you, God, for giving us your Son, Jesus Christ"
Song: "If You're Thankful and You Know It" and "Give Thanks, with a Grateful Heart"
Craft: Pom-Pom "T"
Thankful Activity: add leaf to Thankfulness tree

 Each day, I want to focus on one particular thing for which we can be thankful. Today is the most important one: that God sent us His Son, Jesus Christ. We read John 3:16 aloud and I explained briefly (very briefly) about God sending His Son. We then bowed in prayer and thanked God for His Gift to us.

I want to read more than just one Bible verse, so on days that have few or one verse I will read a section of Proverbs as well. We only made it to verse 7 today before the wiggles overtook us.

Next, we sang "If You're Thankful and You Know it". Evan loves the stomping part so we sang that verse a couple times. Reese was with us today and she loves music and dancing. So I held her and swirled around (until I was dizzy) and she squealed along with our song. I don't suppose Evan will memorize "Give Thanks, with a Grateful Heart" anytime soon. But I want to expose him to some of the great songs we have as Christians.

Our craft today, focused on the letter "T". Which I was surprised to find out Evan already knew by sight! That was easy.

Supplies: I had a bag of colored rainbow poms (or pom-poms as we refer to them in our house) already, so I grabbed those. The red paper has a capitol letter "T" drawn on it, and I had glue for sticking on the pom-poms. The yellow leaf, tape, and pen were for the Thankfulness Leaf.

Evan traced the "T" with the glue stick (badly, I might add) and pressed on colored pom-poms. I tried to tell him which color to glue on next for color recognition practice, but he got ahead of me in his excitement, so I finally just gave up and let him go to town.

We practiced saying "T is for Thankfulness" over and over. This theme will continue for the month of November. Also, I practiced his new verse at this time. For this verse, I added motions: "in everything" arms stretched out wide, "give thanks" make prayer hands.

Lastly, I reviewed that we are thankful for God sending His Son; this I wrote on the yellow leaf.

Earlier, I created a tree from brown construction paper. I wanted to display this in my home, so I stuck it on the closet door in the play room/office. The branches are bare because we will be adding a different leaf every day.

(Evan must use a chair to reach the tree because I wanted it high enough not to be played with during the rest of the day.)

I am thankful for this chance to teach my son at home. What other things are you thankful for?