Thanksgiving Countdown

This is my favorite time of year.  It is always the most frustrating time for me as well. I hate retail. It is disgusting to me that as early as August, they start decorating for Christmas. I worked at Old Navy about 12 years ago and let me tell you that by the time Christmas comes, you are so sick of it. In addition to that feeling, Thanksgiving is just skipped over.

As much as I love Christmas, I adore Thanksgiving. Giving thanks for what you have, what you want and what you are grateful for, is not only important but I think it helps to keep things in perspective.  A few years ago, I fell in love with Pottery Barn Kid's countdown calendar for Thanksgiving! Now, the only problem was, I will not pay that much money for a decoration, no matter how important I think it is. I waited and waited and finally found the same one on ebay and was able to purchase it for not only a quarter of the price but I earned money through ebates as well!

Love this calendar countdown chart!

I love the calendar, not only does it look great on the wall but it is a fun and easy way to help teach my children to be thankful.  Each morning as we are eating breakfast we talk about the things that are important to us. Then on a roatating basis, we each fill out one of the cards and write what we are grateful for.

love the cards!

The great part is that PBK, actually provided the cards to go with the calendar, all I did was laminate them so I could use them over and over again. 

We each end up about writing 8 cards in which we are grateful and thankful. The fun part is that no one (except me,) knows whose card is whose. On Thanksgiving as we are about to sit down to dinner, we take turns reading them aloud and trying to figure out which card belongs to whom.  Sometimes we guess who it belongs to right away and somtimes it takes a couple of guesses. The best is that, we learn to appreciate little things and Thanksgiving just isn't the holiday between Halloween and Christmas, it has actual meaning to us.

Some of the things we have been Thankful for thus far:

Our house
Our toys
Mama
Dada
Sasa and Uncle Russell
New brand of toilet paper
Running water (this is after a storm and the the entire town had no water for two days) funny how a storm can help teach a lesson!

The cards stay facing backwards until it is tme to read them! I also slip in the blue piece of paper to keep the kids from trying to cheat and read the cards before it's time.

What ways to do you teach your children to be Thankful?