Talk to your child or group of children about how greediness is bad and can influence the heart in a negative manner, causing us to be unthankful. Augment this with telling them how Jesus wants them to be thankful for everything. In advance, make up a blank book for each child. Take some typing paper or construction paper and fold it in half, making a book. Staple it to hold it together. Pick a Bible verse relating to thankfulness. With markers or crayons, have the children write their names on the fronts of the books, along with the chosen Bible verse. Tell the children to think of something they are thankful for and have them put one thing on each page. Have them write the name of what they are thankful for and draw it out. This activity will help to reinforce a spirit of thankfulness.
Children of all ages can learn to be appreciative and thankful. This activity is good for youngsters who are learning to write. Find a picture of helping hands or an adult holding a child's hand. Copy and paste the image to a word processing program. Under the picture, print out the Bible verse Psalms 121:2. "My help comes from the Lord." Recite the Bible verse with the class and then have them trace the words with a crayon or marker. Afterward, they can color the picture. Talk about ways to show that we are thankful for the Lord's help.
The act of being thankful is something that can be practiced all year long. One activity that is good The act of being thankful is something to practice all year long. One activity that is good any time of the year is a Bible game called Thankful. The game originally calls for students to take each letter in the word thankful and shout out something that begins with each letter that they are thankful about. Another idea is to make an anagram out of the word and have the students write one item per letter on paper and then illustrate it by drawing what they are thankful for next to each item. The discussion part of this activity centers on the Bible verse Psalms 136:1. Read this verse and allow the students to talk about how God appreciates us voicing our thanks to him.
Counting you blessings is a way to see what you have to be thankful about and encourages gratefulness. Ask your class what counting your blessings mean. Then tell them that it means thinking about the things that you can be thankful for or glad about. One activity involves having the students make a list of things for which they are thankful. However, making a blessings quilt will allow the students to show some creativity and will allow them not only to talk about them but to see them. Have the kids each take a white piece of construction paper and using crayons or markers to draw what they are thankful for in each square. Then have the students use a slightly larger piece of a different colored construction paper to frame their square and have them tape it on. After the squares are all done, lay them out in a quilt pattern and tape them all together, forming a large quilt. When the quilt is completely finished, hang it where the students can see it and talk about just how many blessings are represented by each square in the quilt.