Books to Teach Gratitude

Thanksgiving is a great time of year to help children focus on gratitude and teach them how to live a life full of it.

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It's easy to get caught up at this time of year on getting more stuff, especially as Christmas approaches. How can we help kids be happy with what they already have? The books I'm sharing are a great way to start discussions with your kids about living a life full of gratitude. People who are able to live this way are happier than those who are always looking at what they lack. And while these books are more about the feeling of gratitude than specifically about the Thanksgiving holiday, they are still very appropriate at this time of year, or any time of year!


The Quiltmaker's Gift by Jeff Brumbeau

A greedy king learns true happiness thanks to a gifted Quiltmaker.
This is a longer picture book, so give yourself time to read it aloud, but it's a great message and really resonates with kids. 

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
Sylvester finds a magic pebble but accidentally turns himself into a rock. A great story about what really matters in life.
This is a family favorite. I have read this book aloud at least a hundred times to my kids yet I still tear up at the end EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback

Joseph has an overcoat that is getting old and worn. What should he do with it?
A great story about making do with what you have. 

The Stonecutter: A Japanese Folk Tale by Gerald McDermott

This is a favorite of mine. A man becomes greedier and greedier only to find in the end that what he had in the beginning was enough. 

Hey, Al by Arthur Yorinks
Al is not happy, so when a mysterious bird invites him to an exotic island in the sky he goes with him, not realizing the dangers in paradise.
A nice story about finding joy in your current life.

The Table Where Rich People Sit by Byrd Baylor
A young girl is jealous of her rich friends but eventually is able to see the richness in the world around her.

Chapter books:

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin
Minli sets off on a quest to find out how she can change her poor family's fortune and discovers much about what brings happiness in life.
LOVE THIS BOOK! You should read it aloud to your kids. They will love it too, and it's a great book about living with gratitude.

Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter

You've most likely seen the movie, but the book is even better! (isn't it always?) I wish I could get my kids to play the glad game at times . . .



The next three books are all on the same theme and based on the same tale - be grateful for how things are now because they could always be worse:

It Could Always Be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale by Margot Zemach
The original tale of a poor man living in a small house with a large family. He asks the Rabbi for help and things go from bad to worse, but in the end finds peace.

Too Much Noise  by Ann McGovern

The too full house becomes a too noisy house in this telling of the tale. 

"Could Be Worse!" by James Stevenson
A grandfather helps his grandkids see that life could always be worse. This book is not really related to the first two, but is a more humorous take on the phrase.

What would you add to this list? 

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Pumpkin Chiffon Pie

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and we are getting ready to make our favorite things, one of which is this delicious pie.  It's pumpkiny and spicy but not dense like most pumpkin pies.  

First you will need a baked pie crust. This is the recipe I use - it's nothing fancy but it works.  

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 cup shortening

6 to 7 tbls. cold water

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (completely optional, but I just like cinnamon in the crust sometimes)

Stir together flour and salt.  Cut in shortening until pieces are small peas.  Sprinkle 1 tbls. of water over part of the mixture; gently toss with fork and push to side of the bowl.  Repeat until all is moistened. Form into a ball and roll out on a lightly floured surface.  Transfer to pie dish and ease it in.  Trim pastry and do whatever decorative thing you like to the edges.  Prick sides and bottom of pastry generously with the tines of a fork.  Prick where bottom and sides meet all around the pie shell.  Bake in a 450 degree oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden.  Cool on a wire rack.  

I opted for the natural look around the edges.
(fine, I was just too lazy to do anything fancy) 

For the filling, follow this recipe:

Combine the following in a saucepan and cook over medium heat:

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. ginger

1 1/4 cup pumpkin

1/2 cup milk

3 egg yolks (make sure you keep the 2 of the egg whites in a separate bowl!)

Stir constantly until it boils and the gelatin is all dissolved. Let cool.

Whip 2 egg whites until peaks form.  Add 1/2 cup sugar towards the end to make the meringue.  

Whip 1/2 cup cream.  

Fold meringue and whipped cream in to the pumpkin mixture.  Pour into already baked pie crust and put in the fridge to chill.

Serve with whipped cream.  

mmmmm, pie

Hi Ho Turkey-O

Here's a fun math game for preschoolers and early elementary students to play around Thanksgiving time. (aka turkey time)

    

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My kids have always loved playing Hi Ho Cherry-O, and this Fall we decided to play a version of it with a play-dough turkey we called Hi Ho Turkey-O! We practiced our addition and subtraction facts as well as writing numbers and equations with this game.

To play you will need:

Feathers

Brown, orange, and red Play-Doh

Dice

a piece of paper and a pencil

First, make 2 Play-doh turkeys, one for each of you (or more if more than 2 people are playing).
We were starting with addition, so we left our turkeys featherless.

I got a die and put a star sticker over both the 5 and 6.  Christopher rolled and then got to add that many feathers to his turkey.  He then wrote down the equation on a piece of paper.  If he rolled a star, he had to take 2 feathers off of his turkey, and write down the equation.

We played until someone got 10 or more feathers in their turkey.

Then we played again, this time plucking the feathers off of our turkey (I think he enjoyed this way more.)  We made sure we both started with 10 feathers in our turkeys, and rolled the die to see how many feathers we got to pluck off.  If a star was rolled in this version, he had to put 2 feathers back on.

While we played, we talked about math.  How many more do you need to reach 10?  Who has more feathers?  How many more do you have than I have?

Of course, Nathan and  Joshua wanted to play too.

With Nathan I talked about less and more.  Do you have more feathers than mommy?  And he was very good at counting the dots on the die and adding them to his turkey.  He was not as good at the subtraction version because he just enjoyed pulling all the feathers off at once too much to just do a few at a time.

Joshua wanted to play until we reached 20.  It made for a very full feathered turkey.

You could also play this in a school setting as a center station or splitting up into small groups.

This was a fun and easy way to make math more engaging this morning.  Sometimes it's the little things that make school time more fun, like plucking feathers off a turkey.

Thanksgiving Windows

(Window from a couple of years ago)

It's that time of year again!  Time to help the kids focus on gratitude (and maybe that will help their christmas lists be a little shorter :)).  We started our Thankful Windows again on Tuesday.  Every day during a meal we say 1 or 2 things we are each grateful for and write them on our windows with a window crayon.  We used to do a thankful tree, but it was a lot of work and hard for me to be consistent. The windows work well for us.  They are right by our kitchen table and the kids can easily ready what we've written and be reminded of all the blessings we have.

I love hearing what the kids are grateful for.  This year, the first thing out of Christopher's mouth was "TV shows".  The next day he said "TV".  I said "Christopher, we already wrote that up yesterday." He replied "No mom.  That is for TV shows.  Today I'm grateful for the TV".  Okay, fine. Today he was grateful for Wii games.  Tomorrow I'm expecting iPad.  I think he might need a little less media in his life.

thankful windows

Every year we used to do a thankful tree.  I would cut out leaves for each child, or buy die cut ones at the parent-teacher store, and we would have a big tree on the wall and write things we were thankful for.  Last year, I had a very colicky 2 month old baby in November, and the tree just wasn't going to happen, so we simplified.  We decided to write our thankful things on the windows by our kitchen table.  Crayola makes these great things called "window crayons".  I love them.  They work much better and wash off easier than any window markers I've tried, plus the colors are nice and bright. We enjoyed our window thankful things so much last year, we decided to do it this year too.  It's easy, and the kids like it, so that's what makes it great.  At dinner, we all say one thing we're grateful for and I write it down.  And it's so fun hearing what the kids are grateful for, especially the 3 year old.  From him we get gems such as "thankful my water bottle not lost" and "cars, but not real cars, the movie cars".  Jason and I always try to guess how long it will be before one of the kids says they're grateful for their mom and dad.  Sadly, we usually don't make the list until they're having trouble thinking of something and we offer suggestions.  Someday they'll be grateful for us, right?