Ways to Teach Kids About Gratitude

With Thanksgiving soon, this is a great season to teach kids about gratitude. Teaching it while they are young will help to reinforce a thankful attitude when they are older.

According to UNC Chapel Hill’s Raising Grateful Children project, there are four major elements to gratitude that are learned in childhood:

• Noticing things that we feel grateful to have.
• Thinking about “the why” behind gifts. What motivated others to give to us? Are we just surrounded by nice, loving, and giving people?
• Feeling our emotions and understanding those feelings (that the things we’re grateful for make us happy, relieved, satisfied, excited, etc.).
• Doing something in return to express our gratitude.

Learning these skills helps children to not only address their feelings, but to understand others’ perspectives. It’s a big step toward social emotional intelligence. The earlier you start to teach about gratitude, the better.

Here are three tips on how to teach gratitude this season.

Reinforce Appreciation

Teach your kids about gratitude by having them show appreciation when others do something for them. Remind them of good experiences and happy memories to reinforce that gratitude.

You can continue to reinforce that in the simple interactions at school or at home. When you help them get something done or bring them a treat, ask them for examples of how they can respond when someone does something nice for them.

Talk About Emotion

It’s one thing to ask a child to say, “thank you,” but they won’t completely understand it if they’re not grasping the feeling of what they’re saying. So, as you reinforce thank you, explain why we say it and how it makes us feel. You can ask the following questions:

• “How does it make you feel when someone does something nice for you?”
• “Do you know why it makes you feel that way?”
• “Did you know that that feeling is called being thankful?”

This is a great way to teach kids about gratitude. The continued dialogue will help the lesson sink in and they will not only inherently say thank you, but will actually feel it. Feeling the emotion and being able to put a name to it goes a long way toward living a grateful lifestyle in childhood, as well as into adulthood.

Share What Makes You Grateful

This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s easy to get wrapped up in life and forget to speak with intentionality and model gratitude. Mentioning what you’re thankful for will teach kids about gratitude.

Try to bring up what you are thankful for in even the most mundane of situations. For example:

• “The sun is shining! I love it when the sun shines, because it makes me happy and feel like we’re going to have a good day. I’m thankful for the shining sun.”
• “This food is really yummy and gives me so much energy. It makes me feel big and strong. I’m thankful for this food!”
• “Sounds like you’re having a fun time playing with your blocks with Daddy. I love your daddy–he makes us laugh and smile. He’s so much fun. I’m so thankful for Daddy, and I know you are too!”
• “I love spending time with you. You’re so funny and sweet, and every day feels like an adventure, especially when we play. I’m so thankful for you.”

Explaining what you feel gratitude for – not just saying that you are grateful, but also going into detail on emotions – helps lend insight into another person’s perspective. Hopefully they will start seeing that they are not the only people who should feel thankful – adults do, too.

Bonus: Thanksgiving Crafts

Many children love learning lessons through art. Here are ideas for Thanksgiving crafts, particularly ones that reinforce the tenets of gratitude mentioned above:

Gratitude Picture Collage

Ask students to draw a picture of something they are thankful for and write why they are grateful for those things/people/places. Or if you are doing this craft with your children, let them go around your home and take pictures of all the things they are thankful for. Gather the drawings or pictures and make a collage to show all that you have to be grateful for.

Gratitude Journal

During the days leading up to Thanksgiving, ask students to journal each day about something they are thankful for. This can be a simple phrase like, “Grandma,” or “My dog Spike.” Or you can have them add why they are thankful for that particular person, item, or experience. You also have the option to take this activity farther by putting all of these things in a journal that the child can decorate. (You can make a journal by folding multiple standard letter-sized papers in half and stapling the center seam.)

The Grateful Turkey

Use The Grateful Turkey template to have kids list things they are thankful for. Cut out the turkey and feathers. On each of the feathers students can write one thing they are thankful for. Glue or tape the feathers onto the turkey and color/decorate. Alternately, you can buy a large poster board and draw a turkey, but leave its tail unfeathered. Make large tail feathers out of regular paper and have students each write one thing they are thankful for on a feather and decorate it. Adhere the feathers to the turkey for one large, uniquely decorated Grateful Turkey.