Last year we decided to document what we were grateful for every day, for a month. We started on Thanksgiving day and went until Christmas day. I cut circles out of construction paper and every night at dinner each person told what they were thankful for. The boys really enjoyed it and it was a wonderful exercise for them to see how truly blessed they are. They loved it so much that we left the circles up for months afterwards. The boys read them often and so did the visitors to our home. It was such a huge hit that they asked to keep doing it, but my husband was tired of having a wall that looked like a weird chemistry molecule so we purchased a nice journal and are writing down what we are thankful for in the book. Unfortunately, it's harder to remember to do this because I don't have a huge visual reminder like the wall. I'm hoping to create the habit though so we'll keep plugging along.
We did have to make a rule that they couldn't name specific foods. After a while the wall looked like "pizza, cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, Sprite, 7-Up, Root Beer....." It was almost like the only thing they ever thought about was food. Now that we're not constrained by the size of our blank wall, we are allowing them to express gratitude for whatever foods they want!
I love it!
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful idea! I happen to have a giant magnetic dry erase board, and I was wondering what to do with it. Now I know. I, like you, have a much harder time without a visual reminder.
ReplyDeleteI remember when my son was a few years younger, and he looked sad. I was so worried about some emotional thing--and it turned out he was just thinking about food...food is probably what my boys think about at least 70% of the time. :)