FHE: The Grateful Gobbler

For family home evening tonight we started a new family tradition. I can't remember where I saw this idea last year, but I am excited for our family to do it this year.

Since it's November, I decided to start the month off talking about things we are thankful for, and being grateful for things that we have.
First, we sang a song out of the Children's Songbook called, Autumn Day. I'd never heard it before, and it has kind of a tricky rhythm to it, but the kids liked it.

Then I explained to the kids that in November we have a holiday called Thanksgiving, where we remember that everything we have comes from Heavenly Father and so we are thankful for it. Things we are thankful for include our food, our clothes, our house, and our family, plus many others.

We had each of the boys "read" (aka, repeat) a scripture. Lincoln picked Psalms 100:4 "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name." and Ivan picked 1 Chronicles 16:34 "O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever." Then we talked about how we can give thanks to the Lord when we pray.

Then I told them that for the whole month of November we want to try really hard to remember what we are grateful for. I showed them our "Grateful Gobbler" and explained that he was going to help us. Every night at dinner, as a family, we are going to say some things that we are thankful for that day, and then write it on one of Gobbler's feathers. Then at Thanksgiving dinner we will read off all the things we've come up with all month. And we will be able to see that we really do have a lot to be grateful for.

We started tonight, and we each got to say two things we were grateful for. The first few days will probably  be really easy, but once all the obvious things (food, clothes, family, etc.) are out of the way, I'm hoping we'll have to look deeper and start noticing other things to be thankful for that sometimes go over-looked. Anyways, I think it's going to be a fun family tradition that the kids will really enjoy.