The holiday season is a wonderful time to teach your children to practice gratitude. Talking about gratefulness and thankfulness is essential during the gift-giving season and spending time with extended family. Kids will be kids, and the excitement of receiving gifts should go hand in hand with slowing down and being appreciative.
Talk About What It Means to Be Grateful
Explaining to your children the concepts of happiness, gratefulness and gratitude may not be new to your family, but it can be reinforced during the holiday season. For young ones, try to explain little moments of gratitude, generosity and thankfulness they may experience each day. This can be shown with a random act of kindness toward a stranger.
Practice Acts of Kindness
Here are 10 ideas from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation as examples.
- Return shopping carts for people.
- Smile at five strangers.
- Write out a gratitude list in the morning and see what you can add by the end of the day.
- Grab some litter and recycle or dispose of it properly.
- Take a treat to your local police station, postal office, library or fire station.
- Write a brief, kind letter to a neighbor, worship leader, teacher or other local figure.
- Complete a chore for someone else in the family.
- Donate supplies to a local animal shelter.
- Participate in a local toy or clothing drive.
- Hold the door for a person entering behind you.
Read a Book About Gratitude
Are you looking for ways to teach little ones about thankfulness and appreciation? Explore this collection of e-books to help inspire an attitude of gratitude. You will be thankful for how easy it is to access these e-books on your device with your Canton Public Library card! Some titles are available on the Libby platform, and others are on hoopla. To learn more about these services, visit our Books & Media page.
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