Teaching Little Ones about Thanksgiving

It's not too late to prepare some Thanksgiving crafts for your children as you are teaching them tomorrow about the First Thanksgiving, and the reason we celebrate.

The girls and I have been doing these Pumpkin Pockets (just scroll down on the page and look on the right-hand side. Click on "I am Thankful Pumpkin Pocket.")

I printed the document on orange construction paper, but you can have your child color or paint the pumpkin instead. And just a note: if you DO print on construction paper, you'll probably have to trim the paper to fit the printer, as I did.

I also cut out some colored leaves for them to glue to the stem.

I had some extra photos of our family, and when Maggie and Lilly put their pictures in the pocket, we prayed, "Thank you Lord, for our family."

You can cut out or draw pictures of food, a house, pets, friends... anything your child can thank God for, and put in their pumpkin pocket.

We've also been reading a children's book about the First Thanksgiving and talking about Pilgrims, Indians, the Mayflower, and how God provided and protected. I found coloring pages on the internet that I printed out, and we colored the Mayflower as we talked about the story.

Tomorrow, on Thanksgiving Day, we will look at and thank God for all the items in our Pumpkin Pockets, and we'll probably make an Indian headdress out of construction paper too.

My friend Jo mentioned that she made pine cone turkeys with her kids last year - I loved doing those when I was a kid - we'll probably end up making some of those tomorrow as well. There are plenty of pine cones in North Louisiana!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!