A Month of Gratitude with Kids: Teach Kindness, Love, and Thanks

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These gratitude activities are great for celebrating a month of gratitude with kids. Grab the free printable included to mark off as you go.

I want to give my kids the world, but I also want to help them appreciate what they have, and the people in their lives. We do a month of gratitude activities every Fall, and it’s wonderful family bonding and great for helping our children appreciate what they have.

Throughout the month, we will do an act of gratitude a day. Then in December, for the Christmas season, we make an advent calendar with acts of kindness. My kids talk about this often, asking if we can do ‘actus kindess’ again.

I have a list of activities and prompts that we will follow each day to complete a task. My son loves surprises and unveiling toys right now, so to make this exciting for him, I am creating a gratitude board that he gets to open each day.

A Month of Gratitude to Celebrate with Kids

The word gratitude means “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness.” When you read that sentence about the readiness to show kindness, doesn’t that just resonate with all of your parenting goals? Work toward this in every day of your parenting journey, but making a point to celebrate a month of gratitude is a really wonderful way to highlight this.

Create a Gratitude Calendar for Kids

Making a visual for kids is a great way to get them involved in this. My kids love unveiling anything so I created a board where each day had a flap with its kindness task inside.

As you can see, my board is incredibly basic. I raided the recycling bin and found two pieces of cardboard that I could match up together. Using a box cutter and a sharpie, I numbered squares and cut little flaps (much like a lift the flap book) and wrote our gratitude activity on the piece underneath. With a little glue in between the two pieces, we had a simple DIY gratitude board.

This isn’t the easiest way to follow along, so I’ve created a printable for you that you and your family can check off as you go.

Print the Month of Gratitude List

Grab the Month of Gratitude prompts by clicking on the image below. Below this are descriptions for the various prompts on the calendar.

To gain access to all of our printables exclusive for subscribers to this site, click here and sign up.

So here they are, our 30 days of gratitude for kids!

1. Make a gratitude jar. This is a place where kids can write on pieces of paper what they are thankful for and add to the jar.

2. Create a thankful turkey wreath. We like to make our turkey with handprint feathers for this. Or, print and fill out this free thankful turkey poster.

3. Go on a gratitude walk. Take a walk outside and look around and note what you are thankful for. This one should be easy 😉

4. Make a gratitude sensory bin. Fill a box with some of the items around the house that represent what you are thankful for and add them to a bin of rice.

5. Write letters of thanks to community workers.

6. Read books about being thankful.

7. Make a gratitude photo album. Kids love to take pictures, hand them your phone or a disposable camera and let them take pictures of what they are thankful for, then print and add to a small photo album. We love to use the Instax Mini to take photos and make little scrapbook albums with.

8. Do some charity work.

9. Donate toys to a family in need. During this month my kids save a larger portion of their allowance to set aside and then all pitch in to purchase a nice toy for a family in need.

10. Sponsor a child from another country.

11. Draw a thank you picture for teachers.

12. Bake cookies for firefighters.

13. Read The Giving Tree and do an activity.

14. Tell someone thank you.

15. Collect your treasures in a basket and talk about why they are important to you.

16. Look through family photo albums.

17. Say a prayer for someone.

18. Read books about other cultures.

19. Make gratitude stones to keep at the dinner table. We love to make story stones, you can use Sharpies to draw on flat rocks or put stickers on some stones as gratitude reminders. 

20. Make a collage of what you are thankful for.

21. Make a gratitude reinforcement jar, add a marble to the jar when someone in the family shows gratitude.

22. Make a family tree and write one nice thing about each person.

23.  Make erupting hearts, a visualization of overwhelming love. Fill a heart mold with a mixture of baking soda and water to form a paste, and freeze. Remove from the tray when frozen and drop vinegar on them to erupt! 

24. Create potato stamp hearts for a gratitude garland. Carve a heart out of a cut potato to stamp with.

25. Look through a toy catalog, add up the prices, and talk about the value of money. The Target holiday catalog just came in the mail and we went through a couple of the kids’ favorite pages and started calculating costs and they were floored at how much the total of everything they wanted was.

26. Donate warm clothing to those in need.

27. Make a gratitude affirmation dice. Make flash cards or a printable dice with affirmations that kids can repeat such as “I am thankful for the roof over my head”, “I am loved by my friends”, etc. Or, play the gratitude dice game with our free printable.

28. Write thank you letters to soldiers.

29. Build a graham cracker house and discuss being thankful for a home.

30. Bake cupcakes for the dogs. Or make a treat or picture for a pet. 

 Enjoy celebrating a month of gratitude with kids.

More Ways to Practice Gratitude:

• Free Printable Gratitude Dice for Families
• 20 Gratitude Crafts and Activities to Do with the Family
• DIY Gratitude Jar: Upcycled, Kid-Made & SIMPLE
• Thanksgiving Printables for Kids

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