As always, I want to not only practice life-giving disciplines myself but I want to model them to my children as well. Gratefulness is certainly one of those training exercises.
I am almost not embarrassed to tell you that I got the following idea off of Pinterest. 🙂
In the beginning of September, our thankfulness tree went up in our entryway. The kids and I went for several walks together and gathered up long sticks that we found. All of them were placed in a vase, tied together with ribbon, and bam! A thankfulness tree. Leaves were cut out of fall themed papers so that our family could write things we were thankful for and tie them to the tree.
My children really embraced this practice and could be found adding things to the tree for the entire 2 months it was up. Here are just a few of their additions:
All in all, this was a very simple and fun way to practice gratitude together. And, it turned out to be beautiful, too!