Last week was the American holiday of Thanksgiving. It’s not a celebration I’m hugely knowledgable about so I thought it might be a good opportunity to host a session for some friends.
When I host sessions at home I tend to do an information section, then we split into groups and do crafts and a lapbook. I thought that with it being Thanksgiving, it might be a good opportunity to get the children to reflect on the things that they’re thankful for, so I created a thankful Pumpkin.
Creating the Pumpkin
The pumpkin is created using eight strips of card. I printed the template here onto A4 orange card, one for each child.
The children are prompted to think of eight things that they’re thankful for. It was lovely to hear the things they came up with. The things that they are thankful for included:
- Their name
- Nature
- Their parents
- Their friends
- baths(!)
- Favourite teddies
- Siblings
Once they had written the things that they are thankful for onto the strips they then cut them out. Once cut pierce a hole into both ends of each strip (I use a metal skewer to do this).
Gather each of the strips together and place a split pin into each end. Fan the strips into a ball shape and, once completed, you have a thanksgiving pumpkin. These make wonderful decorations and it would be easy enough to print onto red or green paper to adapt for the Christmas period.
These are really simple to do and it’s a great way to encourage children to reflect on their (often many) blessings.
