Thankfulness – January’s Habit
2012
With the holidays so recently finished thankfulness was the most natural habit to pick for January for us to work on since thank-you cards need to be done and this is a relatively easy habit to ease us into this year long focus of intentional habit building.
I have mapped out our activities for the month – a little something daily that will direct our attention to the subject of being thankful. These activities are meant to be short and simple. I don’t imagine any of them taking more than 5 minutes each day – and that is the point. My hope is that through simplicity faithfulness and focus will be developed and the habit of thankfulness will be deeply rooted in their foundation.
A lot of the activities are repetitive from week to week – I believe this will work well with the ages of my boys but I am ready to tweak the activities if they seem bored with the repetitiveness.
Activities for encouraging the habit of thankfulness
1. Sit one person in the “thankful seat” and everyone else mentions one thing each that they are thankful about the person. {We did this yesterday and I believe it had a lot of impact on them seeing both how good it feels to be on the receiving end of thankful people and how to personalize your thanks to another person. I wrote down each item so they will have a permanent record of it.}
2. Talk about times we have been thankful.
3. Read a short story.
4. Focus on saying thank-you for each meal throughout the day
5. Write thank-you notes for Christmas gifts recieved
6. Read Luke 17:11-19 – the story of the 10 lepers that were healed and 1 came back to say thanks
7. Hold up 10 fingers and list 10 things we’re thankful for. Write one item on each finger with permanent marker.
8. Talk about times other people may have been thankful for something we have done.
9. Gift wrap a random assortment of items (both things they love and oddities) and practice being sincere and communicating thankfulness for the items.
10. Read a short story
11. Focus on saying thank-you for each meal throughout the day
12. Write thank-you notes for Christmas gifts recieved
13. Read Luke 15:11-32 – the story of the prodigal son; the father was thankful for his sons return and the brother was not.
14. Hold up 10 fingers and list 10 things we’re thankful for. Write one item on each finger with permanent marker.
15. Talk about things God has done for us that we are thankful for.
16. Do something for our neighbors to thank them for being such great neighbors.
17. Read a short story
18. Focus on saying thank-you for each meal throughout the day
19. Write thank-you notes for Christmas gifts recieved
20. Read Psalm 136:1-3
21. Hold up 10 fingers and list 10 things we’re thankful for. Write one item on each finger with permanent marker.
22. Talk about times we have been unthankful and times others have been unthankful for things we have done and how it felt and may have felt to others.
23. Serve plain rice for all our meals to show how a lot of the world does live and how much we do have to be thankful for.
24. Read a short story
25. Focus on saying thank-you for each meal throughout the day
26. Write thank-you notes for Christmas gifts recieved
27. Read Philippians 4:6
28. Hold up 10 fingers and list 10 things we’re thankful for. Write one item on each finger with permanent marker.
29. Talk about ways that thankfulness can be shown (written, verbal, by our actions, etc.)
30. Let the boys use a camera to take pictures of things they are especially thankful for and make a photo album of their pictures
31. Read a short story
I am so, so thankful for all the dear people that have let me run these ideas by them, that have contributed their own ideas to this project and that have committed to pray for this year of intentional habit building.
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[...] have been encouraged with our focus on developing the habit of thankfulness through this month. There is much joy in ...
This is wonderful, Jessica! I really appreciate you sharing your list of activities! So excited to be following along with you on these habits this year!
Thanks for the encouragement Cindy!
Really good ideas!The scripture reminds us to give thanks “in all things”! I know it makes such a difference in my own perspective on life.
Thank you for putting these plans together! Late this fall I was inspired to intentionally study a character trait with my family, too, but I’m not as quick to pull it all together. Your plans will really help me. We are beginning the year with the urgently needed habits of obedience, attitude, work ethic, and efficiency. Later in the year I think our topics will overlap and I’m sure I will pull heavely from the work you’ve already done. Thank you!
You’re welcome!
Have you shared what you’ve done online? I’d be interested to see and share links on here if they match up with future habits we’ll be working on!
I’ve just FINALLY gotten my January/Obedience plans all together. I’m thinking about posting them on my old blog that’s I haven’t updated in forever. I’m always stealing others’ ideas like this…maybe it would be nice to give a little this time! I will leave a comment and let you know if I actually get it up sometime. Otherwise I could e-mail you – if you’re intested, maybe you can just e-mail me from the info I fill out when I leave a comment?
Jessica thank you for sharing these. I have been wanting to do something like this but it has just never made it off of the to do list. I will be following along and pulling inspiration from your activity lists. I love the idea of the thankful chair! We might start making that a weekly family activity. I also realized that my kids have never been the ones to speak up and give thanks for their meal – an adult usually does this so starting yesterday we are all taking turns throughout the week to do this.
Thanks again!
Oh and I almost forgot that I saw some cute templates for Christmas thank you cards over on http://www.organizinghomelife.com
My daughter will want to make all of her own thank you cards but her two younger brothers aren’t quite there yet so I will be printing the ‘reason for the season’ cards for them to ‘sign’ and hand out.