Kiddie Craft For Thanksgiving
It's easy for us to get so swept up in holiday preparations that we forget about the meaning behind the holiday. For the sake of our children, though, it's important to take the time to think about what the holiday means, and how we might invest our children with the history and spirit of the day. The thing is, it doesn't really take much effort at all to transmit to your child the flavor of this holiday, and we're not talking turkey.
Gratitude Tradition
You might want to try taking on a Thanksgiving tradition. Perhaps you could talk about your family's early origins at the table. If your family were immigrants from another country, you might speak about why they left, and about their experiences: how it felt to leave their families and familiar surroundings, and the difficulties and strangeness they encountered in their new land. Or you might add one dish to your holiday feast that hails from the country of your forebears. There are many ways to bring home the important message of Thanksgiving. Here's one we like: the gratitude tradition.
During their first winter in America, food was very scarce. It became necessary to ration supplies in order to make them last until new crops could be harvested. The pilgrims were each given 5 kernels of corn every day, and somehow, their fortitude carried them through that hungry, difficult time. You may want to hand out 5 corn kernels to each guest at your Thanksgiving feast and have them name 5 things in their lives for which they feel gratitude.
Holiday Project
You can carry this theme home even farther by helping your child with this fun and colorful holiday project a few days before the event.
Indian Corn Napkin Holders
What you'll need:
*Popsicle sticks
*Craft glue
*Yellow felt
*Small paintbrush
*Assorted, colorful buttons (these can be bought by the bag in craft stores)
Instructions:
1) Cut the felt into 4"x5"x1/2" pieces.
2) With paintbrush, paint glue on 12 of the Popsicle sticks and press them onto the felt, starting at the short end of the felt rectangle. Line up the sticks as evenly as possible, side by side. There should be margin of uncovered felt.
3) When glue has dried, glue the uncovered felt margin to the underside of the other end of the rectangle, forming a ring.
4) Glue on the colorful buttons in rows, so that you have something that resembles an ear of Indian corn. Allow glue to dry completely.
5) Just before the feast, take yellow napkins (to resemble corn husks), roll them up and insert them into the napkin rings so that a "tuft" of napkin sticks out at the top of each "cob."
