Thanksgiving Jar

I recently read an excellent book by Noel Piper, called Treasuring God in Our Traditions.

She talked about making traditions in the normal every day things of life, like always reading to them while they fold laundry, etc. There are also the important practices of teaching them to have their own daily quiet time with the Lord. Even before they could read, she would have her children sit down with a Bible story on CD and listen to that so they were trained to have that personal time with God. She stressed the importance of family meal time at the table and praying together, as a family and as a couple. One of the things she pointed out was that at Holidays we need to make sure that everything we are doing is pointing our children towards Christ. She encourages her readers to come up with some of their own family traditions.

I read about this online and thought I would try it since it's so simple. I took a canning jar and affixed some scrap booking paper to it. Then I cut out some small pieces of paper (which I'm storing in a little basket with a pen next to the jar). The idea is that we write down things we are thankful for all during the month and then on Thanksgiving we will read them. I'm toying with the idea of reading them once a week instead of all of them on Thanksgiving, but I haven't decided yet. It was so simple but I'm hoping this will help all of us focus on all of the things we have to be thankful for and most of all the God who deserves our thanks. Rylie is enjoying it so far and has already had me write several things she is thankful for (her various toys mostly).

If you come to our Mops group, we're going to make these at our next meeting.

(The pine cone turkey was a craft that Rylie made in Cubbies. Pam got the pine cones from the Redwood forest. Isn't it cute?!)