We are so excited to have partnered with Dr. Jenny Rose, a Clinical Psychologist and Parent-Child expert in our new Connected Family Series. Together we have created a series of wonderful tools that encourages connectedness within the family; modelling kindness, empathy, and which equip children with an effective emotional vocabulary.
This week’s theme centres around gratitude. How do we encourage our kids to be thankful? One of the first ways to do this, is through modelling. Instead of ‘forcing’ our kids to say thank you and pushing them to develop a ‘learnt’ response, we want to encourage the development of gratitude as a feeling state – something that they can feel and identify. At first, this is hard for them, and so our role is to pair experiences and the feeling of thankfulness together for them. One evening this week, work through the thankfulness game together.
How it works:
This will look like a sheet of paper (A4), that has “gratitude scavenger hunt’ printed on the top.
Instructions:
Each family member takes a turn to read an item off the list. Following that, each person must aim to find something that fits with the chosen criteria, as quickly as possible. Once all members have found an item, move onto the next item. Each family member takes turns to reflect on why they chose the item they did, and why that particular item makes them thankful.
- Find something that makes you happy
- Find something that has your favourite colour in it
- Find something that brings back a good memory
- Find something that shows a skill you have learnt
- Find something that reminds you of someone you love
- Find something that makes you laugh
- Find something that makes you feel loved
- Find something you feel lucky to have
This activity is focused on the following goals:
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This game encourages your child to connect the feeling of gratitude with an experience. This is called experiential learning, which is far more likely to ‘stick’ than mere rote learning, where we simply tell our kids to be grateful.
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An additional goal of this activity is to encourage gratitude for smaller things. When we shift our perspectives slightly, we are able to see how much there is to be thankful for in our everyday lives, and we learn to see just how much we take for granted.
This week, we need to make a conscious effort to identify and point these moments out for our kids and help foster a sense of gratitude within them. The Scavenger hunt game is a way to tap into gratitude a little more indirectly. Sometimes the door to thankfulness is through reflection and this activity encourages you and your children to reflect on positive past experiences, skills they have, people that love them, happy times, and items that bring them joy. These all provide a platform for building gratitude.
Download and print our Family Gratitude Scavenger Hunt above to use with your family. Tag us on Facebook and Instagram, @purebeginnings if you’d like to share your experience.
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