Morning-Time Gratitude

We continue to make entries in our journals. Kids are free to write or draw anything that they are thankful for. Usually when they write simple things like ” I am grateful for my music”, I use this as conversation, and ask questions like ” What do you love about music?”, ” What is your favorite song?”. I notice that two of my kids, the boys, do not always enjoy writing everyday. I encourage pictures, one word gratitudes (which they can elaborate by telling me more). For reluctant writers, here are some ideas for adding variety into the gratitude journaling practice:

• Draw pictures
• Cut out magazine clips
• Use the camera to take a picture
• Use a one-word gratitude bomb
• record a voice note
• do a video interview, siblings taking turns
• use “guess-it game”, where a person picks an object to represent their gratitude and we guess why they picked it.

Bed-Time Entries and Family-Time Discussions on Gratitude

We created a gratitude jar, by putting gratitude questions on strips of paper that each person had come up with. I opted for questions that we as a family could come up with as a start because I was keen to get us thinking and investing in this challenge and I was curious about what we could come up with.  Each person had to complete the sentence    ” 3 THINGS …..” as gratitude prompts. For the remainder of our gratitude challenge, we will be drawing from our gratitude jar for our bed-time gratitude focus. We have at times written in our journals and other evenings ended our dinner with a discussion from the jar. Simply drawing from our jar has been an easy way to keep us focused on this challenge amidst the busy times.

Here are some of the prompts we have so far in our Gratitude Jar:

Gratitude Prompts

“Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say: Rejoice!” Phil 4:4