Thankful hands

                  Thanksgiving is nearly here, so we thought it would be nice, as a family, to tell eachother what we were thankful for. 

Who can play

3 years+

What do I need

• Paper, ideally fall/autumnal colours (red, green, brown, yellow and orange)
• Pens
• Kid friendly scissors
• Clothes pegs
• Somewhere to display the 'thankful hands'. We used a vase with decorative twigs in it. You could also attach the hands to a family photo frame or to the thanksgiving table.

Safety

Always supervise children when using scissors

What did we do?

Whilst sitting on the sofa and having a little cuddle, Bee and I talked about what we were thankful for. She surprised me by saying 'I'm thankful for my lovely home', 'peanut butter and jelly' and 'mummy and daddy'... after giving her a big hug, I told her what I was thankful for too.

We then set about drawing around our hands and then carefully cut them out. Once we had done this, we wrote what we were thankful for on the hand cut outs. Bee made marks on the paper, whilst trying to break down the word phonetically.

Our final part of the activity was to attach the hands (which were now looking more like leaves) onto the twigs via a wooden peg. Isabella had to try a few times with the skill of opening the peg, developing her fine manipulative skills and also began pegging the sofa and anything else she could find.

What did we learn?

Knowledge and understanding- Knowing that they are part of a family unit.

Personal, social and emotional- Feeling loved and special. Pride from finished product being displayed within the home. Working together.

Creative- Communicating ideas.

Communication, language and literacy- Make marks on paper and give them meaning.

Mathematical- Compare the size of the hands, for example, Mummy's hand is bigger than mine.

Physical- Developing scissor skill, hand eye coordination and pencil control. Developing fine motor skills.

Follow up activities

The handprints could become part of your thanksgiving tradition. If laminated, they can be used and looked at for years to come.

To extend this activity, you could leave extra cut out handprints, pegs and a pen/pencil next to the area, for the child to return to the activity, if they wish