Activity Days: Gratitude and Thanksgiving

I was in charge of Activity Days a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to tie it in with Thanksgiving and Gratitude. For Activity Days (twice a month activities for girls ages 8-11), I feel like I need to be creative in incorporating one of the requirements, and in letting the girls make or do something. (Hence the term "Activity Days"). I have the younger ages, so they are the 8 and 9 year olds. They love to make things, and are excited about ANYTHING we plan. They are darling!

In my age group, we have three leaders, so we each take turns being in charge. It makes it a breeze, since it means we theoretically only have to be over an activity every six weeks. After serving in Young Women, where we have weekly activities, that is ever so easy. When it is our turn to be in charge, we have a scheduled topic from the book, and then we can choose any of the requirements and base an activity around that. My topic for my activity was "Serving Others".

Soooooo, I went to that section in the book, and scanned the various requirements. 

I decided this one worked great for this time of the year: "Write a letter to a teacher, your parents, or your grandparents telling them what you appreciate and respect about them".

So, we first talked about gratitude and what it means to be thankful.  I shared a couple of stories with them, and discussed them a bit, and then we moved on to making some cards.

We started with this mat stack that I've had in my paper stash. Perfect size.

They each picked a couple of sheets from the stack so that they could make two cards. They folded the papers in half, and then glued this darling "Thankful and Blessed" graphic (go to nestofposies.com for the free printable) to the front. Then, they each wrote two different Gratitude Notes to two different people they were grateful for.

Then, of course we had to make a little treat to go with the note. I gathered a few supplies that I had on hand: baker's twine, treat bags, and extrenous treats from Halloween (okay... leftover candies, but it's not like they were the icky ones, or that they were a year old... heck, I would have loved to get that little sack of treats!)

They again chose some pages from the mat stack, and folded it in half the other way to make the bag topper. We stuffed the bags with candy bars and then stapled the topper to the top of the folded bag.

They punched a hole in the top of the bag topper and also the card, and attached the card to the bag, leaving a nice long loop at the top...

... so that they could put the treat on someone's door and leave it for them to find. What a fun surprise! I don't know if the girls believed me when I told them, that even though the treat was fun, the best part of that little package were the cards that they so painstakingly wrote expressing their gratitude. What treasures!