As we continue through the holiday season, we’ve reached the days of fallen leaves, festive scarecrows, and words like “kindness” and “gratitude” being shared more often than they usually do. Thanksgiving is upon us and it truly is a season to be grateful, thankful, and blessed. Although many families will take a break from homeschooling around the holidays, I’d like to provide you with a few Thanksgiving social & emotional learning opportunities.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, SEL is the abbreviation for Social and Emotional Learning. Anytime your children are learning about emotions or spending time with others, these are part of SEL. Additionally, SEL includes self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship-building, and decision-making. Many of these areas are naturally taught by parents to their children, but, as homeschooling parents, we have the privilege of providing our children with more dedicated learning opportunities.
How Does Your Family Celebrate Thanksgiving?
Growing up, I felt like I had a typical American Thanksgiving experience. Mom woke up early to put the turkey in the oven. The rest of the family would wake and have fried stuffing for breakfast, then watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It wouldn’t feel like Thanksgiving if I didn’t cry as soon as Santa appeared (years later and I still cry every time!). We had an early dinner (around 3pm) and a huge dessert after we woke from our tryptophan-induced naps. As I got older, my sister and I helped mom prepare the turkey and all the fixings.
Does any of this sound familiar to how your family spends Thanksgiving? Or maybe you watch the parade, but then you’re all about football? Or maybe your family spends the day volunteering or running a Turkey Trot race? There’s no “right way” to celebrate Thanksgiving. This is a lesson in social awareness that you can share with your kids. They can reach out to friends and neighbors and ask about their holiday traditions and see how they compare and contrast to their own experience. Your child can see if there’s anything that they want to incorporate into your family traditions or find ways to be more involved in the day.
The History of Thanksgiving
The basic history of Thanksgiving is that the Pilgrims came to this land and met the Wampanoag tribe of American Indians. Together, they celebrated a bountiful harvest. In order to incorporate Thanksgiving SEL opportunities, children can learn about the lives of the American Indians and/or the Pilgrims and reflect on how it would have felt to live back then. These were the days before electricity. There were no televisions or telephones. Food was cooked using fires, and your meal came from what you could grow or catch – a phenomenon unfamiliar to most people in the twenty-first century. Additionally, the Wampanoag tribe and the Pilgrims spoke completely different languages.
Here are a few questions you can ask your children to help them get into character as someone from that time period:
- Describe your daily life. What are your chores? How do you help with bringing food into your home?
- What kinds of food do you eat each day? Do you have a favorite meal?
- What challenges do you face each day?
- Do you make your own clothes?
- How does your community work together? Could you survive on your own?
- What are you grateful for?
- After reflecting on life back then, what are you grateful for now?
Sharing Gratitude
Whether you have a large group or a small group, take time to have each person share something they’re thankful for. It can be something big or small; what’s more important is that it’s something important to that individual. Take turns reflecting back on what each person shared and ask questions to learn more or better understand their feelings. This gives each person the opportunity to practice empathy and listening skills. If you want to take this to the next level, you can practice sharing and reflecting gratitude each day. This could be added to your dinner routine: pray or say grace, then each person shares what they’re grateful for as you pass food around the table.
Gratitude Tree or Gratitude Chain
Once your family understands more about gratitude and can share multiple things that they’re grateful for, you can take these things to create decorations for the holidays. To make a gratitude tree, you can take a large poster board and draw or paint the trunk of a tree and some branches. Together, cut leaves out of construction paper and write something you’re grateful for on each leaf. You can hang your gratitude tree on the wall or the fridge, wherever it fits. Instead of a tree, you can instead make a paper chain and write things you’re grateful for on each link of the chain. This can be hung around the house or on your Christmas tree.
A Month of Kindness
By now, most people have become familiar with the idea of #30daysofgratitude. It’s a great habit to start in November and continue throughout the year. If your family has already established a habit of gratitude, it may be time to practice a month of kindness. Each day, each person should perform an act of kindness. Just as noted above, this can be something big or small. Ask your children how it makes them feel to perform these acts of kindness, then reflect on how the acts affect others. Once they understand how it affects others, see if it makes them feel any differently. Some acts of kindness can include letters to friends and family in which they share things they like or love about them. They can also write letters to military or essential workers to express their gratitude for what they do to keep us safe and help others.
Self-Love Journal
Prior to this, we’ve been mainly focusing on the social awareness aspect of SEL, but I think self-awareness and self-esteem building can be done alongside any of the other activities listed above. Sometimes, it can be easier to think about things that you like about other people than to think about things you like about yourself. Additionally, it’s often easier to be kind to others and put them first than to do the same for yourself. That’s why Thanksgiving is the perfect time to start a self-love journal. Ask your child to write or draw things they like about themselves in the journal. When they write a letter to a friend with things they like about him or her, ask them to also write a letter to themself in their journal. When they perform acts of kindness towards others, encourage them to perform acts of kindness to themselves and write about what they did. This may not be a journal that they use daily, but they should use it or look through it, at minimum, weekly in order to remind themselves of how great they are.
Grateful for Thanksgiving SEL Opportunities
Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude. So much so that the holiday is literally about “thanks giving” or giving thanks. The spirit of Thanksgiving is filled with gratitude, kindness, and empathy. Thankfully, these feelings present a perfect opportunity for building SEL skills, such as active listening, reflection, and communication. Thank you for reading, and thank you Kerry for the opportunity to share! Click here for more about social and emotional learning and how to incorporate it into your homeschool. Thank you for joining us today In Our Homeschool.
Free Gratitude Challenge
To help you out, I’ve created a simple 30 Day Gratitude Challenge Printable. Each person in your family should have their own printable. At dinner time or bedtime, let your kids write what they are thankful for that day. There is enough space on the printable to let your kids write what they are thankful for that day.
Kristen Rattanamongkhoune is a mom of two and wife of her soulmate. She has been able to work from home and be the primary teacher to her kids since birth. Check out the In Our Homeschool blog to take a peek at their days, explore with them on their adventures, get book recommendations straight from a children’s librarian, and read reviews of homeschooling resources.
