Kiven J. Molina Blogs: Simple Thanksgiving Conversation Starters for Kids

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Simple Thanksgiving Conversation Starters for Kids

These Thanksgiving conversation starters are for young kids who are just grasping the concept of being thankful. Expressing gratitude and being thankful is something we definitely need to work on in this house.

My kids know when to use “please” and “thank you,” don’t get me wrong. Do they go out of their way to show their gratitude for others? Not so much…

They’re still young, so I don’t expect a lot from them. But this is something I keep thinking will help them in other areas of their life as well. Thanksgiving is the perfect time to introduce this to the kids! What are you thankful for?

After hearing what my boys have been thankful for, it makes me realize how important it is to slow down during the holidays… the simplest things make their day.

I decided to make this an ongoing activity until Thanksgiving Day, and maybe keep it up after that. We’ll see how it goes!

We created these Thanksgiving conversation starters as a centerpiece for our dining room table.

I filled three festive bowls with Thanksgiving conversation starters, each bowl having a different job. Easy tip: I wrote them up in Google Docs, printed them out on fall-colored card stock (affiliate link), cut them into strips and folded them.

The first bowl was filled with the conversation starters that I created.

10 Thanksgiving Conversation Starters we used:

Who is someone you could say “thank you” to today? And why?
What is something you do with Mom & Dad that makes you happy?
If you had to give anyone in the world your piggy bank, who would you give it to and why?
If you had to leave your house for a long time, what three things would you grab on your way out?
What is the first birthday or Christmas that you remember and what do you remember?
What is something you’d like someone to tell YOU “thank you” for?
How can you be thankful even when we’re upset?
When is a good time to tell someone “thank you”?
How does it make you feel when someone does something really nice for you?
How does it make you feel when you do something really nice for someone else?

I also pulled questions from Dixie Delights and ‘would you rather’ topics from Minds in Bloom.

I filled another bowl with blank pieces of paper. The boys get a choice: do they want a question to answer or would they like to write down something they are thankful for instead?

I was shocked to see that the boys really wanted to write what they were thankful for! They both jumped at the chance to write something down right away!

George, of course, needed help writing and spelling the words. He’s really getting the hang of letter formation though. I’m rather proud to see him excited to write!

Henry wrote in complete sentences… “I am thankful for…” and filled it out. While George just wrote the one word that he’s thankful for.

And the last bowl I placed between the first two.

This bowl was for any of the papers that got completed. Once a question was answered, or a paper was filled out with their thankful thought, it got put in the middle bowl.