Due to a comedy of errors, we ended up hosting Thanksgiving this year with only a few days notice. After I had rushed around like a crazy woman trying to assemble all the fixings, I realized that we were still missing one crucial item: Place mats. Now before you think that we are completely uncivilized, we do in fact own a handful of place mats. The issue at hand was volume. And, due to a slight case of OCD on my own part, there was the minor snafu that what we do own do not even remotely match.
With one day of lead time, and my older son in tow, I decided to take my oversight as an opportunity to continue to teach my preschooler about the importance of gratitude. This time, the focus was on expressing gratitude toward other people.
This topic, Dear Readers, is well traversed territory in the Positive Psychology circles. In a 2005 study conducted by Seligman, Steen, and Peterson, participants were instructed to identify a person who had been beneficial to their lives but had never been properly thanked. They were then given a week to write a letter expressing their gratitude for that person and were instructed to deliver the letter in person. During the delivery of the letter, the participants were told to talk with the person about what they had written. While the recipient of the letter undoubtedly appreciated the gesture, the results of the study showed that the people DELIVERING the letter received a month long increase in their levels of happiness as well! It ends up gratitude gives a happiness boost to both the giver and receiver.
Now clearly my young children can not be expected to compose and read full letters documenting their appreciation of the people in their lives. However, my take is that any time they are given the opportunity to think in a grateful way it sets the stage for them to continue this practice more automatically in the future. So to kill two birds with one stone, I created the following table mat-producing, preschooler-appropriate gratitude exercise:
What you Need:
- Ironing Board - (AKA "The Skateboard" as Liam once pointed to ours and asked me why we had a skateboard in our closet. It goes without saying that we are not big "ironers" in my household!)
- Iron
- Waxed Paper
- Yard Stick
- Construction Paper
- Scissors
- Markers
- Any thin, found items, (confetti, cut up paper, leaves, pine needles, flowers, and Liam's very favorite: Dirt)
Instructions:
1. The first step is to interview your child about what they appreciate about each person who will be joining you for dinner. This is obviously the crucial, positive psychology part of this process. There are no right or wrong answers and it's fun to hear what your child appreciates about others. Write their responses on the construction paper and use the scissors to cut each of the answers out. A selection of Liam's answers are as follows...
2. Next, gather or create the items you would like to put as decorations in each place mat. We went outside and found items to include and Liam also got some practice using his scissors to cut out pieces of paper.
3. Measure and cut two 24-inch pieces of wax paper for each place mat that you are creating.
4. Heat up the iron on the warm or low setting.
5. Putting one sheet of paper on the "skate board", place the gratitude message in the center and allow your child to arrange the decorative items where ever they would like, steering clear of the edges of the paper.
6. Place the second piece of wax paper on top of the first so that the edges are even and use the iron to melt the wax between the two, paying particular attention to the edges.
7. Trim edges if necessary and you are done!
Liam and I decided to surprise everyone at Thanksgiving with our special creations, which doubled as place cards at our table. Each person took home their place mat as a keepsake of our time together. The end result was a tradition that was both amusing and heart warming for the participants, and educational for my child. As an added bonus, his neurotic mother was happy because we had matching place mats to boot!
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