Sharing Gratitude/Making Cards

This lesson fulfills the following Faith in God requirement, under Serving Others:

• Write a letter to a teacher, your parents, or your grandparents telling them what you appreciate and respect about them.

This was a November lesson, and during Thanksgiving season we often talk about blessings and gratitude. (Much like we often talk about Christ during Christmas!) Obviously, gratitude should be something we strive for in our daily lives, NOT just on a thankful holiday. 

Most of us are aware we have blessings, but we rarely stop to consider them.  Most of us know we have loving people in our lives, but we rarely think of expressing our appreciation beyond a simple verbal "thank you."

Why is that? 

Before we talked about writing notes of appreciation to our parents, teachers, etc. I wanted to talk to the girls about WHY gratitude has to be a conscious choice/decision we make daily. 

I have included all the information below, as well as some the card printable templates in a PDF file that you can download from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9ltWADMnsx7dFR3OHlCRmFYaVE/view?usp=sharing


This file includes the lesson, directions for the cards, a template to print the card text, and an example thank you note the girls can fill in (to make writing the cards easier!)

Lesson: The Busy Brain

Could you, right now, tell me how many rooms are in your house? Probably not INSTANTLY tell me, but if you thought about it, you could likely me tell the right numbers.

This is an example of how our brain works. Our brain knows, but yet it doesn’t know instantly, all the things we know. This is because Your brain is always very busy.   

Your brain does many different things all at once: It helps you feel emotions and physical sensations like temperature, and touch. It sorts out smells and sounds, helps you move different parts of your body, helps you talk and think, all at the same time! So it’s no wonder it can’t tell you instantly how many rooms are in your house. It KNOWS, but before you can access the information you have to STOP and THINK.

Our brain, because it has so much to do, takes shortcuts. 

If something is normal, or common, our brain doesn’t take too much time to think about it. So if something nice happens to you every day, soon your brain won't even notice it!

Let’s think about an example of this:

When you flip a light switch, you expect the light to turn on. If it does, you don’t think about it at all. 

Only if the light DOESN’T turn on will your brain notice! 

When the power goes out, light switches don’t equal light. The computer doesn’t work, the TV doesn’t work, the heat or air conditioning don't work either. And what if it’s night time???? Now everything is scary and different and we have to find candles to go to the bathroom! When this happens our brain keeps thinking about how great it would be for the electricity to be back on!

When the power comes back on we're excited!

But very soon… our brain is used to having electricity again and it stops thinking about how great it is to turn on the light switch and have a light come on. We go right back to not thinking about it AT ALL! When it's gone, we miss the blessing. When we have it, we don't think about it much!

Does that seem right to you? To not think about our blessings?

We CAN think about them, if we choose to. But it takes effort on our part.

When we take time to stop and recognize and appreciate our blessings it is called gratitude. Things that make our lives pleasant, better, lovely, cheerful, healthy, etc. are our BLESSINGS. 

Gratitude takes time!

This is one reason why, when we say our prayers each day, if we are wise and obedient, we should begin by thanking Heavenly Father for our specific blessings. We can easily think of many things each day to be grateful for, from food being in your fridge and cupboard, to your mom waking you up for school, to your school building being warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Focus on different blessings each day as you pray, and you will be amazed at how many you have!

So... what are some things we are blessed with? Some things (big or little) that we are thankful for? 

{Let the girls think and answer for a few minutes and list answers on the chalkboard…}

Guide toward families: Think about some of the things your parents do for your family. Think about some things your grandparents do. That your siblings do. List some.

Think for a minute, does someone in your life bring you many things you are grateful for? 

Who is it? Do they KNOW you are grateful? Do you tell them? Sometimes it is nice to share our gratitude with those who help and love us.

Activity:

Tonight we are going to make a card (or two —depending on time) and that will be fun. But what is important is that we will use these cards to write a special, specific note of thanks to someone who blesses our lives.

~ What does specific mean? Discuss i love you/you're awesome (nice but not specific) vs. I appreciate bed time stories and that you go to work every day for our family. I love it when we play tickle fights and squirt gun wars. I appreciate that you help make dinner and tell me jokes.

This can apply to our prayers too: I thank thee for this day vs. I thank thee that I got to play with my friends, and have fun in school

Gather supplies and make cards!

I chose a sky blue card stock as the main material for all the cards, as it would show multiple colors of ink easily (for the writing inside) and make a nice background— I thought white would be too stark and require additional supplies to “liven up.” I felt like I could even have gone with a lighter blue, better too light than too dark!

Card Directions:

• Both cards are VERTICALLY CUT— they do not open like a book. 
• Print the last page with the “you uplift me” and “Thank you” texts, if desired. 
• Cut each 8.5x11 piece of card stock in half the long way, so you have two 4.25x11 inch pieces. Fold in half so each card is 4.25 inches wide by 5.5 inches tall. 
• Have envelopes for the cards! You can purchase these at Walmart or Staples.
• Have the girls gather the supplies for their cards BUT write the inside message before assembling the cards.

Flower card

• Punch or cut 5 heart shapes or petals. Glue onto the card front with a small amount of glue.
• Button: OPEN THE CARD before piercing the paper for the button holes.  Use a paper piercer or needle over a doubled piece of card board to pierce the (OPEN) paper where the button holes are, to make stitching easier.
• When tying on the button, come in from the TOP/outside of the card and go through the button, and do the stitch on the inside of the card and back up through the other button hole. Thread is now ready to be tied in a bow.
• Paper “ribbon” strip: cut a piece of patterned paper or card stock 6 inches long by 1/4 inch wide.  Adhere to the front of the card (4.x25 inches wide) and cut of the extra to form the little “bow” pieces. Adhere. 
• Add small heart punch between the leaves (optional— but fun!)
• White “stitching”: use a white gel pen. They are more contrasting/easier to use than white colored pencil. Hold the gel pen in contact with a scrap piece of paper and let it build up the gel before starting. Draw each line slowly, and you may need to retrace pale lines. Draw stitches in about 1/4 inch from each edge of the card.

Balloon Card

• Cut or punch 7 heart shapes
• Cut three threads (leave them a bit longer than needed and trim at the end)
• Add one thread under the top balloon, and under one of the next top balloons. Add the third thread to one of the lower side balloons, and make sure the bottom balloon covers all three threads.
• Tie the threads with a thread bow.
• Trim extra length from threads as needed
• Add the white “stitched” border with a white gel pen

Supplies for each girl

• button
• friendship thread (thick thread or embroidery floss), enough to tie the flower button bow, the balloon string bow, and do three balloon strings
• needles (that will hold the thicker thread)
• white gel pen & black or other colored pen for writing
• Patterned or colored paper for bottom strip embellishment
• colored paper heart punches (7 for balloons, 5 for flower)
• small heart punches for stem decoration
• card stock base (2— 1 Thank you and 1 You Uplift Me)
• 2 envelopes

Supplies to share: scissors, glue, paper piercer (optional), cardboard (optional)