A Gratitude Book

The first day of November starts one of my favorite classroom projects- the gratitude books. The idea is simple enough. Each day, children wrote one page for a book that I put together for them to bring home before Thanksgiving. We created books for a number of years, which gave me additional ideas and perspectives on how to inspire and support students along the way. The good news for all of you this year is that I made printable PDF pages to jumpstart your child’s creativity.

You can start the book anytime (and any time of year). You can complete one page a day or a page a week or multiple pages a day. Whatever works best for your children or students.

All of our projects are invitations. Take the idea and make it your own. The templates are set up to be half pages that you can print, cut in half, then staple or punch holes to thread yarn for binding the book. Your book can be 5 pages or 50 pages. I recommend not binding the book until you reach the end of the project. That way you don’t find yourself either with blank unfinished pages or running out of pages. I kept them in a folder. This way, too, I could shuffle pages that a child had already completed, and they could read the pages to me before adding a new page (massive reading practice reinforcement). And students could plan the order of pages before we assembled the final book.

Creating pages itself is fun. The real magic, however, is what happens as children plan pages.

The idea is simple. Make a stack of pages- blank or use our template or make your own. Each day, the child adds another page. They write the sentence (or more if they want) and illustrate it. The only guidance is that each page needs to be different- choosing dogs, dogs, dogs, every day becomes repetitive. However, if they want to vary the dogs- thankful for black dogs and spotty dogs, that’s fine. Here’s why-

They start noticing things throughout the day.

In the beginning, I say that it’s fine to use obvious/easy answers. Some children go right to “air” and “food”. They eventually run out of easy answers. And that’s when they start paying attention to plan the next day’s page. If they get stuck, I’ll ask for details. What’s your favorite food? Or your favorite place to go? But mostly I try to stay quiet and let them simmer ideas and choose on their own time. They know that they need an idea for the next day, and eventually, they realize that paying attention can give them an idea before they sit at the table to write.

The original book project was a daily activity during group time. You could easily change the duration of the project for whatever is available for your family, classroom, or group. The pages can be made in an afternoon or over a number of weeks.

One way that I make it easier for younger children is to write the beginning of the sentence because the goal for me is thinking and writing unique ideas. The templates use a gray font because I would encourage children to trace the written letters if possible. Tracing takes less brain-power and reinforces the spelling for later. If students are tired or overwhelmed by that quest, skip tracing the letters.

A supportive idea for their own words is that they could tell you the end of the sentence and you write the letters lightly for them to trace, or they use a colored pencil over your letters to make it colorful. For very young children, you can write the words and they draw the pictures.

As with all my projects, I ask myself, “What is the goal?” If the book is going to be shared around at Thanksgiving, you may want to pay closer attention to correct spelling and neatness. If the goal is an immersive celebration of all the wonders of a child’s life, then don’t worry too much about neatness and correct spelling.

And I guarantee you, they love reading this book. By having the first words exactly the same on every page, it builds confidence for early readers.

With older children, I encouraged looking for details. Why say cats when you mean super fluffy cats? Why say food when you mean garlic mashed potatoes with gravy?

I encourage adults to create their own books as well. Show that appreciation continues through all of our years. This year, in particular, brings massive challenges. Yet the appreciations are so sweet. I appreciate my fluffy black and white dog that cuddles throughout the day.

Further ideas and notes: you can make the book resemble a scrapbook. Collect leaves or look through old magazines for images that inspire. Add them to pages. Use watercolors or paint or stickers. Give students room to imagine how each page can express their ideas. By assembling at the end, you won’t worry about paints smearing onto other pages. Feel free to let children express their creativity. I am so grateful for that!

Our template has a text box and another page with a line. You can add more lines, or a top line and dashed middle line if that matches your child’s learning process. It’s easier to add lines than remove them :)

If a child wants to write more than one page a day, that’s totally fine. Some students wanted to write many, many pages. When you assemble the book on a date instead of binding it in the beginning, making a page a work of art won’t damage other pages.

We hope that you enjoy the project! The Gratitude Book was a delight to create and read with students. And they were so proud of their books (as they should be).

As an added bonus, children went to Thanksgiving celebrations with plenty of answers to “What are you thankful for?”

We’ve included a “print” font version and a “handwriting” font for practicing cursive. Both can be printed on printers. Enjoy!