Happy Thanksgiving! This lesson is going to be a little different. With Thanksgiving approaching, it seemed appropriate to release a shorter lesson that can be done around your family’s holiday traditions. That being said, we hope you will find this lesson informative and fun. During this time apart from each other, we are more thankful than ever for the many wonderful families who make up the St. Mary Magdalen Religious Formation program. God bless!
Introductory Video and Opening Prayer
Go Deeper
Featured Activity: Thanksgiving Feast / Eucharist Feast:
- Open your family Destined journal to the next free left and right page.
- Label the left side “Thanksgiving Dinner.”
- As a family, create a colorful picture of your family Thanksgiving dinner.
- Label the right side “The Eucharist.”
- Again, as a family, on the opposite page draw a colorful picture of the Mass.
- Highlight the similarities of the two pictures.
- Below the Thanksgiving Dinner picture write what your family will give thanks for this Thanksgiving.
- Below the Eucharist picture write what your family will give thanks to God, for the next time you go to Mass
Featured Saint
When we hear the story of the first Thanksgiving, we are reminded of the important role native Americans have played in American history. Did you know there is a native American saint? Her name is St. Kateri Tekakwitha. Watch the video below to learn more about her life.
Let Us Pray
Many families have a tradition of gathering around the table at Thanksgiving and sharing something they are thankful for. This lesson’s prayer challenge asks you to gather around a different table – your prayer table!
Please print off the following bible verses:
There are 10 Bible verses related to things we should be thankful for. For 10 days, go to your prayer space as a family and look one of them up in your own bible. Discuss the verses together and share things you are thankful for related to each verse. Have an adult teach the children how to say a prayer of gratitude for the things you have discussed. Prayers of gratitude are a great way to learn how to pray spontaneously from the heart!
Follow the directions to fill out the work sheet and then glue it into your destined journal. If you wish, you can print off the worksheet for each member of the family.
Live It Out Activities
Below are many fun activities to help your family celebrate Thanksgiving. Let us know in the comments which activities you did. After commenting, please reply to at least one other family’s comment so we can share our experiences with each other!
Option 2: Start a tasty new tradition. Below are instructions for making Thanksgiving “gratitude rolls.” This is a fun addition to anyone’s dinner, just be sure not to eat the paper!
Option 3: Make a Thanksgiving snack mix full of symbolism.
More to Explore
We enjoyed the Thanksgiving scavenger hunt! we also make homemade cards & delivered them with cookies to extended family today. Happy Thanksgiving St. Mary Magdalen families!
Since we didn’t have all the ingredients for the gratitude snack mix, We made our own blend of peanuts, popcorn, dried apricots and chocolate! We did a lot of baking and making for Thanksgiving and since our grandparents couldn’t be with us this year, we baked them a pie and drove it to their house, visiting outside the door for a short time. We are finding it hard sometimes to keep our distance from the ones we love, but we know God is looking down on us and our faith will get us through. Wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving.
We did the same! We made little apple pies and delivered them on Thanksgiving, since we couldn’t be with our extended family. This was one of our most special parts of the day.
kids are looking so grown up here! I am sure grandparents were so thankful to see faces & get treats!
We loved the idea from the gratitude rolls of writing down what we are thankful for. We decided to combine them with an art project my youngest had instead of baking them inside since we had a modified Thanksgiving meal that didn’t include rolls. Our youngest created a gratitude garland of her pieces of paper, she had so many.
love the gratitude garland!
LOVE this idea!
This is such a great idea. I want to remember this for next year.
we want to do this too
We enjoyed the Thanksgiving scavenger hunt.
Our family selected the snack mix activity and discussed how all the elements of the snack mix related to Thanksgiving.
We had fun doing the Thanksgiving scavenger hunt!
We enjoyed the scavenger hunt together. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
We decided to use our journal and drew a picture of our Thanksgiving feast table and then we drew a chalice to represent the Eucharistic feast. It was a good chance to stop and dwell upon what we are all thankful for in our lives and what we may say prayers of thanksgiving about the next time we are at mass.
We enjoyed making the Thanksgiving snack mix. However, our favorite part of this lesson was the activity in the Go Deeper section.
We celebrated our Thanksgiving late this year, since Mom is a nurse and was working. We made the gratitude snack mix to enjoy together.
We enjoyed seeing how other families modified the suggested activities and made them their own. We also modified the gratitude rolls activity and instead made a gratitude tree which will be a wonderful keepsake. Happy thanksgiving all!
We did the scavenger hunt! The kids loved it.
The scavenger hunt was fun! We did it in December so we did not find a turkey we found something else. Lol
We liked learning about the meaning of the word ‘Eucharist’. We’ll make the gratitude rolls next year.