Thankful Hands...

 I'm a little behind on posting (I don't recommend catching a bad cold and getting a back injury in the same week...) but I'm trying to catch up, so here goes!  We did three activities with this one night's hand-stamping craft activity.

 First we talked about how thankful we are for HANDS!

 There are SOOO many things we can do with our hands it was nice to talk about it.  Eat, brush our teeth, play catch, carry things...

                                         

I talked to them about a man in out neighborhood who doesn't have hands.  He has to carry his grocery bag in his mouth.  They asked how he ate food, and I said it was probably challenging.  It was good to spend sometime talking about how something as simple as our hands is really a great thing to be thankful for.

 Next we talked about prayer since that's also something we get to do with our hands.  We talked about how wonderful it is to be able to pray and all the things we get to say thank you to God for.

 We made this picture with our hands and then once it dried, put it in a plastic cover that had this poem, "Thankful Hands" so they could put it on the wall with some reminders of things to pray and be thankful for.

Here is the poem text...

Thankful Hands

By Eva Barnett

I'm thankful for hands that pray

They thank the Father every day

For caring friends and family

For autumn air and falling leaves

For my body and my mind

For my home and what's inside

For the food I get to eat

For the scriptures I can read

For the preisthood, prophets too

For the fun things I can do

For my Savior's loving plan

I pray & thank God with my hands

 Next, we let all those hand prints dry and cut them out.  This was an activity that took us a couple days...

 And the kids got to work writing names on the hand "leaves" of people who love them and are willing to be helping hands to them.

 Aaaaah!

 Sophia asked Michael how to spell his name so she could write him down.

 Michael wrote Sophia's name too!  Too cute!

  We got out some pictures of extended family to help them remember more people that love them.

We wrote teachers' names and classmates and ran out before we even got to the General Authorities!  There are SO many people to be thankful for that love and support us if you take the time to list them!

 Then we made our tree!!!

 Chad helped with the ones on top.  This tree is a wonderful reminder of the many incredible people we have to be thankful for...

 I love that my kids get to see it everyday this month and remember who loves them as they fall asleep...

Hope these ideas are helpful and inspire you to spend some time talking about how wonderful it is to have hands, pray and have so many helping hands of friends and family in our lives.  The Gospel is true!! Luv, Eva