Turkey Day Planning!
Talk about your Thanksgiving plans! Include your children in the discussion. Let them know what you are thinking and get their thoughts. Let them help you make a list of food, activities, sleeping arrangements for you as you travel or for company coming to your house.
If you are having family/friends at your house, well, that opens up a whole subject of getting the house ready. Divide chores, think ahead, make plans!
- How do we need to get the bathrooms ready?
- What do we need to have for all the breakfasts? Lunches?
- How many desserts should we have? What should they be?
- What do we need to do to the yard so the kids can play in it?
Children are usually hospitable. Listen to them. Take a couple of their ideas and make them happen…with their help. From now until then, you could have Thanksgiving Thursdays when you check your list and muster the troops to knock out 3 or 4 things on it! When you discuss events before they happen, you guarantee there will be more meaning, memories, and joy that comes from it.
Our children need to know we cannot “do it” without them! This is a great way to show them!
Really Praying
Here’s an idea to adapt to your week. Designate one day in which the first thing done in any activity is to talk to God about it. Upon arising, before breakfast, before leaving the grocery store, before visiting a friend, after a snack, before and/or after many parts of your day.
Express to God your thankfulness, your expectations, your desires, or your need for help in the situation. It will be fun! God will love hearing from you. It will plant an idea in yours and your child’s mind that He is present in your lives and it is deliciously fruitful to acknowledge Him.
Let’s help our children develop the habit of prayer, so that no matter the upset, the excitement, the threat, or the promise, they find their first response is to talk to God about life.
“I pray to You, Lord.” Psalm 69: 13
Daniel talked with God. We talk with God. We pray.
(From a Sunday lesson on Daniel 6)
— Mary Craig