Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers, toddlers and kids in Saint Louis, MO

Thanksgiving is a holiday for recognizing and showing appreciation for the the people in our lives. Even young children can realize when someone has helped them so you can use this time to help kids give thanks to others.  One way to do this is by helping your kids make thank you cards for the people in their lives.

Start out by talking to your child about what it is to be thankful for someone. Next, make a list of the people they want to thank and why they are grateful for that person. For example, my son chose to thank his bus driver because without him, he couldn't get to school. We also talked about family members who make his life better by spending time with him and taking him places.

To make the actual thank you cards, we used regular construction paper, markers, crayons, stickers and stamps with an ink pad. I encouraged the kids to write whatever they wanted or whatever they were capable of. For the young kids, I traced their hands on the front of the cards to turn them into turkeys and let them scribble all over the pages.

In case you have forgotten, here are the steps to making a "Turkey Hand"

1) Trace the hand
2) Make a beak on the outside of the thumb
3) Draw a circle on the thumb for the eye
4) Draw an oval under the turkey beak to make the turkey waddle
5) Color the fingers red, orange and yellow to make "feathers"

Voila! Hand turkey! They are cute, easy and great for the front of young kids' thank you cards.

By helping your children make thank you cards for Thanksgiving, you teach them valuable lessons about being thankful, identifying those who make their lives better and the benefit of recognizing those people. Plus, what grandma wouldn't love a custom turkey hand print thank you card?