Love Note

We're celebrating  May We Be Grateful month in our house, where we are focusing on gratitude and kindness.  Not only do I want to teach Xander about expressing gratitude and being kind to others, I also want him to experience that gratitude and kindness himself.  Now, of course, I always try to express love and appreciation to Xander, but as a little something special, I decided to write him a love note.  

I picked out a cute card that I had, wrote Xander a note to remind him how much I loved him, and sent it in the mail so that he would receive it at daycare.  My daycare provider told me he was so excited to receive mail there!  When I picked him up he was holding his card and insisted on reading it to me right away.  He also read it a few times after he got home. I want him to remember that he is always loved and that I am always thinking about him, even if I'm not there, so this was perfect. It was such a simple thing for me to do and it brought him so much joy! 

 Check out our other May We Be Grateful activities and share your own!

May Day Baskets

We wanted to start the first official day of May We Be Grateful month off right, so I had Xander make some May Day baskets for his friends at daycare.  Inside each one he include a flower with a note that said "Thanks for being such a great friend!"  Xander colored each flower himself.

You're welcome to download the Friendship Flower Template here.

 I bought little boxes with handles from the dollar store as well as some stickers and fruit snacks.

 Xander was SO proud to stuff the boxes himself!  While he did we talked about how he was making them to make his friends happy.

How did you celebrate May Day?

Don't forget to check out the other MAY We Be Grateful activities and link to your own posts about teaching gratitude and kindness!

Tree of Gratitude

As the first big part of our May We Be Grateful month, we made a new Tree of Gratitude (we made one last November also).  

I just used packaging paper from the dollar store for the tree itself.

 I cut out some leaves and flowers to go on the tree.  Every day in May we will each write something for which we are thankful on one and add it to the tree.  You can print the templates for the leaves and flowers here.  (I just print them on scratch paper and staple them to a big stack of construction paper).

He's pretty excited to start!

MAY We Be Grateful 2014

Back in November, like many other early education mommies, I put a lot of focus on being grateful.  We read books about being thankful, we made our Tree of Gratitude, and, of course, we celebrated Thanksgiving.  While I try to maintain an attitude of gratitude and try to instill that in Xander all year round, I really enjoyed having a month to really focus on it.  At the end of the month, I decided I needed to make it a bi-annual event and  "MAY We Be Grateful" was born.  May was the perfect month since it is six months away from November.

So what is May We Be Grateful?  Well, to be honest, it is still a little bit in the works.  I'm envisioning a month of reading books about gratitude, expressing appreciation for others, doing another Tree of Gratitude, some gratitude and kindess themed school materials, and a big celebratory meal.  Rather than simply doing another Thanksgiving dinner, I am thinking of throwing a small backyard barbecue and letting Xander invite a few friends.

Our May We Be Grateful Posts and Activities
(Click the pictures to go to the posts)

Won't You Join Us?

I would love to get other families in on the fun!  Feel free to post any links or pictures of your May We Be Grateful activities to my Facebook Page or Twitter Feed!  I'll post pins to the May We Be Grateful Pinterest board.  You can also link up any May We Be Grateful posts you put on your blog below!  I'll leave the linky open through the beginning of May 30th (it wouldn't let me go longer, sorry).  

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