For the past two years, we’ve taught mindfulness to what brings us daily JOY by writing gratitudes on a family pumpkin.
As preparation for this Halloween/Thanksgiving/Autumn gratitude activity, we select a LARGE pumpkin and purchase new Sharpie Markers.
Last year several of our pumpkins came from a local farm, but we also snagged a few from our local Aldi, where each pumpkin was under $3! You can’t beat that pumpkin price! (check Sharpie prices on Amazon)
How we’re making our Joyful Pumpkin
Each evening, we spend a few minutes discussing what brought us JOY today.
The first year, our daughter was in first grade, and this exercise was great practice for her spelling, penmanship, and reading. Her lack of precision had our “very precise” son laughing quite a bit, too!
The beauty of a fall gratitude pumpkin is you can make it in October or November. Because the pumpkin is not carved, this pumpkin will last for weeks! You can start this pumpkin in October and keep it on display through Thanksgiving. If you decorate your Halloween pumpkin with vinyl or foam stickers, you can even repurpose it as November’s Joyful Pumpkin.
Celebrate Thanksgiving with a Gratitude Pumpkin
Looking for other family pumpkin decorating ideas with kids? You might like our list. As a bonus, if you use pumpkin stickers to decorate for Halloween, you can reuse the same pumpkin for a Thanksgiving gratitude pumpkin, too!
More Family Daily Gratitude and Joy Ideas
If you love our Joyful Pumpkin idea, you’ll also enjoy our LEGO Alphabet of Gratitude project and free printable. We started the Alphabet of Gratitude in November 2020, 26 days before Thanksgiving. Each day, we wrote and shared on Instagram our gratitude, prompted by a Lego brick-built letter of the day. Starting at Z, we’ve made our way to A day by day!
These same letters we now use in the designs of our personalized Brick-Built Name Decals for kiddos to use as room window and wall decor! Display your child’s name in Arts and Bricks’ Brick Font decals.
Save this Gratitude Pumpkin Thanksgiving Tradition to Pinterest
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