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Turn your mindful moments into gratitude and provide gratitude activities for children that can make your classroom decor or trigger meaningful reflection. Apart from being fun, they can help build a stronger classroom community and bring valuable social and emotional learning (SEL) into your day.
Playing a gratitude game inspires positive thinking
Gratitude is more than just getting students to write in journals or post positive reminders around the classroom. Make it a fun game where students can make money and reflect on their spiritual moments. These activities can be used during the transition period as morning bell ringtones or as ongoing classroom games throughout the year.
- Find value in daily projects: Challenge students to explore the classroom and determine the purpose and practicality of everyday items such as pencils, markers, etc. This helps them appreciate small things and recognize the people who contribute to the learning environment.
- Draft Thanks Map: Create a map of the school on the bulletin board and provide students with sticky notes to write down areas of their experiences or express gratitude.
- Turn gratitude into adventure: Transform students into gratitude explorers. Challenge them to identify the three people they want to thank and take action by creating thank you letters. You can grant badges to complete these tasks.
- Play Thanks Detective: Ask students to write something specific, and they are very grateful for their classmates’ attitude towards them. Collect all the notes, mix them, and then have the students try to guess who each note is about. After making a guess, read each note aloud and reveal the classmates who describe it. It can also double as a children’s icebreaker.
CBT Gratitude Games and Activities Gratitude and Gratitude SEL Consulting Course
Consult by the entire child
Level: Not specific
Standard: CCSS SL.1.1, 1.1A, 1.1B
This PDF resource includes 30 schemes provided in digital format, 60 printable scheme cards and printable board games. You can also access the thank you worksheets and rules for playing the game.
Make simple thank you posters and events
Express gratitude through artistic and collaborative projects. These activities are team building activities for children and create lively bulletin boards or displays.
- Create a thank you comic: Divide students into groups and let each design a comic page show gratitude in their school. Once done, the page was assembled into a class gratitude comic book that told an appreciation story.
- Build a gratitude journey: Track the students’ footprints on butcher’s paper and let them write for a while, they thank them for their footprints. Students can decorate their own footprints before adding it to the corridor or bulletin board to create a “Gratitude Journey.”
- Assemble a gratitude puzzle: Assign each group of puzzle pieces to something they appreciate at school or home for decoration. Laminate the pieces and connect them to a huge gratitude puzzle to show how each contribution fits the bigger picture.
Free Thanksgiving poster for social emotional learning
Through wholehearted school consultation
Level: Not specific
Practice motivation with free gratitude posters, which include writing tips. They help students think of different areas to be grateful for, such as providing strength to them or comforting them.
Thanks to the booklet K-2
Brandy by consulting teacher
Results: K-2nd
The Trifold manual provides students with important facts about gratitude and what they should be grateful for. It also includes five bookmarks, a writing tip poster, and a color poster that is perfect for the entire course or SEL circle.
Join forces to spread gratitude
Children’s gratitude activities help foster positive connections and encourage positive peer relationships. You can also use the collaborative gratitude activity as part of your SEL learning. Research shows that SEL is key to enhancing coping skills and student resilience.
- Enhance classroom culture through gratitude chain: Use a link to start a chain outside the door or outside the room, with a link worthy of gratitude. Leave a note and a pen. Allow students in your grade and school to start adding their own links to understand its size.
- garden: Create a bulletin board with blank space in your class or in the hallway. Encourage students to be grateful, encourage and grateful for flowers. Share comments with the class to improve them in a week.
- Unlocking the story of gratitude: Cut the paper into the shape of a large key. Give students a thankful writing tip and have them write it on the key. Link the key to the ribbon “key chain”.
Gratitude Tree’s Story and Collaborative Projects • Art Class • Writing Activities
Expressive monkey – Art teacher’s little helper
Results: Second place
Standard: CCSSSCCRAW9
Share a story about the gratitude tree with students through a 22-page PDF. Then let the students decorate a part of the tree of gratitude. The teacher will get instructions and a list of materials.
Positive thinking gratitude activities to improve mindfulness and self-esteem
Learn through roots and germination
Results: No. 3 to No. 8
Challenge students for five days of gratitude and six event tables. The resources also include a collaborative arts project and posters, as well as simple instructions.
Thanks for writing tips card diary for expressing gratitude in November
Tanya G. Marshall Butterfly Teacher
Level: Not specific
A daily Thanksgiving list, 16 writing tips and printable sticky notes are all lessons in themselves. The resource also includes a poster for display and a reflective page. There is also a Google Slideshow version.
Thanksgiving lessons and crafts | Winter snowball activities
Carol Miller – Consulting essentials
Level: Not specific
Provide students with fun snow riders gratitude activities to carry out with a sly attitude. This resource can be used with children’s winter and fall activities and includes lesson plans and instructions.
Celebrate this season with a tribute to the children
Many students associate gratitude with holidays like Thanksgiving or Valentine’s Day. But whether it’s the 100th day of school, the last day of the year, or even the smaller classroom milestone, children’s gratitude can be weaved into any celebration. Through thanks to these events, teachers can turn ordinary celebrations into meaningful students to make their gratitude reflect and share gratitude in an unforgettable way.
- Choose a thank you pumpkin: Instead of just drawing pumpkins, let every student decorate the pumpkins with what they thank for. Then, set up a “pumpkin patch” in the classroom or corridor. The blindfolded students chose one pumpkin at a time to take home, so they got a surprise pumpkin from their classmates.
- Light up the lantern of gratitude: Students design paper lanterns with notes, drawings or appreciation symbols for school, classmates or family. Hang the lanterns from the windows, ceilings or along the corridors.
- Launch a random gratitude challenge: Turn gratitude into a continuous adventure of a 30-day classroom challenge. Every day, students complete a small topical task, such as leaving a thank you letter to their peers, giving praise, providing help in the classroom, or sharing positive memories.
Day 100 of the school activity | Gratitude Diary Course Coloring Page
Shelly Rees
Results: Fourth to Seventh
This resource guides students to create a 30% off manual to show their thanks. There are 10 categories to explore and students can easily generate up to 100 gratitude ideas; perfect for classroom gratitude jars or personalized dining venues.
Thank you for Love Bug on Valentine’s Day | Creativity and Writing | Social Emotion
Julia Erin
Results: K-4
The 26-page PDF includes step-by-step instructions with photos, thank you diary components and bulletin board banners. Students create a “Love Bug” while reflecting on the people, places and experiences they appreciate, making it a hands-on activity.
Thank you notes at the end of the year | Thank you notes
By active educators
Results: Top 5
A lot of thanks were given at the end of the year, so the year-end mood created meaningful appreciation. Multiple thank you note templates allow each student to feel seen and valued, giving them the opportunity to thank teachers, classmates and staff. Add it to the last day of your school event.
Build gratitude to primary school students’ outdoor gratitude activities
Thank you for letting the kids move outside, exploring and thinking about what they love. Activities can range from hunting activities that encourage attention to the world around them to leaving a small sense of gratitude around the playground equipment or campus, turning the outdoors into a keen moment of gratitude.
- Get to know nature with your art: Take students outdoors in sidewalk chalk, and let them decorate the stone or sidewalk with words such as “gratitude,” “appreciation,” and “gratitude.”
- Leave a note for thanks: Students are encouraged to think about why they are grateful for different playground equipment. Provide a lid on a small bucket or container and have them write down at least four different parts and explain how each part positively affects them. For example, how swings help them make their best friends. Leave notes for students to read during the break.
- Cultivate natural mandala: Have students collect natural objects such as sticks, leaves, flowers and stones and collaborate to arrange them into large mandalas. Each project represents something they thank. Over time, students can add mandalas, allowing the artwork to grow with their gratitude and facilitate discussions about appreciation in nature.
Explore the benefits of teaching gratitude
Teaching students to be grateful is a valuable lesson and the course extends throughout the school year. Practicing gratitude not only helps students to empathize with others, but also encourages emotional regulation. It also helps:
- Enhance emotional resilience: Regular reflection and gratitude activities can increase resilience and relieve stress.
- Strengthen relationships: Students learn to recognize the contributions of others and build positive connections with their peers.
- Improve collaboration: Thank you for encouraging your understanding of your classmates and creating a more cooperative and supportive classroom environment.
- Promote self and social awareness: Reflection and gratitude helps students understand their behavior and their impact on others, thus laying the foundation for empathy.
TPT’s children’s gratitude changes spark changes
Teachers can guide students in fun, hands-on gratitude activities to help them reflect and connect with others. Engage your courses by using the basic gratitude resources in TPT and be creative with activities that inspire sharing, discussion and reflection. Most importantly, this is a lesson you can weave in the classroom all year round.
