Setting Family Intentions for November
November is a time for gratitude, community, and connection. As everyone prepares for the holiday season, I am setting an intention to slow down and lean into the present moment. To come up with my intentions, it helps me to first envision the feelings I want this month, such as gratitude and generosity, and think about what actions we as a family can take to bring us those feelings. With Thanksgiving on the way, I also want to focus on providing an age appropriate history of Thanksgiving for preschool-age daughter and centering Native American authors in our November reading list. Below are my intentions and actions we’re going to take as a family this month.
Gratitude
This month we’re focusing on thankfulness and gratitude in our family. I already do a daily gratitude practice and it really shifts my mindset positively. During November I’m setting the intention to share this gratitude practice with my family. We’ll be doing a Thankful Turkey up to Thanksgiving for the second year in a row. I learned about this activity from Busy Toddler. The turkey is cut from a paper grocery store bag, and the colorful feathers from construction paper. Each morning for the two weeks leading up to Thanksgiving we will talk about gratitude and thankfulness, say one thing we’re grateful for, write it down on a paper feather, and then we tape the feathers to the tree.
To jump start conversation about gratitude and thankfulness, I will ask my child questions like:
What does it mean to be thankful and grateful?
How do we express thankfulness and gratitude?
How can we practice gratitude every day?
Community & Generosity
We’ll talk with our preschooler about communities and what it means to be part of a community. We’ll talk about communities that we’re part of (family, neighborhood, school, city, etc). Then we’ll talk about ways we can show generosity to our community. Here are some simple acts of kindness we will do as a family this month:
Donate food to our neighborhood’s community fridge
Drop off a pumpkin pie to an elderly neighbor
Mail my child’s cousins and best friends Thanksgiving cards
Donate toys, books, and clothes that we no longer need
Connection
We will focus on slowing down as a family and prioritize small moments to connect every day. Some things we will do:
Hold our boundaries around the television. Us parents will also work hard to keep our phones out of sight during the evenings and use them minimally on the weekends. We have much more time for connection as a family when we don’t watch television. I find our after school evenings and weekends are so much more fulfilling without any screens.
Not planning too many day trips, and staying around the house more. We will keep the planned activities to a minimum, and spend more time at home and around our neighborhood.
Planning a few simple, non-stressful family craft activities to do this month.
Centering Native American Stories
I want to begin teaching my child about Indigenous peoples and the history of Thanksgiving in an age appropriate and culturally sensitive way. Here some are things that I plan to focus on with my four year old this year:
Read stories by Native American authors.
Talk about harvest, gathering together to celebrate the harvest, and that harvest festivals are celebrated around the world.
Help her understand that Native Americans lived here first, and there are still hundreds of Native American nations in North America today.
Here are some web resources that I found incredibly helpful:
Webinar – How to Teach Thanksgiving: Resources for Young Children
Cultural Survival: 8 Ways to Decolonize and Honor Native Peoples on Thanksgiving
Books by Native American authors that I am reading with my preschooler can be found on our Thanksgiving Reading List.
I hope you found this helpful! Please let me know some of your intentions for November in the comments below!