Turn It Around Activity

We’ve been spending a lot of time together as a family. A. LOT.

And we’ve been hearing our fair share of complaints about chores, rules, and the bizarre situation we find ourselves in.

It’s understandable, expected – and honestly – completely normal behavior. Life is full of good and bad. And you can’t fully appreciate or recognize good things, if it wasn’t for the bad.

So I created this activity, hoping it would help my children think of reasons to appreciate the “bad things”. And I’ll be honest, I had very low expectations on how it would be received.

And listen…it was awesome! AWESOME!

My son really ran with this project. I was (and still am) completely dumbfounded by it.

To start, I asked him to list seven things he doesn’t like. Almost all of them were chores.

Then I asked him to write those “bad” things down in the spaces marked “I’m thankful for…”

The look on his face was priceless. “Why would I be thankful for DISHES?”

I challenged him to think of a reason we should be grateful for dishes. “If we have dirty dishes, what does that mean?”

And that was the ah-ha moment. His face immediately lit up. “It means we had something to eat.”

Exactly buddy.

I left him alone and a few minutes later he brought his paper back to me with a list of reasons he appreciated the “bad things”.

It’s probably sappy. I’m sure there are people rolling their eyes at this, but it really was a great activity and much needed in this house.

  • “I’m thankful for laundry because it means I have a lot of clothes to wear.”
  • “I’m thankful for making my bed because it means I have a warm, safe place to sleep every day.”
  • “I’m thankful for grocery shopping because it means we have enough money to buy food.”
  • “I’m thankful for this quarantine because it means we are all home, safe and healthy.”

If you’d like to try this activity you can download the template here.

This is part of my four weeks of quarantine series: new (free!) projects for you and your family to do during quarantine.

UPDATE: I have created a mailing list for all my freebies. If you’d like to get an e-mail every day with a link to the newest template, you can sign up here.

Stay well, friends!

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