With Thanksgiving coming up in a couple of weeks for us here in the United States, I'd like to share with you a quick and easy way to begin the thoughts of thankfulness in your home.

It is SUPER hard to express this to really little kids. So it's easier to lead by example and hopefully they'll follow suit. They will eventually.

Brigitte, a contributor on Hands On As We Grow®, shared this super simple Thankful Chain she and her girls make every year.

You start by having the kids practice their scissors and cutting skills and create a bunch of strips of paper that will become the chain links.

Then each day of November, or leading up to Thanksgiving, each person in the family writes on each chain link of what they're thankful for and add to the chain!

You can decide how you want to do it, whether every person writes a thankful chain link every day, or if the family members take turns. Or if you'd rather just create the chain all at once and read the thankful notes each day leading up to Thanksgiving.

Simple enough, huh?

Rachel, another contributor on Hands On As We Grow, does the same concept but as a Thankful Tree.

Things to remember --

Young kids are going to be thankful for physical objects, such as their toys, and it may seem very shallow -- but let them be thankful for that! It's a start and will get better as you model to them other things they can be thankful for that might not be physical objects.

If your child doesn't understand what being thankful is, ask this way: "What makes you happy?"

You can get the full details of the Thankful Chain here: