History is yesterday, today, and tomorrow
History? Because it's Here!
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    • Honoring a Veteran: Veteran's Day, November 11, 2012
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    • Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, American, and Australian Story
    • The Murderer and the Museum Curator - Nathan Leopold and Kirtland's Warbler
    • Wilbur Carr, the State Department, and Immigration - 1920-1945
    • Billy Sunday Preached His Prayer Pennant Willing Baseball Story
    • William Alden Smith, Michigan's Titanic Senator
    • Helen and Dickinson Bishop Survive An Earthquake and the Titanic
    • Faster Than Flames: Locomotive Engineer James Root Races the Hinckley Fire
    • Three Hot and Contentious Weeks in July 1925 - The Scopes "Monkey " Trial
    • The Confederados Become Brazilian, but Honor Their American Southern Roots
    • Fascinating Footnote: The Goosedown Divorce
    • Clara and Henry Leffingwell - An English, Australian, and American Story
    • The Molly Maguires - Trailblazers or Terrorists?
    • Lt. Uriah Phillips Levy Fights Prejudice and Saves Monticello
    • The Stavisky Affair - Sasha the Suave Scammer
    • General Santa Anna, Chicle, and Chewing Gum
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  • Women Along the Historical Way
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    • Ida Tarbell- "Bachelor Soul." Transitional Woman, or Both?
    • SOE Agent Andree Borrel Lived Several Lifetimes in Her 24 Years
    • Ruth Becker's Faith Helped Her Survive the Titanic and Life Beyond
    • Clara Zetkin Speaks Against Hitler in the German Reichstag
    • Maria Mitchell, America's First Woman Astronomer
    • Lee Lawrence Ansberry - The Courage to Live
    • Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt and the First Mississippi River Steamboat
    • Margaret Fox Kane's Victorian Love Story
    • Chicagoan Kate Kellogg Meets a Ghost on a Train
  • Acting History-History Plays
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    • A Bicyclist Encounters a Phantom
  • Wading in Historical Waters
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    • Harry Barnhart Helped Soldiers Sing Their Way Through World War I >
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        • George and Harry Washington Fight for Freedom
        • Charles Wedel Served on Manitowoc Submarines >
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          • Stan Valentine at Pearl Harbor
          • World War II - Serving Aboard the USS Enterpise
          • Michel Linovich-an Italian in Napoleon's Grand Army
          • Charles Whittlesey- Scholar, Soldier, Humanist
          • The Five Sullivan Brothers Stick Together...
          • Kentuckian James Andrews and the Yankee Bridge Burners
          • General Grant, General Babcock, General McDonald and Journalist Colony: A Study in Scandal and Friendship
          • The Dudman Family Lived the Meaning...
        • George Washington Travels French Creek to Fort Le Boeuf
        • Miracle in World War I - the Christmas
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        • President Grover Cleveland's Secret Surgery on the Steam Yacht Oneida
        • John Kissinger Volunteers to Get Yellow Fever
        • Mary Todd Lincoln Considered April Her "Season of Sadness"
        • Violets for Valor - Two Bereaved Fathers in the Civil War
      • Clarence and Mildred Beltmann - Persevering Through Hard Times
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    • Do You Ken John Peel?
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  • Back Water River and British Bluster
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    • Memories of Pearl Harbor
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      • Presidents in a Package - Abraham Lincoln
      • Americans and Britons Celebrated Thanksgiving 1942 in War Weathered England
      • Writing a Gratitude Journal for Thanksgiving Day
      • "Do You Hear What I Hear?" >
        • Christmas Eve, 1941-A Sailor
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        • Milwaukee Soldiers and Sailors in World War II
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      • City Scapes

Writing a Gratitude Journal for Thanksgiving Day

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By Kathy Warnes
Writing a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal and presenting it to the one you are thanking on Thanksgiving Day benefits the recipient and the writer as well. 

“It isn’t what you have in your pocket that makes you thankful, but what you have in your 
heart.”

Today, is the day to start writing your Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal! It doesn’t matter if the temperature is in the wrong numbers outside, gratitude works in all seasons.

Keeping a daily Thanksgiving gratitude journal  with an eye to a reading some of its entries at Thanksgiving dinner is a good way to remind yourself and others of forgotten blessings. A Thanksgiving gratitude journal is also a good way to let the important people in your life know what they mean to you.

Keep a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal Because...
 The hustle and bustle of the holiday season and the hurry and stress of our busy lives in general make it easy to take the blessings in our lives for granted. Blessings include people as well as things and people like to be appreciated. Small gestures of appreciation such as a personalized gratitude journal can often mean much more than an expensive gift.

For children, making a gratitude journal is an educational experience without being in school. Writing or drawing a daily entry in a gratitude journal teaches them discipline and develops their creativity and writing and drawing skills. Psychological and spiritual benefits include developing a sense of thankfulness and thinking of others as well as deepening of relationships with their creator and their friends and family. Keeping a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal can be a fun and worthwhile family project as well as a worthy project for individual family members.

A Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal Could Look Like…

The outward appearance of your gratitude journal doesn’t have to be fancy. You can buy a bound booklet 
with blank pages at an office supply store. You can also use loose leaf notebook paper and a binder or you can even use a legal pad if appearances don’t mean as much to you as content does. For a journal for your children you can use a three hole punch to punch holes in computer paper and give them a report cover to protect their journal.

A gratitude journal can be... 

A gratitude journal can be handwritten in pencil – as long as the writing is legible- ink, or calligraphy. It can be typed on the computer and printed off and trimmed to size. Children can use crayons and colored pencils to illustrate their entries in their gratitude journals or even oil pastels and water colors if they are extra artistic. You can make double entries or make copies of pages so you can give a copy to that special someone instead of just telling them what they mean to you. If your gratitude journal is to your mother or your grandmother or other special people, you can even dedicate an entire journal to them and present it to them at Thanksgiving dinner.

 As long as it can survive being handled and written in every day, a gratitude journal can be as fancy or as plain as you want it to be. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

What and How to Write in a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal

 The contents of your Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal depend on the contents of your heartand your imagination. If you’re thinking that your heart and your imagination have been crowded out by daily life, think one more time. Thank the friend who picked you up when your car broke down. Thank your son for making his bed without being tortured. Thank your daughter for making macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Thank your friend who really listened to you. According to Neil Clark Warren, Ph.D. and founder of eHarmony.com, “communication is 85 percent listening and 15 percent talking. The more you listen, the more you enhance communication.” In this case he was talking about married couples, but his comment applies to all relationships.

Thank a friend who gave you comfort by just being there. Thank your spouse for being there emotionally as well as physically. Thank your son for wiping his feet when he came in from the muddy yard. Thank your daughter for not making a smart aleck remark when you gained those extra pounds.
.
Help younger children make a written or bulleted list of the things they appreciate. They can illustrate the list as well.

Older children can write thank you notes to friends or family for things that others have done for them.
 
Teens and adults can write an "I remember when you did this for me" list or paragraph.


 Unexpected Benefits of a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal
 
According to Dorene Clement, author of Keeping the Five Year Journal, keeping any kind of a journal, including a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal, helps the journal keeper grow personally and makes them freer because they are focusing on their inner and outer worlds and bringing them closer together.

Albert Schweitzer said, “Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.”

If someone has renewed your hope, let them know by thanking them with a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal. 
The amazing thing about focusing on a“gratitude attitude” and keeping and giving a Thanksgiving gratitude journal is that you develop a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal  in your heart that you write in every day.

Presenting a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal
 
Send a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal to a soldier here or overseas thanking him or her for sacrifices for America. Send a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal to a wounded veteran or an aged veteran.

Send a Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal to someone in a nursing home, thanking them for contributing their lives to build and maintain our country.

Present your Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal with a smile, a hug, and a thankful heart and receive one with the same attitude. A Thanksgiving Gratitude Journal is a lasting thank you that can be read and re-read over the years. It is an eternal loving message from the person who created it.

 References
Diehn, Gwen. The Decorative Page: Journals, Scrapbooks & albums Made Simply Beautiful. Lark books, 2003

Roberts, Kelly Rae. Taking flight: Inspiration and Techniques to Give Your Creative Spirit Wings. North Light Books, 2008

Trout, Diana. Journal Spilling: Mixed-Media Techniques for Free Expression. North Light Books, 2009


  

Copyright Notice

All of the material on this website is copyrighted.  You are free to link to any of the articles and to download any of the PDF books to read and use as long as you credit me as the author. I fully hope and expect the classroom activities to be freely used.      kathywarnes@gmail.com
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Sunset on Lake Michigan in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
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