For many, Thanksgiving means sitting down with family for a turkey dinner. For Bible teachers, it only begins with the turkey. Whether your class time falls in anticipation of the holiday or after as a reflection, let students talk about the turkey but bring them back to the Thanksgiving part of it.
Get Beyond the Turkey to What They’re Thankful For
You could do this simply as a spontaneous sharing time. Or, you could use the circle response method where you go from person to person sitting in the circle to give one thing for which they’re thankful, followed by discussion. You can make it harder by not allowing repeats.
Another idea uses an acrostic of the word THANKSGIVING:
For older children or younger teens, you could start with a cut out of the body of a turkey posted on a bulletin board or wall. Make 12 feather cutouts, each with a letter of the word THANKSGIVING at the top of the feather, so when tacked on to the body, in order, it spells the word. Put the feather cutouts all in a bag. Have students reach their hand into the bag to pick a feather. They must write down something on the feather for which they’re thankful that begins with that letter. If you have less than 12 students, they pick more than one feather. If more than 12 students, you could make more than one turkey. Be sure to think through, ahead of time, how to handle this logistic.
For older teens or adults, you could give them a piece of paper with the word THANKSGIVING already printed on it vertically with space to write words that begin with each letter. You might even include a few Bible verses at the top or bottom of the page about being thankful like Ephesians 5:20, Colossians 3:17, or 1 Thessalonians 5:18. You could have them work on the acrostic individually and then come together to see how many unique words they came up with for the different letters.
Get Beyond What They’re Thankful For to the One Who Deserves Their Thanksgiving
We find commands in Scripture to be thankful but don’t stop there. Use it as a segue to remind students of some key truths:
1) All we have comes from God. (Ps. 24:1-2; 89:11; 1 Tim. 4:4; 6:6-8, 17)
2) Apart from God we can do nothing of eternal value. (Jn. 15:4-5; Phil. 4:13)
Consequently God ultimately deserves our expressions of thanksgiving for each and every person, thing, or ability we might list.