Singing Our Thanks

Everyone is grateful for something! Hooray for Thanksgiving time!  It's such a wonderful season to help our children focus on the commandment, "In every thing give thanks" (1 Thessalonians 5:18).  One of my favorite Singing Time activities for November is to help the children sing their thanks to Heavenly Father.  I use the song, "I Am Glad for Many Things" (p.151), and I help the children fill in the lines of the song with things for which they are grateful. My preferred way to sing this song is to mix and match the verses.  I place the first line of the first verse and the second line of the second verse together, like this: "I am glad for many things, many things, many things/ Thank you for the many things that are mine today." The song is so repetitive that I don't need to formally teach it.  I just sing it once, and the kids catch on right away.  Then I ask for a suggestion from one the children of what he would thank Heavenly Father for.  I plug his answer into the song, like this: "I am glad for my fam'ly, my fam'ly, my fam'ly/ Thank you for the many things that are mine today." I immediately ask for another suggestion.  The children are always so eager to share their ideas and hear them in song that we'll repeat this over and over, with lots of different suggestions.  Sometimes I'll add actions to match the suggestion.  The children are amazingly thoughtful. Truly, "the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me" (Doctrine & Covenants 25:12).

Happy singing!