Gratitude Activities for Kids: 12 Ideas That Fit the Age

About this tool

Gratitude activities for kids are simple, repeatable routines that help a child notice good things, work out where they came from, and, as they get older, feel and express thanks for them. The popular ones are a gratitude jar, three good things at the dinner table, thank-you letters and a gratitude hunt. All of them are easy to run. The part that takes some thought is matching the activity to what a child of that age can actually understand, because gratitude in the full sense is a later-developing capacity, and asking too much too early turns it into a performance.

Developmental research shows that understanding of gratitude develops gradually, and that what a child shows depends a lot on how the task is set up. Younger children can say thank you when prompted and can enjoy a gift; the fuller appraisal that gratitude depends on, that someone chose to help them, that it cost that person something, and that it was done for their benefit, becomes more reliable across the primary years. Experiments with preschoolers have found that four to six year olds who are given a gift help and share more with the giver, especially when the giver's intention is made clear, and that five year olds already prefer a recipient who shows gratitude, so the building blocks are present well before a child can explain them. Jeffrey Froh and Giacomo Bono, who have led much of the research on gratitude in young people, built a school curriculum around teaching exactly this appraisal to eight to eleven year olds, and found that children who learned to think this way showed more gratitude and more thankful behavior, with effects still visible months later. The lesson for parents and teachers is that with younger children you are teaching noticing, and with older children you are teaching the thinking behind the thanks.

The evidence for the simple activities is more modest than the enthusiasm around them. Froh's 2008 study of counting blessings in early adolescents found gains in gratitude, optimism and satisfaction with school compared with listing hassles, which is encouraging. A later study found that a gratitude visit, where a young person delivers a thank-you letter in person, helped mainly the children who started with low positive mood; the already cheerful ones showed little change. The pattern across the literature is that gratitude activities are a mild, safe, probably helpful habit, not a transformation, and that the version where an adult talks with the child about who helped and why works better than a list filled in alone. Gratitude seems to be caught through conversation more than taught through worksheets.

For children of about three to six, keep the activities concrete and sensory. A gratitude jar works well: each evening the child draws or dictates one good thing on a slip of paper, you write the words, and the slip goes in the jar to be read out at the end of the month. A gratitude hunt sends them around the house or garden to find things they are glad exist, which is really a noticing exercise with a label on it. Three good things at dinner works at this age if you model it first and accept answers like 'the dog' and 'pancakes'. The aim is the habit of scanning for good, not a correct feeling. Do not ask a four year old to be grateful; ask what was good today.

From about seven to ten, add the thinking. When a child names something good, ask three follow-up questions: who made that happen, what did it cost them, and why do you think they did it for you? That is the appraisal the research says drives gratitude, and asking it at dinner is probably the single most useful thing on this page. This is also the age for thank-you letters that say what the person did and how it helped, rather than a generic thanks, and for the gratitude visit, where the child reads the letter to the person. A gratitude tree or paper chain, with one leaf or link added per day, gives a visible record that this age enjoys.

From about eleven, children can handle gratitude as a private practice and as a social one. A short gratitude journal, two or three entries a few times a week rather than daily, suits this age better than a jar. Rose, thorn and bud at dinner, naming one good thing, one hard thing and one thing to look forward to, gives permission for the hard thing, which matters with teenagers who will otherwise refuse the exercise as fake. Letting an older child choose a cause to give time to, and talking afterwards about what people are grateful for and why, connects gratitude to action. Expect eye-rolling. Keep doing it anyway, briefly.

The one mistake to avoid is using gratitude to dismiss a complaint. 'You should be grateful' in response to a child's disappointment teaches that gratitude is a stick, and children who learn that stop sharing the disappointment rather than start feeling the gratitude. The same goes for forced thank-yous delivered under threat and for comparing a child's situation to children who have less. Gratitude and disappointment can sit together: the party was cancelled and that is rubbish, and grandma still drove over with cake. Name the first before you point to the second. If you only do one thing differently after reading this, do that.

Other common mistakes are smaller. Running an activity every day until it dies of boredom, when two or three times a week lasts longer. Correcting a child's answer ('that is not something to be grateful for') instead of asking a question about it. Doing the activity to the child rather than with them: children copy what adults do far more than what adults assign, so your own three good things at the table matter more than theirs. And expecting the activity to fix a behavior problem. Gratitude activities are a nice habit with mild benefits; they are not a response to entitlement, anxiety or low mood, and a child who seems unable to find anything good for weeks deserves a different conversation.

If a child's inability to name anything good lasts more than a few weeks, comes with withdrawal, irritability, sleep or appetite changes, or with talk of being worthless or not wanting to be here, that is not a gratitude problem. Speak to your child's doctor or a licensed child therapist. The printable lists all twelve activities by age with the follow-up questions and a short script for the dinner table.

Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW
Checked the developmental claims and the gratitude intervention findings against the cited studies, and confirmed the page addresses the adult, never the child.

References

1. Froh JJ, Sefick WJ, Emmons RA. Counting blessings in early adolescents: an experimental study of gratitude and subjective well-being. J Sch Psychol. 2008;46(2):213–233.
2. Froh JJ, Kashdan TB, Ozimkowski KM, Miller N. Who benefits the most from a gratitude intervention in children and adolescents? Examining positive affect as a moderator. J Posit Psychol. 2009;4(5):408–422.
3. Froh JJ, Bono G, Fan J, et al. Nice thinking! An educational intervention that teaches children to think gratefully. School Psychology Review. 2014;43(2):132-152. doi:10.1080/02796015.2014.12087440
4. Tudge JRH, Freitas LBL, eds. Developing Gratitude in Children and Adolescents. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 2018.
5. Shoshani A, De-Leon Lendner K, Nissensohn A, Lazarovich G, Aharon-Dvir O. Grateful and kind: the prosocial function of gratitude in young children's relationships. Developmental Psychology. 2020;56(6):1135-1148.
6. Vaish A, Savell S. Young children value recipients who display gratitude. Developmental Psychology. 2022;58(4):680-692.

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