In correlation with Thanksgiving, Nassakeag and Setauket Elementary School students in Kerry Diana’s health classes completed a project focused on Attitude for Gratitude: recognizing and expressing thanks and appreciation in all parts of life, for both big and small things.

The students played a gratitude game which was essentially “pick-up sticks with a purpose.” The challenge in the game is to successfully pick up a colored stick without moving any others, but the added challenge for scoring the points associated with the stick is report to the group and record on their gratitude scorecard something they are thankful for associated with the category assigned to the stick color. Red is for a person, yellow for a place, blue for an item and green for anything.  

The additional challenge for the students was to think to themselves about why they are thankful for the person, place or thing. They did not have to report that to the group if they were not comfortable doing so.