Art Therapy Thursday: Thanksgiving Edition

OK SO I REALIZE THANKSGIVING WAS MONTHS AGO, LOL, BUT APPARANTLY I NEVER PUBLISHED THIS ONE! 

It's thanksgiving week, which means I have three hyper boys with thanksgiving feasts at school, short school weeks, and ramped up behaviors.  Something about the holidays brings out trauma and attachment related behaviors in full force!  We have been doing quite a few activities this week as we focus on being grateful and thankful for what we have.  I don't know about you, but with the commercials on TV showing all the new toys and Christmas presents my boys have been OBSSESSED with asking for every single thing they see!  Regardless of if they even want it......ugh!

Todays activity is all about self-esteem.  A lot of our kids have a really big "SHAME" piece, they believe deep down that they are unloveable, why else would they have been abandoned, abused, neglected by the people who were supposed to love them best.  For those of you who have children in foster care or who have been through foster care they often feel it was their fault that their birth family ended up in this situation, maybe if they hadn't told that teacher about the abuse, maybe if they hadn't asked for that toy their parents wouldn't have been arguing about money.  Getting these children to believe in themselves and recognize all of the positive qualities and characteristics can be challenging.

For this activity all you need is paper and some crayons/markers/colored pencils.

Have each of the kids trace their hands on the paper.

Add some turkey legs, beak, and that hangy down gobbler thingy...Im sure it has an official name, but I have no clue what it is??!!

Now comes the "hard" part:  Have the kids come up with 5 things they like about themselves, you can help them if they need some ideas.  Write each of the things on their turkey fingers with a black marker.

Then let the kids color their turkeys anyway they want!

ADAPTATION for older kids:
This is a great activity that can be adapted in lots of ways, you could draw a flower and use the petals to write the attributes. You can add more feathers, flowers or areas to increase the number of positives needed and make it more challenging.
You may want to provide a list of attributes your child can look through and pick from if they are having difficulty coming up with them on their own.