A Simple Gratitude Journal Activity for the Classroom
- Brooke Silva
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Gratitude activities for kids can get complicated fast.
A new prompt every day. A worksheet for every occasion. A carefully planned lesson. Another thing for a teacher to prep, print, explain, and somehow fit into an already packed day.
I don't think practicing gratitude has to work that way.
There's something valuable about making it much simpler.
One question.
A few minutes.
And permission for kids to answer based on the day they actually had.
Gratitude Doesn't Mean Everything Was Great
One of the things I care about most when talking about gratitude with kids is making sure we aren't accidentally teaching forced positivity.
Some days are hard.
Kids get frustrated.
They have disagreements with friends.
They struggle with schoolwork.
They're tired.
Things happen at home that follow them into the classroom.
A gratitude practice shouldn't ask them to pretend those things didn't happen.
Instead, we can help kids understand that a difficult day can contain other things, too.
There can still be laughter.
There can still be kindness.
There can still be something interesting or unexpected.
There can still be a moment when something finally makes sense.
There can still be something worth remembering.
Noticing something good doesn't erase something hard. Both can be true.
That's the kind of gratitude practice I want kids to learn.
The Goal Isn't Journaling. It's Noticing.
I love journals. I literally made one.
But the goal isn't to turn every kid into someone who keeps a gratitude journal for the rest of their life.
The journal is the tool.
Noticing is the skill.
The questions inside InBetweenies are designed to help kids pay attention to different parts of an ordinary day.
They touch on things like:
Curiosity and learning: Recognizing moments when they discovered, understood, or experienced something new.
Kindness and connection: Becoming more aware of the people around them and the small ways people show up for one another.
Sensory awareness: Slowing down enough to pay attention to what they're experiencing through their senses.
Joy and humor: Giving the funny, silly, happy little moments of an ordinary day a place to matter.
Confidence and accomplishment: Recognizing things they did, figured out, tried, or handled.
Memory and reflection: Thinking about which ordinary moments stood out enough to be remembered.
We're not asking kids to search their brains for something profound.
We're helping them become more aware of what's already happening around them.
Why Use the Same Questions Again?
There are approximately eleven billion lists of gratitude prompts on the internet.
Okay, I made that number up. But it feels accurate.
I didn't want teachers hunting for a new gratitude prompt every morning, and I didn't think kids needed one.
InBetweenies in the Classroom uses nine reusable questions intentionally.
As the questions become familiar, kids spend less time figuring out what they're supposed to do and more time thinking about their own experience.
And here's the important part:
The questions may stay familiar, but their lives don't.
Their experiences change.
The people around them change.
What they're learning changes.
What catches their attention changes.
What feels difficult changes.
What they're proud of changes.
Their answers become little snapshots of who they were and what they noticed along the way.
A Classroom Gratitude Practice Doesn't Need to Take 30 Minutes
Please do not turn this into another elaborate classroom routine unless you genuinely want to. Five minutes is plenty.
Use it in the morning. At the end of the day. Once a week. During a quiet transition. When everyone needs a minute to reset.
And an answer doesn't have to be an essay.
One word counts.
A sentence counts.
A drawing counts.
A doodle counts.
A whole story counts.
For younger students, drawing might make more sense than writing. Older students might have much more to say.
And sometimes a kid won't have an answer.
That's okay, too.
Choose something else. Come back another day. Skip it.
This isn't about producing the "right" gratitude answer.
It's about practicing the act of noticing.
Why I Care So Much About This
As a kid, I struggled to learn.
School didn't always feel like a place where I was good at things, and over time I became withdrawn.
When so much of your attention is focused on what's difficult, it's really easy to miss the small things happening alongside all of it.
That's part of why I've become so fascinated by the little moments in life.
The things that don't make the photo album.
The things nobody puts on a milestone chart.
The five-minute conversations.
The ridiculous things that make us laugh.
The people who quietly show up for us.
The tiny discoveries.
The ordinary pieces of an ordinary Tuesday that somehow become the things we remember years later.
I call those moments InBetweenies.
Because life isn't lived only in the milestones.
It's lived in the InBetweenies.
And I want kids to learn how to notice them.
InBetweenies in the Classroom
InBetweenies in the Classroom is a printable classroom gratitude practice built around nine reusable questions that encourage kids to notice gratitude, curiosity, kindness, connection, learning, accomplishment, their senses, and the ordinary moments happening around them.
Not hundreds of daily prompts.
Not another curriculum.
Not another thing teachers have to do perfectly.
Use it in whatever way works for your students and your classroom.
Because practicing gratitude doesn't have to be difficult.
Sometimes we simply need to slow down long enough to notice what's already there.
Slow down. Get curious. Notice more.
Are You a Current Educator?
I periodically make InBetweenies in the Classroom available at no cost to current educators, faculty, and school staff.
There is a complimentary educator offer available right now.
Complete the short educator form to receive the current coupon code and instructions by email.
InBetweenies in the Classroom
Digital Download | $7.99
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