At the beginning of the school year, I introduced my class of third graders to an activity that I like to call “Gratitude and Giggles.” Each week, we would spend time reflecting on things that we were grateful for throughout the week and things that made us laugh. Many of the giggles were inside-stories of funny moments at recess that I did not fully understand, but I nonetheless enjoyed watching them retell and reenact the trips, slips, and “mistakes” that they made in their games. I was most impressed by their recollections for Gratitude. Simple things like sleep, food, rain, friends, and kickball made the list each week – so often that I stopped recording ones that were repeated. For a while, I tried to guide students to expand and go deeper, to think of something new, but their gratitude always stayed at their hands-on experiences with the world and people. I began wonder why this was the case – did my students just want to get through the activity and check off another item on their school to-do list? Or was there something deeper going on in their reflections that my adult brain could not slow down enough to see? I came across the answer a few weeks ago.

In her book titled The Religious Potential of the Child, Sofia Cavalletti, co-founder of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, expanded upon the theme that a young child’s relationship with God is grounded in gratitude and praise. Gratitude for the simple things – for the new shoes they got, for the game they played at recess, for the sweet treat they ate, for God loving them, for Jesus coming at Christmas time. As children mature into adulthood, their relationship with the spiritual becomes more complex. Prayer turns into petition – we worry, we need, we want. Our Heavenly Father wants our petitions, He likes to hear our petitions, but sometimes, in our busy, noisy world, we can forget that we are also called to respond to God’s gifts with gratitude and praise – just like our children do.

Children naturally see and are thankful for these gifts. God is constantly speaking to us, reaching out to us through gifts. The minerals, plants, animals, and people that we are constantly surrounded by are His gifts to us. My Third Graders, look around at the material world, and they can see God’s gifts to them. They look at the mineral world, and they are thankful for the rain that falls and creates the mud they play in. They look at the plant and animal worlds, and they are thankful for the trees they climb and the food they eat in their lunches or at dinner. They look at the human world, and they are grateful for the same friends who play with them at recess.

I realize now that their gratitude for the simple things like snacks, friends, and kickball are not quick answers – they are honest acknowledgements of God’s gifts. From the beginning of time, God created the minerals, plants, animals, and humans knowing that we would eventually behold and use them. When God created the waters, He knew that they would fall just perfectly in our crater creating the messiest and most fun recess for our children. When He created plants and animals, He had us in mind knowing that we’d be using the coffee beans, herbs, fruit, vegetables, and meat that we now have in our kitchens. When He created our friends and co-workers, He knew that our paths would cross one day, bringing them into our lives.

How do I respond to my students’ recollections of gratitude now? I enter into their simplicity, their repetitiveness, and I try to see the world as they see it – as a perpetual gift from God.