Thanksgiving Traditions and Gratitude with Teacher Robin

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Hello, welcome to another class. I’m Robin and today we are going to talk about Thanksgiving traditions and ways to express gratitude. So as you may know, I am American. I’m from Texas and it’s traditional in the United States to celebrate this holiday, Thanksgiving. And the point of Thanksgiving is giving thanks. So to be grateful for something, that means that you thank, you thank someone or you are thankful for something that you have or something that someone has done for you. So today, I’m going to talk about some Thanksgiving traditions and typical foods and things that we, Americans, tend to do on Thanksgiving Day. And then, I’m going to give you some ways to express gratitude. Okay, so other ways to say “thank you” to someone.

All right, so let’s start with the traditions. So as you may know, one of the biggest parts of Thanksgiving is the meal, the food. This might be a lunch, it might be dinner. But this is what brings families together, families gather and they eat this very large meal that has a lot of typical foods. Now, every family does it a little bit differently. They each have their own style, the dishes that they make, but the most popular one, of course, is the turkey. So everyone comes together and eats turkey. And then you have the sides, which are the dishes that go with the turkey. This is, this could be things like stuffing or dressing. Okay, so what goes inside the turkey. And it’s typical also to eat things like sweet potatoes, or yams, pumpkin pie as a dessert, of course, or apple pie. All right, the cranberry sauce to go with your turkey. So there are many, many different Thanksgiving foods, but these are some of the “staples”, which means the things that you have to have, okay. But again, every family is different. Maybe you don’t eat meat, so you have a different kind of meal. But the point is to celebrate together. What else do people do on Thanksgiving Day? Well, a lot of times after you eat this huge meal, you feel tired. So you might take a nap or you might watch a football game because American football is so popular and there are many games being played on Thanksgiving Day. So it’s very common either before or after your meal to turn on the TV and watch a football game. This is very common, very traditional. Okay, and I want to share with you one other tradition that is popular for children, but it can also be fun for adults. Okay, so let me show you. This is called tracing a turkey or drawing a turkey. So what you do, I have some colored pencils here. I’m going to take my hand, I am left-handed. So if you’re right handed, you do it with the other hand, but I’m going to take the pencil in my hand and I’m going to trace my hand. So to “trace” is to draw a line around the edges. Okay, so watch here. I’m going to draw, I’m going to trace my hand. Okay. Now I don’t know if you can see this very well. Now I’m going to decorate it like a turkey because this becomes the body of the turkey. This is the head, okay, and then you can draw the feet, etc. So I’m going to draw my feet and I’m going to decorate the turkey’s head. Okay, so here you have the head of the turkey. And you can draw a face, you can draw a smile, etc. and you can also color each of the fingers and different colors. Or another thing that you can do is you can write what you are thankful for.

Okay, so now we’re going to talk about this, other ways to express gratitude. This is very common when people eat their Thanksgiving meal, they go around the table and they say, what they are grateful for or thankful for that year. Okay. So let’s look at some different ways to express gratitude, and something, some common things that people are thankful for. Okay? So normally you would say, “I’m grateful” or “I’m grateful for”, you could say or it could be your family, your health, your friends, your job, it could be all kinds of different things, but you have to say, what you are grateful for. Okay, so how else can we express gratitude, being thankful in English? All right, so if someone does something for you, you can say or they give you something, you can say, “I appreciate it”. Okay, this is another way to say “thank you”. If it makes you really happy, you can say “I can’t thank you enough”. Okay, so that means I am so happy. Thank you so much. I can’t thank you enough. “That’s so kind of you.” Okay, if somebody does something, gives you something “That’s so kind of you”. Alright, “You shouldn’t have”, okay, if someone helps you, or they give you a present or something like that you can say “You shouldn’t have” and it’s not literal. It just means “Thank you so much. This was so nice.” Okay, you can also say “Thanks a million.” “Thanks, a bunch.” “Many thanks”, okay, “Thanks a lot”. You can also say to someone, “You’re the best”, okay, that’s another way to say “thank you”, to express gratitude to someone, “you’re the best”. All right. And if somebody does something for you that really moves you, you feel emotional, you can say, “I don’t know what to say”. And that means that I feel so grateful, so thankful that you have no words you are actually “speechless”. So to be speechless means you can’t talk, you can’t think of anything to say, you are so happy and moved by what this person has done. Okay, so “I don’t know what to say”.

All right. So now I want to ask you, because you can fill in this turkey here, if you’re going to do it. What are you grateful for this year? Okay, I know that this year has been so hard and it’s not like normal years. And some of us for Thanksgiving, we can’t celebrate with our families. Maybe we’ll celebrate in smaller groups or virtually. But there are still things in our lives that we can be grateful for. I’m grateful for all of you watching. So tell me in the comments. What are you grateful for this year? Okay. And you can use some of this vocabulary that I have given you to express gratitude. So tell me what you’re grateful for. And you can even thank someone in the comments using this vocabulary. Okay, so I hope you’ve enjoyed this class. If you are celebrating Thanksgiving because you live in the United States, I hope that you have a great one. And I will see you back here next week. Take care. Bye!