The Jar of Good things is a great family bonding activity, especially on busy nights. It’s easy to set up: Just put a big jar in the middle of the table, with slips of paper and pens handy. Each person writes something on a slip of paper to add to the jar. The “good things” could be:

1. One good thing that happened today
2. One good thing I learned today
3. One good thing I’m looking forward to
4. One good thing I want to share about my family
5. One good thing I’m grateful for

Then the paper goes into the jar. You could use the jar of good things as a family bonding activity in a few different ways! Here are some suggestions:

• Keep the jar’s contents secret until a certain date — maybe the last day of the school year, New Year’s Eve, or another date that’s meaningful to your family. Keep adding paper to the jar every day, or as often as you can. On the date you’ve chosen, gather as a family and read all the papers aloud together.
• Let the jar “speak for you” when the family can’t all be together for dinner. If everyone adds their thoughts to the jar, then family members who get home later can read what was written and have some insight into how everyone else is doing. They can also add their own papers to the jar for the rest of the family to read the next day.
• Or turn the jar into a guessing game! Once everyone has added their papers to the jar, one person is the “picker.” The picker takes out each piece of paper one by one and reads the contents aloud. The others have to guess who wrote that good thing.