Learning to say grace

Growing up, my family always ate dinner together, but we never said grace.

Maybe once or twice at Thanksgiving we'd give it an attempt, but it was a "Well, it's Thanksgiving, we should"-kinda awkward.

My husband didn't grow up with grace, either, but we both wanted to make it a practice with our family.

I bought a children's book, Mealtime Prayers, which we keep on the dining room table. Each night we pick a new one, hold hands and say a different grace. Our daughter, who is 2, is over-the-moon about it. She loves the hand-holding, and the fact after we loudly proclaim "AAAAAAA-MEN!" we clap our hands once. (We adopted the hand-clapping from friends. The wife is part of a large family who constantly forgot whether they said grace at the beginning of the meal. They added the clap to remind them they did. They may not have been able to remember saying grace, but they'd remember 8 of them clapping - LOL).

So our toddler loves grace, which makes us very happy. She loves it so much, in fact, she makes us say it 4 to 5 times every meal. And this is so great for us because she will grow up not feeling awkward about saying grace. We're even saying it, quietly, when we eat in public, which is a big step for we non-natural-grace-sayers.

I recently found and purchased a new aid for grace - this Table Grace Die from Abbey Press. Six-sided, it's much like the grace book, offering different ways to say grace. However, we can roll the die, which is another big hit with our daughter. I don't think it's really meant for rolling, but she loves it. And it also helps me and my husband as we continue to jumble up the words to the classic "Bless us, Oh Lord, and these Thy gifts..." grace. This gives is a cheat sheet. ;-)

The die is about 2.25" in diameter and as you can see is just half the height of a soda can. We're having a lot of fun with it, and I thought I'd pass the recommendation along.