I should write thank-you notes after Christmas when the thank-you note competition took place in our house.We couldn't get out of the _________   to play with our new toys until we _________   at least one thank-you note to the person who wasn't there when we opened that _________   up under the tree.That was the _________ : You had to write a thank-you note to the person you couldn't thank _________   ,even if you didn't _________   me present , or the shirt you got was the wrong color , or the book was one you _________   wanted to read.You had to _________   that you were grateful.

All these years later , I can say I'm _________   for The Contest of the thank-you notes or maybe I should call it The __________   of the thank-you notes because learning how to be grateful and how to __________   it is one of the best lessons of life.Every week I have to write at least one thank-you note if not __________   .And often when I do it , l think , "I'm not sure what I’ll __________   .”

But thankfulness is __________   .You put some of it down on paper , and you start discovering more of it all over. It might feel __________   to write it out at first but not for long.

Thanksgiving is around the __________   , a day when we put gratitude on the __________   ,a celebration of thankfulness for all that we have. It's the __________   thank-you note experience.

"In everything we __________   thanks," I wrote in my thank-you letter. Nothing __________   writing it down and sharing your gratitude.For that , l give thanks.

Another school year was beginning. It was a(n) _______ job to handle 30 first graders, _______ six-year-olds’ attention spans (持续时间) are rather short. Then I _______ to work out a special plan to make it easy: adopting a _______ member as the pen pal for my students. I began by sending out e-mails to the army. Then I got a _______ from Captain Denisar.

Captain Denisar quickly became a(n) _______ system for my class. If students practiced and could read a book _______, I recorded it and e-mailed it to Captain Denisar. And if they finished a writing assignment, I would take a _______ and e-mail it. Captain Denisar, then, would send back emails full of praise and _______. You could imagine how excited my first graders were to ________ a soldier!

We also used the information Captain Denisar included in his e-mails as ________ opportunities: what a soldier’s life was like, how to make a fire etc. Gradually, this man ________ the hearts of my students. They were so eager to please Captain Denisar that they tried their best to ________ themselves in my class. Now, teaching became a(n) ________ rather than a headache to me.

At the end of that year, we wrote a letter of thanks to him. To my surprise, he was even more ________ of the communication, saying my first graders truly lightened things up for him.