Manners

Ryan and I have talked a lot about teaching our kids manners. Not just please and thank you, but ones that don't just come naturally to kids. We decided to have a F.H.E on manners.

This was a really simple activity, but our kids really enjoyed it. We sat them down and talked to them about manners that we think our important in our family. I think every family has certain things they expect as far as manners go from their children. One thing that we think is important is looking people in the eye and speaking loudly enough for that person to hear. We talked about other things as well such as:

1. Ringing the door bell only once and waiting for a bit before ringing it again. (our neighbor is a doorbell ringing nut, and does it 5 times before we can get to the door, so we decided to teach our kids that that isn't exactly polite).

2. Asking to use the bathroom at the neighbors instead of just going ahead and using it.

3. Of course please, thank you, I'm sorry, you're welcome etc.....

4. Not staring at others.

5. Holding the door for others.

There are MANY more you could come up with, but those are a few we talked about. We then played a game. I had the kids stand against the wall and I sat on the opposite side of the room. I would say something like "If this is good manners take 3 steps forward. You ring the doorbell once, and then wait a minute before ringing it again." Then they would take three steps forward. "If this is good manners take 1 step forward. When somebody says "hi" to you you look down at the floor and mumble "hi". They stayed in their spot, because they knew that wasn't good manners. They LOVED this game! I then let them make up the scenarios for us and we took the steps. You could get really creative with it and have them jump like a frog instead of just stepping as well.

It was really fun. I think we are going to do this F.H.E about every three months just as a refresher. If we see something they can work on as far as manners go we will add it to future lessons.