Manners

Last week we focused on Manners.  The kids were all just getting over being sick, so were a bit more ornery and less behaved than usual for the first day.  I was thinking it was a mistake for me to think about manners, as it just made me realize how much the kids needed to work on!  But then, they started feeling better and we had a good week.

I have a few file folder games about manners that I pulled out.  I don't know where they came from, as I've had them for a long time.

One is about the land of the bad-mannered dinosaurs. "Where the Dinosaurs Roam"
We kept the dinosaurs up on the window and Brielle keeps pointing out which dinosaur you are if you are not using your manners.

it includes this matching game with the dinosaur bones.  Each bone has a nice thing you can say to someone.

We also focused on the proper way to set the table.  

We played a manners game at lunch.  I put 3 m&m's for each child on the table and told them that if I saw any bad manners during lunch I would take one candy away.  I don't know if it was that they were using glass dishes, or that they had the incentive of candy, but that was the best behavior I've ever seen out of these kids!

Practice writing letter 'M' (and then B, which then went to playing tic, tac, toe)  

We are focusing on writing this year (for the older kids), and letter recognition (for the younger kids).   Since we did 'A for Airplane' last week, I had thought about going through in alphabetical order, but since I already had my themes set for the year I was having a hard time rearranging them to still fit with holidays, etc.  So, we are just focusing on the first letter of the word we are learning each week.