Family Night: Manners

We were having mashed potatoes for dinner.  The family was called to the table and it wasn't but a few moments before my four year old had stuck his entire hand in the mashed potatoes and then licked his hand clean...enjoying every last lick.  During that same meal I actually saw the bottoms of someone's feet...I'm not making this up...but I wish I was.  It struck me that we were obviously in need of a table manners review at our  house. During dinner I watched carefully...it was perhaps even worse than I had thought.  Fingers in food and not using utensils properly.  Forks with at least twice as much food on them as could possibly fit into a child's mouth...SHUDDER!

After I recovered from dinner I started looking for a good family night lesson on manners.  And guess what I found....NOT MUCH!  So I decided to list some basic manners that I expect to be followed at all meals and create a little restaurant to practice those manners in for family home evening.
We called our restaurant the "MANNERS CAFE" and the kids were totally into it.

The idea of the Manners Cafe is that the only serve dessert to patrons with exceptionally good etiquette. It's just their dessert policy.
 
So here's the Manners Cafe Family Night lesson and the printable menu and manners quiz cards to go with it:

PRINTABLE MENU AND QUIZ CARDS (PDF)