I've been looking and looking for a good manners curriculum or website for my 2nd grader and have been VERY unsuccessful! I consider manners to be the job of parents, however not just my stepdaughter but many parents are failing to do this. OR, I think young parents just don't know. For example, my SD has no manners for going over to someone's house. I can't blame her, no one ever taught her. I'm not with her enough to really instill these manners by dealing with them as they come up. I'm thinking of writing a manners curriculum for elementary school kids and putting it up on a free website. I'm even throwing around the idea of making videos. I'm not advertising my site...I don't have one yet. I'm just asking if you'd use one if it existed, and what you'd look for. Thanks!
If it was a good fit for our family values (the manners we think are important), I would probably use it as a supplement, but not as a main focus. I find my boys learn better by living it than reading/talking/listening about something. For example: when one of our boys started spontaneously using "thank you" and "you're welcome" without being prompted, I started to wonder why he used those words but not "please,"...then it dawned on me one night at dinner that DH & I simply didn't make a practice of saying "please," although we said "thank you" and "you're welcome" a lot (oops). I've observed further since then that the number one issue with manners in our house is modeling. However, if there was some aspect where we needed a little help...like, my one son simply CANNOT understand why talking about a unique characteristic of a person (they are fat/thin/short/tall) might make them feel bad. He doesn't see these attributes as negatives, and he can't grasp why people would feel badly about something obvious about them...the problem is, as a result, he has a lot of trouble remembering not to say potentially hurtful things...If you had a unit on refraining from insensitive commentary, I'd probably use that.
I'm not sure I would NOW, because my kids are mostly older and (should have) all that down. But I probably could have a few years back!
I have looked at a few sites...but never found a good fit for what I was looking for. I would definately consider it.
If you don't want to have to re-invent the wheel, you might want to take a look at http://www.nc4h.org/publications/curriculum/MannersMatter/MannersMatter5-8_1.htm. It's a manner's curriculum put out by 4-H. It is broken down first by age (5-8, 9-12, 13-19) then by topic. See whatyou think. I haven't had a chance to really look into a lot, but have been considering it to put a little extra "polish" on the manners of my two kids. Carol
Thanks! We've actually done the Manners Matter. It helped with things like learning how to answer the phone, or how to introduce someone. But it didn't cover things like how to be a good host or a good guest when at someone's house. Or how NOT to be bossy! But it was good!
Have you looked into books.. like the Help Me Be Good books from Scholastic? We have those and they are good.. we also have an Arthur set of books on manners type topics.
