Manners and Internet Safety

Today we taught the girls about manners (home, table, public and phone) as well as Internet safety.

Since there was so much to talk about I made an outline for me and the other leader to follow.  Here's the rundown:

We set the table with plates, cups, napkins and forks (you could do spoons and knives too, but it wasn't necessary for us) and had each girl sit down.  We then served them each a piece of cake.  We asked them what they should do with their napkins and then taught them how to properly use it.  While they were eating cake we played a little game.  In a bowl we had questions and scenarios.  The girls each chose one slip of paper out of the bowl and then had to either answer the true or false question or act out the scenario using good manners.  We also discussed the section about using good manners at home, other than table manners.

After the cake we went back into the living room and followed the rest of the outline.

For the introduction game we paired the girls up and told each of them to play a certain part.  One girl was supposed to represent the Bishop, another a new girl at Church and so on.  They showed up how they would introduce themselves and I have to say it was surprising how weak the introductions were!  We talked to them about shaking hands, smiling and making eye contact.  We then reversed the roles and re-did the introductions.  Things were much better the second time around!

As for manners at other people's homes, this is where the activity originated from.  Most of the activities are held at my house, and although I don't mind one bit, I do mind when the girls go in my bedroom (can you believe that!?) and into my kids room.  I decided that we had to tackle this, so hence the whole activity.

For phone manners the other leader and I had a pretend phone conversation.  She was the caller and when I "answered" the phone I was totally rude.  I pretended to keep the phone to my ear while yelling at other people, hanging up rudely without saying good-bye and totally interrupting everything that she was saying.  It was pretty comical, but it got our point across.  After talking about the three parts of a phone call (1. When to speak,
2. When to listen, 3. How to respond) we then held a "real" conversation using the three points.  (This site was extremely helpful with this part of the activity.)

For Internet safety I have to say that I didn't even think about this until I read this idea on a Yahoo group (thank you to whoever you are for this idea!).  I wanted to include it because I know that most of my girls use Facebook daily. Since they are so young and it's not our place to overrule the family computer rules, we simply talked about the Crash and Tell method for a short minute but mostly focused on not giving out personal information.

With the remainder of the time we answered the rest of the true and false questions from earlier.

Throughout the whole hour, it was interesting to hear the girls share personal experiences with manners and Internet safety.  I am so glad we had this activity!

I know this is sort of confusing to read, but if you review the outline and still have questions just email me!