Kids Night In - Mind Your Manners

Set the scene: You’re out to eat with your family when your child lets out a HUUUGE burp….and he laughs. Dad chimes in, “What do you say??”

Sound familiar? If you have children, I can most likely answer that question for you—YES! It happens, especially at meal time (or not), but teaching them to be polite and say excuse me is a huge step forward in learning manners.

Why am I talking about burping? This month’s theme for the Kids Night In Box, from Night In Boxes, was Mind your Manners…a perfect topic for all kids! Night In Boxes is a monthly subscription service that sends themed boxes every month with either a kids geared theme or a date night theme, we have been enjoying the kid themes for the last few months. Oh, excuse me, where are my manners, lets discuss what this box was all about!

What’s Inside?
night in itinerary*
book related to topic (Mind your Manners B.B. Wolf by Judy Sierra)
2 labeled placemats
2 plates
2 straw cups
2 paper napkins
2 sets of “silverware”
materials for napkin rings: beads, pipe cleaners
Colored pencils (for coloring placemat and decorating cups)
Materials for spinner board: brad fastener, spinner card, paperclip
2 pack of cookies
*within the itinerary you would find recipes for your night in, games, and how-to instructions for folding napkins, making napkin rings, setting the table, etc.

Manners Themed Menu
Sweet Honey-Lime Fruit Salad
Tea Sandwiches
Or simple cookie party option

We started off our manners lesson with read the included book, Mind your Manners B.B. Wolf. It’s a cute book about B.B. Wolf attending a tea party in hopes of getting cookies. He learns some manners and has some silly mishaps in this colorful attention-grabbing book. My son loves when the wolf says, “excuse me” BEFORE he burps…now that is being on top of your manners! We then pulled out the colored pencils to decorate their cups (after washing). This lasted a whole hot minute because my boys aren’t into coloring just yet, but they loved that they were putting a special touch on their cups. Side note: I love that these boxes come with enough materials for 2 kids. I can do the activities with both of my boys and no arguing about who gets to do it! We also made their napkin rings since the cup decorating went so quickly. Putting beads onto a pipe cleaner is a simple activity but is so great for little hands, I loved that my boys were working on their fine motor skills without knowing—especially my 2-year-old.

We could have colored the placemats as well, but I chose to skip right to setting the table. The placemat is great because it is labeled, but obviously with a 2 and 4-year-old who can’t read I did show them where everything went on the placemat. They were totally shocked that I gave them a knife, or a “sharp” as my 2-year-old calls them, I told them not to get used to it..ha! I told them that this is how you set a table to for a fancy dinner with friends, even if you don’t use all of the silverware. My youngest really didn’t grasp the whole set table thing and I wouldn’t expect him to, but my 4 year old was able to remember where everything was supposed to go once we played a round or 2 of the spinner game. This is when we ate our delicious tea sandwiches, applesauce, and cookies.

The tea sandwich recipes included a chicken salad sandwich or pimento cheese, we chose to make chicken salad because my kids are big fans of it. We made it a little differently as we don’t like celery or grapes in our chicken salad, but there are so many varieties you really can’t go wrong going your own direction. Although they would have loved the fruit salad, my kids decided to have applesauce on the side. They aren’t the biggest lunch eaters, so small tea sandwiches were perfect for a light lunch.

The itinerary gives a lot of great tips for using manners at the dinner table like not talking with a full mouth and keeping your elbows off the table. My kids also already know to ask to be excused after dinner, which is great for keeping them at the table longer since they aren’t allowed to just get up and go. “May I be excused?”, “no, eat your green beans!” Sometimes it works, other times they just stare at me in disbelief, but that’s ok because they are being respectful by asking. It also includes a link to music and instructional videos to end your dinner party with ballroom dancing. Now I don’t know if my wild boys would appreciate a good ballroom dance yet, but they do like to dance post dinner!

My kids have thoroughly enjoyed receiving and reviewing these boxes each month and we think you’re family would enjoy them too! If you’re interested in learning more click my affiliate link here or the picture below!

*I received this Kid’s Night In box for free in exchange for a review as an affiliate, all opinions are my own. This post DOES contain affiliate links, which means if you click on them and purchase your own Night In Box using the links posted, I may make a commission.