Teach Your Young People Table Manners!

Some table manners are obvious and these are the most important for little ones to learn:

1. Eat primarily with a fork, not your fingers or even a spoon. The exception to this rule is if a soup or similar consistency of food is served that must be eaten with a spoon, such as ice cream. D'œuvres may be eaten with the fingers.
2. Pass the dishes at the table counterclockwise; wait to be served thus. Do not reach across the table to serve yourself. Ask for the plate of food politely if others are not promptly passing the dishes.
3. Chew with the food in your mouth closed. If you can not chew this way because you are sick with a cold or congestion, ask for the food to be sent to your room and eat it privately. If you are ill and eat at the dinner table, you will likely spread those germs to healthier members of your family.
4. Do not over stuff you mouth with food. Take small bites and chew these thoroughly before swallowing. This is best for the digestion.
5. Do not eat too quickly. Eating fast will make you eat too much!
6. Do not speak with others while there is food in your mouth.
7. Do not talk about what you do not like about the food being served to you. If you do not care for it, discreetly decline it or take very little of the food on to your plate.
8. Say please and thank you always at the table.
9. Do not pick your teeth in front of others at the table.
10. Place the napkin given to you for wiping your mouth on top of your lap, unfolded neatly. Lift it and wipe your mouth when it is needed; then place in back on your lap during the meal. When you leave the table, place the napkin to the right side of the plate. 
11. Do not place your elbows distractedly on the table. Elbows are not acceptable until after the meal has been removed from the table. If you are playing cards or simply talking at the table while snacks are passed around, the elbows no longer matter. It is only when a dinner is being served that people still expect you not to put your elbows on the table.

Some table manners are not so obvious to young people, here are a few that take a bit more observation and practice:

1. Listen while members of the family are speaking; do not talk over them or rudely interrupt them.
2. Remember that older members of the family have seniority at the dinner table. Adult conversation must be tolerated at the table. However, if the older family members are speaking directly to a young person, that young person should politely respond to the questions or remarks.
3. Elders may select whoever says the table prayers. This person may politely decline but it is considered an honor to be asked to pray for the family at the dinner table and this should be taken into consideration. It is considered very rude in some families to be a young adult who declines to pray at the dinner table when asked publicly. Simple prayers are quite acceptable. If you do not know what to say a simple "Thank You, Lord, for this food and hospitality. Amen." is a very kind and polite prayer to give, once everyone has bowed their heads. To make a dinner prayer too long so that the food served becomes cold is actually considered rude. So to choose a polite simple prayer is preferred.
4. The exceptions to the rule when asked to pray when you are a guest are: you have no religion or of a different religion than your host. What is a different religion is not a matter of denomination if your family is Christian. So if you are a visiting Baptist, do not decline the invitation if your host is a Methodist. By the same token do not decline to say a simple table prayer if you are Catholic visiting a Protestant's home or vise versa. Also priests and pastors of all Christian denominations should be expected to be asked to say table prayers in ordinary circumstances, do not be surprised by this nor insulted if not asked.
5. If you have no religion or a different religion and you find yourself at the table of those who are praying, simply keep you gaze level and distracted upon the wall opposite to you and wait patiently for others to finish. If they take your hand during prayers accept it politely as a gesture of friendship. Do not interpret table prayers as an affront to your personal beliefs. If you are invited to take a meal with others, this is a compliment to you and it is not the correct forum for debates on religious belief.
6. If you are coughing or choking at the table, stand and quietly exist without eye contact. Gain control in a bathroom and then return to the table. Say, "Excuse me," when returning; this is sufficient.
7. When visiting the home of a friend for dinner, it is customary to give a small floral token to the hostess. Adults frequently give wine to each other but this is not expected of young adults under twenty. If you have neither token, write a simple note afterwards expressing thanks and leave it at a table by the front door or mail it as soon as you get home.

  

Harvest: Greg Laurie Ministries

Eating Etiquette:

• Teach Your Kids Table Manners
• Rules to Teach Children Good Table Manners
• 8 tips for teaching your child table manners
• Top Table Manners...

"Oh Danny Boy"

      "Danny Boy" is a ballad written by English songwriter Frederic Weatherly and usually set to the Irish tune of the "Londonderry Air". It is most closely associated with Irish communities.

      Although initially written to a tune other than "Londonderry Air", the words to "Danny Boy" were penned by English lawyer and lyricist Frederic Weatherly in Bath, Somerset in 1910. After his Irish-born sister-in-law Margaret (known as Jess) in the United States sent him a copy of "Londonderry Air" in 1913 (an alternative version has her singing the air to him in 1912 with different lyrics), Weatherly modified the lyrics of "Danny Boy" to fit the rhyme and meter of "Londonderry Air".

      Weatherly gave the song to the vocalist Elsie Griffin, who made it one of the most popular songs in the new century; and, in 1915, Ernestine Schumann-Heink produced the first recording of "Danny Boy".

      Jane Ross of Limavady is credited with collecting the melody of "Londonderry Air" in the mid-19th century from a musician she encountered. 

• The Legend and History of the Song Danny Boy
• Danny Boy 1913 sheet music from Duke University Libraries
• Doll sized sheet music and music stands for your child to craft

"Danny Boy" performed by Peter Hollens

      The most beloved song of Gordon B. Hinckley, "Danny Boy" was originally intended as a love song sung by a girl to her sweetheart, but it is now more often associated with brotherly affection between friends. When McKay Crockett collaborated with Keith Evans for this arrangement, Evans viewed the lyrics in a different way: about a father struggling to share his feelings with his departing son. In the newly written final verse, the father contemplates that perhaps he will outlive his precious Danny Boy.

LYRICS

O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

From glen to glen and down the mountainside.

The summer's gone and all the roses falling.

'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,

Or all the valley's hushed and white with snow.

'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow.

O Danny Boy, O Danny Boy, I love you so.

When winter's come and all the flow'rs are dying,

And I am dead, as dead I well may be,

You'll come and find the place where I am lying

And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

But I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,

And all my grave shall warmer, sweeter be.

And you will bend and tell me that you love me;

And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

O Danny Boy, the stream flows cool and slowly;

And pipes still call and echo 'cross the glen.

Your broken mother sighs and feels so lowly,

For you have not returned to smile again.

So if you've died and crossed the stream before us,

We pray that angels met you on the shore;

And you'll look down, and gently you'll implore us

To live so we may see your smiling face once more,

Once more.

"You Take The Cake!" Valentine

      I have included below four little cupcake templates that teachers and students may work with in order to craft some sweet enticing valentines. Two of the patterns are designed to fold and tuck beneath the top half of the iced cupcake. Therefore, you must paste one icing cap on top of another but leave approximately 1/2 inch of the cupcake top free of glue. 

      The bottom two patterns simple fold in half and open as a typical card. The third card pattern illustrated shows that the lower half of the cupcake card folds in half and on the fourth option, the entire card top and bottom fold in half. 

      When assigning cupcake cards to older students, 3rd - 5th grade, include all of the steps involved with the card craft. This would include the cutting and tracing of the stencils as well. For students younger than second grade, teachers may wish to cut and paste the cards together in advance so that the children will only need to decorate the cards and write their own sentiments.

The Valentine cupcake on the left is trimmed with a red lace doily and the one on the right is cut from fancy paper. Teachers may wish to use this little assignment to emphasize shading while encouraging students to color their icing caps.

Left, the cupcake cards are open to show how these will look when the bottom half of the card is unfolded. Right a close up of the doily used to trim the cupcake Valentine.

Cupcake pattern with a very exaggerated, fluffy icing for young students to decorate.

   In this version of my cupcake Valentine cards, I have decided to decorate the extra fluffy icing with a variety of rhinestones, glitter, textured papers, shading and an oreo cookie.

      This cupcake pattern also requires that an additional fluffy icing top be pasted down to the front side of the card, leaving approximately 1/2 inch of the icing cap unglued at the bottom edge. 

      Below you can see that what the card looks like when it is open. 

      Students love to use all kinds of scrap papers for this project: comics, wallpaper, wrapping paper, fuzzy or furry fabrics, stickers, lace etc... Let their imaginations run wild!

      My third pattern includes a strawberry ready to topple over the side of the large icing cap. I've included both a strawberry and a heart shaped cherry on the pattern sheets for young students to incorporate in their own interpretations of this Valentine project. On the left, I have used a figured scrap paper for the cupcake liner instead of drawing and shading the liner shown on the right. This card craft may be modified according to the abilities of those students you are working with.

General Supply List:

• markers and colored pencils
• construction papers: browns, white, pink, red and green
• decorative Valentine papers
• white school glue
• scissors
• glitter
• a variety of textured papers

On the left, decorative paper was selected for the liner of the cupcake Valentine. I selected construction papers both in a dark, chocolately brown shade and in tan, to mimic caramel, to trace and cut the cupcake tops from. Don't forget to add the seeds to your strawberries with a fine line black permanent marker.

This little Valentine cupcake card is the simplest of them all. It opens from side to side.  It also include a heart shaped cherry on top!

Above, First sheet of two, four cupcake Valentine templates by Kathy Grimm.
 Below, Second sheet of two, four cupcake Valentine templates by Kathy Grimm.

Bakery Crafts & Art Projects for Your Valentine:

• Ceramic Lesson Plans: Cupcakes
• Ceramic Lesson Plans: "All American Berry Pie"

Vintage Cake Valentines: 

"Hello Sugar, You're Sweet Be My Valentine" card

Doll Quotes

“Little girls love dolls. They just don’t love doll clothes. We’ve got four thousand dolls and ain’t one of them got a stitch of clothes on.” Jeff Foxworthy

“Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the Forest that was left out by mistake.” – Pooh’s Little Instruction Book, inspired by A.A. Milne

“Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout “Bang!” George Will

“We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.” F. H. Bradley

“You can buy about four hundred tiny fashion separates that mix and match to create three tasteful outfits. In that way, the doll is incredibly lifelike. Chilling, even.” Chuck Palahniuk

“For two weeks I gambled in green pastures. The dice were my cousins and the dolls were agreeable with nice teeth and no last names” Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls

“Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested – for a while at least. The peoople are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.” Emma Goldman

“Stouter dolls than I might have quailed at being pressed into service by a Hindoo snake-charmer. I cannot say it is a stage of my career that I enjoy remembering, but at least I comfort myself with the thought that I did not behave in any way which would bring disgrace upon my kind.” Hitty, the doll from Dorothy P. Lathrop’s tales

“Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil!” Victor Hugo

“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot ‘do’; they can only be done by.” ― Rumer Godden, The Dolls’ House 

“Somebody’s poisoned the waterhole!” pullstring quotes from Woody in Toy Story

“I have been thinking; our mistress gave us the nice dinner out under the trees to teach us a lesson. She wished us to know that we could have had all the goodies we wished, whenever we wished, if we had behaved ourselves. And our lesson was that we must never take without asking what we could always have for the asking! So let us all remember and try never again to do anything which might cause those who love us any unhappiness!” Raggedy Anne

“Figuring weight for age, all dolls are the same.”  Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls

FALSTAFF: You make fat rascals, Mistress Doll.
DOLL TEARSHEET: I make them! gluttony and diseases make them; I
make them not.
2 Henry IV 2.4.37 (Shakespeare)


“If the person you are talking to doesn’t appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”– Pooh’s Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size” Mark Twain

“I just want you to know that even though you tried to terminate me, revenge is not an idea we promote on my planet.” Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story

“A girl is Innocence playing in the mud, Beauty standing on its head, and Motherhood dragging a doll by the foot” Allen Beck

“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are “Real,” most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are “Real” you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” The Skin Horse speaks with the Velveteen Rabbit

“You know you’ve made it when you’ve been moulded in miniature plastic. But you know what children do with Barbie dolls – it’s a bit scary, actually.” Cate Blanchett

“Some people care too much, I think it’s called love.”– Winnie the Pooh

Mermaid Paper Doll Parts

Mix and match my paper doll parts for creating your next mermaids, merbabies and mermen: Read the Terms of Use before downloading folks!

Aqua mermaid tail, shells, and sand dollar by Kathy Grimm.

Blue mermaid tail, shell and sand dollar by Kathy Grimm

Sepia mermaid tail, shells, and sand dollar by Kathy Grimm

More Mermaid Paper Dolls:

• Mermaid by Renmeleon
• Mermaid from edupics
• Mermaid by Loretta Willis
• Sunken Treasures (example)
• Jada Mermaid Paper Doll
• Marisole Monday: Beneath the Waves
• Mermaid paper doll by Serendipity Sisters