My daughter is beginning her toddler years and her personality is really starting to shine through. She has a great sense of humor, finding everyone and everything hysterical! She is pretty even tempered, although at times she does have a tiny temper tantrum when she has to wait for a certain toy or a cookie. I want to approach the next few years prepared. I want to be chock-full of knowledge of manners and skills to provide her. I want her to be well mannered but not hammered down with rules.
Recently I came across a very creative and fitting website. Fishful Thinking, www.fishfulthinking.com, made by Pepperidge Farm, makers of my daughter’s favorite snack, Goldfish! (See previous posting about her love of Goldfish!) Fishful Thinking provides parents with creative and useful resources on using Goldfish, or other similar type snacks, to teach optimistic behaviors and activities. The site is maintained by Dr. Karen Reivich, co-director of the Penn Resiliency Project and a research associate in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
An activity that drew my attention, asks parents to identify an emotion with each color of the rainbow Goldfish. For example, red = anger, blue = happy, green = sad. A child picks a goldfish out of the bag and tells a story of when they felt the emotion. Parents can tweak the activity based on the age and needs. While this activity isn’t so out of the box, it is a creative way to use something familiar and popular among children. Some of the other activities are reminiscent of my childhood – leap frog/fish and Five Things/scavenger hunt.
Fishful Thinking is a great Smart Mom resource! Be a Smart Mom and check it out! Let me know what you think by posting a comment or emailing me at [email protected]
There is a book about teaching children good manners called, “365 Manners Kids Should Know: Games, Activities, and Other Fun Ways to Help Children Learn Etiquette” by Sheryl Eberly. I bought that book a while ago even though I can’t use it for a year or something like that.. but it looks really well written and informational.