Toothpaste Tubes and Kind Words

One of the things I love about my association with the Power of Moms, is how many wonderful women I get introduced to, and meet. One of my favorites from last spring's Las Vegas retreat is Shannon. I love to check in with her blog every once in a while--there is always something inspirational to find there. She's an amazing lady. I copied the following idea from her recently for a Family Home Evening lesson.

My children were definitely intrigued during the opening prayer and song with the paper plates and tube of toothpastes set at each spot around the table. Even Mike was giving me questioning glances as to what exactly I was going to do.

Much to Drew's dismay (he thinks he has the corner on the market when it comes to picking FHE songs), I requested, "Kindness Begins with Me" for the opening song. One of my absolute favorites! Even though it is sung almost every morning before we leave for school, the simple words are always worth repeating.

After the prayer, the children were invited to take their places at the kitchen table and draw any design they wished on their paper plate with the tube of toothpaste.

They would have spent forever had I let them, but fortunately their toothpaste tubes ran out and we could move on.

After they each displayed their design, the object lesson came in...

Each child was given straws, spoons, toothpicks, etc. and asked to put all the toothpaste they used back into the tubes.

Some of my children are quite confident in their abilities and Luke was convinced it'd be quite easy and he immediately began attempting the task.

I let them give it a good honest effort,

Until the frustration became too much for me to tolerate.

The object lesson was complete, and it was time for the explanation.

The Words We Speak...

Once they've been spoken, they can't be taken back. I mean, not that we'd ever have to encourage our children to use kind words around here. Not that we ever have issues of meanness, unkindness and rudeness, but I thought it would be a nice idea to give the lesson nonetheless. 

Disclaimer: Those last two sentences are a JOKE. We need the lesson just as much, if not more, than anyone else does.

We read the story The Power of Kind Words from the March 2011 Friend Magazine and Speaking Kind Words from the January 1997 Friend Magazine. We then came up with possible scenarios that we could choose nice, kind words in, rather than unkind and mean ones.

I'd like to say our Family Home Evening lesson sunk in immediately and we've heard no unkind words since. Unfortunately, that isn't the case... but as Mike and I often say, "Hopefully one day, some of these things will sink in."

And so we keep on trying.