Tattle Monsters FHE

Hello everyone!  

It's been awhile since we posted a fun family home evening and I wanted to share a quick one we did tonight that my kids enjoyed.

First off, I have to say...I take absolutely NO credit for any of these great ideas :)  I found the idea for these adorable Tattle Monsters at Giggles Galore.  Then I found the Tattle Monster poem and the printable of the difference between Tattling and Reporting at Teachers Pay Teachers.

If you haven't guessed yet, we had our FHE on tattling :)  This is something we really have a problem with in our family.  I felt like it needed to be addressed because I felt like my kids have been genuinely confused when it came to tattling.  They often get in trouble for tattling, but the older ones are also often asked to watch the others and let me know if they are being naughty.  It's kind of a grey area I think and something I have been wanting to talk about with them for awhile.

To prep for tonight I made these adorable little Tattle Monsters!

All I did was spray paint two empty Kleenex boxes, wait for them to dry, and then cover the front and top with polka dots.  I made my polka dots with paint and a large pencil eraser.  After the paint was all dry I cut a strip of white computer paper to look like teeth and then glued it to the opening.  Then I simply cut up an empty egg carton, colored in the black pupils, and stuck the eyes on toothpicks and our monsters were ready to go!

We were lucky enough to have some of our cute cousins over to join us, so we set the kids down and we quickly went through the differences between tattling or responding.  I LOVE this printable!!!  It was easy for the kids to understand and really helped me explain something I haven't been able to on my own ;)

We used some real-life scenarios and asked the kids if they were examples of tattling or reporting.  I felt like my kids had a much better grasp of what qualified as tattling and why we want to avoid that as much as possible :)

Then I pulled out our Tattle Monsters and this darling printable I found online.  I explained that from now on, if you feel the need to tattle, you get to sit down, write your tattle down on a piece of paper and feed it to the Tattle Monster.

I wasn't sure how much the kids got out of the lesson since we had friends here, but later on Skylar came running into my rooms saying, "Mooooooom...."  I know this usually prefaces a tattle so I sweetly said in response, "Is this something for the Tattle Monster?"  She got a sheepish grin on her face, and with a quick "never mind, mommy!" was on her way to rejoin her brother and sister playing.

Success!!

A small success, but we will take it!!

Hopefully I will be able to be consistent about making the kids use the Tattle Monster.  I think it will make them aware of their habit of tattling and hopefully help us start to change some patterns.

Thank you SO much for stopping by today, this week we are doing some fun Apple Activities and lots more, so come on back! :)

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