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What we are doing for hospitality training

a We are cooking 2 meals for friends and family this week.
a Maiden has written and sent an encouraging note to someone dear to us in our church family.
a Sassafras will be sending her special handwriting paper as an encouragement to another adult we know.
a Both girls take turns setting the table at dinner time and with clean up. We use simple etiquette for our place settings. [Here is a great article on how to set a table.] We take the time and effort to put food in serving dishes/platters with proper serving silverware and we use cloth napkins. Both of the girls like to sometimes fold the napkins in different and interesting ways [We have a book at home that shows a few different napkin folds.]
a Maiden will play hostess to my parents in two weeks. She must send out an invitation (that she makes), plan the menu, do the shopping for the meal, make place cards, set the table, cook, serve and clean up.
a We take time to discuss proper manners- like how to greet people, how to introduce people to each other and how to hold a conversation with people of different ages. At meals we discuss proper table manners.
a Maiden had a friend over night earlier this week and we discussed how to show our friends hospitality. [Side note: I wish I had her take notes when we discussed this and had her file them in her notebook.] Afterwards we discussed how it went and she evaluated herself on how she felt she showed hospitality. I plan to do this with Sassafras the next time she has a friend over.
a We will, as a family, discuss the difference between entertaining and hospitality and spend time looking up and discussing Bible verses on hospitality. The girls will then make lists of different ways they have shown hospitality to others- this will be a running list that we will continually add to and will be put in their notebooks.
a Maiden keeps a meal plan of different dinners she would like to make and host.
a We plan on starting recipe boxes soon. Sassafras will learn how to write out a recipe card and Maiden will learn a more formal way of keeping track of her meal plans.
As you can see, learning hospitality reflects many other studies also- such as handwriting, social skills, home keeping, and manners.
I find that teaching hospitality is a daily study with many teachable moments interspersed throughout our day. I’m sure there are many other things we do to teach our daughters hospitality but the above are specific projects we are working on to specifically promote learning hospitality.

A wonderful book on this subject....

1:16 PM, 2007-Sep-28 .. Posted by patintenn

is "Simple Hospitality" written by Jane Jarrell. I have just loved reading and learning from this book.

I did a few post on it as I was reading it. Look here for the start of them
http://www.homesteadblogger.com/inhishands/45098/

I loved reading your list of things to do and learn. I have seen there are a few things that I want to add to our list.

Thanks for the wonderful post on this.
Pat

I put this one in too...

12:19 PM, 2007-Oct-1 .. Posted by FruitfulVineof7SoFar

it just seemed to go hand-in-hand with the other one. :))
Hospitality is so important for our daughters to know and in preparation for being a lovely wife. They grow up so fast; we must prepare them now!

I have a book we will be using, The Hospitality Commands.

The 18th Homesteading Carnival-Color Edition!
http://www.homesteadblogger.com/jacquedixon/71483

Blessings!
-Jacque