A lesson on table manners

This is a project that has been on my agenda for months.  I read an article in a magazine about a mom who taught her kids table manners by rewarding them for good manners during dinner time.  Their reward was a dinner at a fancy restaurant, which I thought would be fun for the kids because we hardly ever go out to eat and they LOVE restaurants.  I mentioned the idea to Ellie and she couldn't wait to start!  But wait she did, because mommy is a procrastinator :)

For the most part, my kids have been pretty good at dinner time.  Recently though, they seemed to have forgotten all manners and it was starting to drive me crazy.  To the point that one night I just had enough and threw whatever I was holding down on the table and left the room (luckily it wasn't Violet I was holding.  I think it was a piece of bread).  Finally I pulled myself together and spent an afternoon making this wonderful chart with Ellie.

I drew the lines and labeled the top, and Ellie decorated it.  We brainstormed a list of rules for the dinner table, and here is what we came up with:

No screaming - use your normal voice
Stay in your chair
Say "excuse me" if you need to get up
No talking with your mouth full
Say "please" and "thank you"
No complaining.
You can have a peanut butter sandwich if you don't like dinner
No feet on the table
No toys at the table
Take small bites
Try one bite of everything
No chewing on your hair

I learned from my favorite elementary school teacher that when you brainstorm, you don't edit or criticize, you just write down all the ideas.  I think I will be going through and editing some of these rules later, but most of them are keepers.  The most important to me are staying in their chairs, no complaining, and try at least one bite of everything.  If they follow these rules during dinner, they get to draw a happy face in the next square.  Do you see the darker squares (every 7th square)?  Each of those squares earn them a prize.  These are the prizes in the order they earn them:

1. Fancy candlelit dinner at home
2. They pick any dessert for a night
3. They pick the dinner for a night and help make it
4. Dinner at a restaurant of his/her choosing

So far this is working beautifully.  The kids think it is so fun and really don't want to lose their happy face each night.  It's wonderful to not hear, "Yucky!!  Mommy, I don't want to eat this, it's yucky!" at dinner every time I serve anything but mac & cheese, spaghetti, or pizza.  The prizes they earn are also easy for us to provide, and I am redeeming all our discover card points for gift cards to restaurants.  It will take at least 4 weeks for them to earn restaurant time, so hopefully we'll get the gift cards by then :)  Now the question is, will these table manners remain after the chart is full?