From left to right, your place setting should include the following: a napkin, one fork, one plate, one knife, one spoon and one glass or cup.
Much ado is made about napkin folding, but that sort of presentation is unnecessary at a casual table. Simply fold the napkin in half and place the fork, tines up, on top of it at the far left of your place setting. (Tines are the points on the fork.) Restaurants do wonderful things with napkin folding. For more information on how to make creative folds, you may consider reading more on entertaining by Martha Stewart.
To the right of your fork should be a dinner plate or the room necessary to place a dinner plate. If you are having soup or salad before your main course, the soup bowl or salad plate should be placed on top of the dinner plate. Many restaurants place what is called a “charger plate” here. It is there for decoration only and is always removed before the main course arrives.
Immediately to the right of your plate should be the butter knife with its blade facing the dinner plate. In the event you may be having steak for dinner, you should place the steak knife to the immediate right of the dinner plate, blade facing the plate, and then place your butter knife to the right of that with its blade facing the steak knife. Restaurants will generally place the butter knife across the bread plate which is a plate not commonly used at the family table. As for steak knives, they are usually delivered to the table along with the steak.
To the right of the knife or knives goes the teaspoon. At a casual family dinner, the teaspoon may be used for dessert, coffee or even in the often frustrating spaghetti roundup. If your dinner guests will be having both coffee and dessert, you might want to include two teaspoons in each place setting or simply bring out the spoons when coffee and dessert are served. If you’ll be serving a soup before your main course, you should include the larger soup spoon to the right of your teaspoons. Don’t have soup spoons? Just use a teaspoon. It is unlikely the children will mind.