Sunday Jar

I've been very discouraged by how we are spending Sundays at our house, so tonight I decided it was time to do something about it.  After searching Pinterest, the following is a list of things I'm printing out and putting in a Sunday Jar.  I hope it helps to have a Sabbath, not just Sunday.

Please, please, please, add, add, add!

Gospel Game – 10 stepping stones, questions from scriptures, Gospel Pictures, treat at the end of 10 questions

Draw a picture

Paint a picture

Write a card or letter

Make a dessert

Family Game time

Talk a walk

Read family history

Watch a church video

Do an activity from the friend

Read the friend

Visit the temple

Learn about another country

“I am grateful for” picture or mobile….

Use play dough to make a scripture scene

Make puzzles from Friend

Memorize a scripture or article of faith

Play hangman with church words

Don’t Eat the Prophet game

Learn about a general authority

Learn about a temple

Play Book of Mormon game

Lego scriptionary: Write names of scripture heroes, put in jar, build something with legos to represent

Thanksgiving FHE

For FHE last week, we made this cute little turkey and wrote the things that we were grateful on the tail of the turkey.  We sang "Thanks to our Father" and told the story of the 10 lepers.  Then we discussed why it is important to always be grateful for our blessings.  Jocelyn was very into the story and loved making the turkey!

Alma and Amulek

This year we are working on having Paul remember some of the scripture stories.  I used the Book of Mormon scripture reader to tell the story while Jared played Alma and Paul played Amulek. I built a jail with chairs and a blanket in our living room. This, of course, was the highlight when the jail crumbled down around them. I skipped some of the parts that dealt with Zeezrom, but I think (HOPE!) Paul will remember that Amulek listened to Heavenly Father, bore his testimony, and Heavenly Father blessed him for doing it.

A House of Order

It's Spring Cleaning time and while I was making a list of things I wanted to do this scripture came into my head:

D&C 88:119

Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;

So I thought it would be fun to do a family home evening on each of those areas (faith, learning, prayer, order, and glory). And of course since I'm in the spring cleaning mode, I thought we'd start with "a house of order." 

Song: "When we're helping we're Happy". (Children's Songbook p 198)

We read the D&C scripture above. Then we talked about how it's important that we all work together in the house. 

We read Mosiah 4:14-15 and talked about how it's Mom and Dad's job to make sure we are teaching the kids about doing the right and it's the kids' job to help Mom and Dad. 

Talk about family rules and goals. I found this on the LDS website and liked it:

Family Goals	Family Rules
We want to be a loving family.	We will all try to attend any event in which one of our family members is involved to show our support.
We want to be a healthy family.	We will obey the Word of Wisdom.
We want to be active in the Church.	We will all attend sacrament meeting together. We will accept Church callings when asked.
We want to be alert at school and work.	We will always be home by ten o’clock on school nights.
We want to be morally clean.	We will not date until we are sixteen. We will not do anything that will lead to immorality.
We want to develop our individual talents.	We will practice one hour each day.
We want to be kind.	There will be no quarreling in our house.
We want to be together as a family in eternity.	We will have family home evening every week. We will plan to be married in the temple and keep the commandments.

Then for the activity (this is more of a craft but I justified it being a part of FHE) we painted clipboards that we are going to hang up on the wall that will hold our schedules and chore charts I'm printing out.

So the plan is to do another area next week and I hope we can keep this up cause I like having a topic picked for me :)

Lehi's Dream

The other night we were reading about Lehi's Dream, so we decided to do a Family Home Evening about what holding to the rod means.  Jared had a key chain little iron rod that we got at Deseret Book a while ago.  We turned off all the lights, and told Paul we wanted him to get from our bedroom to the living room couch (where I was) by himself.  (We made sure there was nothing for him to trip on .;-) ) Once he got to the couch, Jared had him hold on to "The Iron Rod" and guided him around our dark house, to where I was waiting with an apple.  After he had a bit of apple, we talked about how much easier it was to find mom when he was holding on to the iron rod.  It was simple, but memorable for the boy, and he wanted to have dad guide him around the rest of the night.
P.S. I can't take credit for this, it was all Jared's idea.

Another conference resource

conferencegames.lds.org is another great resource for kids for FHE.  There are coloring pages and online games.  We have been playing the matching game this whole week to reinforce our las weeks FHE.

Getting Ready for Conference

We are using these last few FHE's before conference to prepare!  I found this game today to start teaching her the names of the apostles and prophets.

http://lds.about.com/od/familyhomeeveninggames/a/fhe_apostlecard.htm