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

A year of FHE

I thought this was awesome. It's a year of FHE lessons that correspond to what was talked about in primary that week! http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8492

Real meaning of Christmas

I'm not sure any of our kids are old enough to have the issue of focusing on Santa, but I wanted to remember this idea for later. http://www.latter-dayhomeschooling.com/2010/12/symbols-of-christmas.html

The Christmas Story

For Family Home Evening on Monday, we took a nativity set and put all the pieces on the floor next to the table where we would be setting it up.

We talked Jocelyn through the Christmas story and as we did it, she found the pieces of the set that related to that part of the story and set them up for us.

Not only did she think it was so fun that she wanted to do it 4 times (and everyday since), but she is learning the story really well now.

Song: When Joseph Went to Bethlehem

Safety

So Tyson had his CPR training at work yesterday so he thought it would be a good idea to talk about safety for FHE.

Song: Families are Forever

Activity: Safety coloring pages

Lesson: We showed these pictures of a fireman in full gear and police men to show Afton that they were good people and if she needs help to ask them.

Then while she finished coloring Tyson and I talked about what he learned at work. Mostly CPR.

That was pretty much it. It was short and very simple but Afton liked the pictures and the coloring :)

Tithing

Since Tithing Settlements are coming up I thought we would do this lesson on none other than...tithing. I know it's a pretty hard concept for little kids and Im not sure Afton even got anything out of it (except the fake money), but you know what they say, repetition is the key.

Song: Keep the Commandments

Activity: Coloring page here. Even me and Tyson did one and it was really fun.

Lesson: I had printed fake money, here, and I counted out Ten and and gave them to Tyson. I asked him to give me one back and he said "no". Then I said "but I gave you the money, can I just have one back you will still have nine." Afton was enthralled at this point to see Daddy not sharing. In the end he gave me one. Then I did the same thing with Afton and she said no at first but then gave me one.

The point is this: God is the reason we have our money so we should show Him we are thankful by giving Him a little back to help his other children.

Notes:

• I didn't talk about 10% because I knew that would be way over her head.
• I could have used candy too but Afton was in love with the play money so it worked great.
• This entire lesson, including the activity all lasts about 10 min. total. short, sweet, and to the point

Scripture: 3 Nephi 24: 8- Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say: Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

Treats: brownies, yum

The Sabbath Day Holy

So now that we have a regular schedule I'm hoping I can keep up FHE at home. Not that I had a good excuse but now I have no excuse whatsoever. So tonight we are going to be talking about keeping the sabbath day holy because for us, it's hard to determine what a two-year-old should and shouldn't do on the Sabbath. I know what we should and shouldn't do, but can we take Afton to the park on Sunday? What clothes should she wear so she still looks nice but doesn't get her pretty dress dirty? Anyway, I did some research and this is what I came up with:

Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy

Song: Saturday is a Special Day

Activity: Berenstain Bears Dress up Paper dolls. This is so cute. It has all four bears with wardrobes for different activities like everyday, working, snow day, church clothes. Print out a few wardrobes and try them all on, then talk about which clothes are good for sports, which clothes are good for working, which clothes are good for church.

Lesson: Read the friend article, Doing Good on the Sabbath Day.

What can we do on the Sabbath so we can show Heavenly Father we love Him? What shouldn't we do?

Sabbath Day Activity Ideas

Game: Put a smiley face and a frowny face on the floor. Write and cut up some ideas things to do and not to do on the Sabbath day, Use the link above for some ideas. Have the kids pick one out of a bowl, read it, and put it either on the smile or the frown.

Treat: Microwave s'mores. yum

General Conference Nursery Packet

Hola!  Just found this nursery packet again and thought you might be interested.  There's also packets for Junior and Senior Primary.

http://scriptures4kids.com/directory/download/general-conference/april-2011-nursery-general-conference-packet.html

Sweet Website

All of you may have already seen this on Pinterest, (who else is addicted?) but I thought I'd share here too.

This FHE blog is awesome!: A Year of FHE

She literally has a year of full family home evening plans complete with treat ideas, handouts, games, and lots of free printables. I grabbed pictures of just a few to make this post look more interesting.

Enjoy!

General Conference Buckets

I saw this idea at Brown Paper Packages.

I thought it could be a really cool idea for a family home evening lesson too. Basically you get some buckets (she found her tin buckets in the $1 section of Target) and put keywords that you want the kids to listen for. Fill them with candy and when they hear the word they get a treat from that bucket.

I was thinking that for an individual Family Home Evening you could pick a story from The Friend and pick words from that story. Instead of treats I would fill the bucket with something that we do as a family for the activity. For example, I might put different colored sidewalk chalk in each bucket and our activity would be to go draw outside together. It could be fun to be creative!

The Creation

Shayla left this in the comments. I thought I'd repost it here.

"So...I am going to do this "Days of creation" as a series of FHE's for Jocelyn. I just thought you guys might be interested. There are a few different ones for different ages. I am sticking with the 2-3 age range, since Jocelyn's barely 3. I really like the Day 1 activity for when the Lord created light. Just thought I'd pass it on!

Just scroll down to Day 1 of creation: light and then look at the other days. Looks fun!

http://www.icanteachmychild.com/p/2-3-years.html"

Family History

Tonight we started a new project to help us with our family history goals.  We are so lucky to have both the Brown family history and Golding family history books so we started at the beginning. I chose a few stories that I thought Paul might be interested in, and read them out loud to him.  He had a notebook and markers, and drew pictures of the stories I was telling.  When he finished his picture, I wrote one sentence describing what he drew. I think for right now we will just do direct ancestors, instead of all ancestors in the book, but maybe someday we'll get to them all.

Interesting side note: Butch Cassidy offered to buy Samuel Brown's fast horse, and Samuel turned him down.  Butch Cassidy laughed and walked away, but then a few days later the horse turned up missing.  It was never seen again. We thought that was an cool story!

Record Keeping

“Get a notebook, my young folks, a journal that will last through all time, and maybe the angels may quote from it for eternity,”

President Spencer W. Kimball.

This week for relief society we are going to be talking about record keeping so I thought it would be a good topic for us for FHE since I haven't been doing too well. This seems like a hard one to teach little kids so I'm hoping to find some good things. What I find, I'll post here.

One thing I thought would be good for those who don't like to write cause they just don't know what to write about are journal prompts. So I searched around for some good ones. Obviously there are a lot more out there but here are a few:

For school age kids here, a great one for creative teens here,

For Adults here, My favorite so far here, thought provoking ones here, 99 Powerful Questions to Ask to Turbocharge Your Life here.

Also, there is a blog called Sunday Scribblings that posts a journal prompt every saturday so you can write about it every Sunday. so cool.

For Little kids here, Or have then draw a picture about their day or have them tell you about their day and you write it down.

Joseph Fielding Smith—“Every important event in our lives should be placed in a record, by us individually. … If you have accomplished something worth while during the day, put it down; it may be of use to posterity.” (Doctrines of Salvation, 2:204.)

Gordon B. Hinckley—“May I suggest that you write, that you keep journals, that you express your thoughts on paper. … You will bless the lives of many—your families and others—now and in the years to come.” (Ensign, November 1984, page 91.)

There are lots of good lessons you could center around great talks. Here are a few Ideas:

So so many good talks about journal keeping here.

Great one on helping your kids start a journal here.

Story of keeping journals from the friend here. Another from the friend here

Another few ideas I thought about were this:

• If you have a hard time writing every day, make it a Sunday afternoon activity.
• Make a gratitude journal. Spend time every day or week to write down the things you are grateful for.
• Online journaling
• Blogging
• Scrapbooking
• Photo Books
• etc.

I'll have more info I think after our Relief Society activity on Thursday. Then I'll post more ideas and hopefully one will work for you and your kids.

Picture it!

Tonight for family home evening we went outside with Paul's sidewalk chalk and we drew a picture of Noah's ark. After I drew the boat, I had him draw Noah and some of the animals that he thought would be on a boat. As we were drawing, we prompted him to tell the story of Noah. He did surprisingly well, and he really liked it. Obviously this can be adapted to most of the scripture stories. And of course, it can't be freezing outside!