Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Family Home Evening Challenge

We've been getting pretty good at having Family Home Evening every week but I've gotten quite boring and it's turning into a chore. I'm in the primary presidency so months I do sharing time I just reteach the lesson for FHE. I got tired of me doing all the talking and demanding the kids sit down and listen so I decided to do something fun but still gospel-centered. I'll share my idea if you share yours. Well, it doesn't have to be yours, but please share a FHE idea via comment or post!!!
The Creation
We had our neighbors over and created yummy, miniature earths. We read from Genesis 1 about the creation and stopped at the appropriate points to add the element mentioned. Here's what we used:
Blue jello for the water
Cardstock for the day/night wheel (tape brad to bowl then poke through cardstock)
Crushed oreos for dry land (graham crackers good for lighter color)
Coconut dyed green for grass

Flower sprinkles
tree cut out
Animal crackers
swedish fish (poke into jello)
star stickers and cut-out sun -forgot moon :(
male and female figurines


Some of Weston's fish are headless. He had a hard time waiting for his treat.


They were pleased with their creations.

And they saw every thing that they had made, and, behold, it was very good.

4 comments:

Megan Dougherty said...

Lately we have been using stories out of the friend as our lessons. I will either choose a shorter one (since my oldest is 2 1/2) or we will act one out.
We had a pretty fun activity the other night. It is usually too cold to go out at night so we got a stuffed soccer ball and kicked it, rolled it and threw it around the living room.

debs said...

FHE is very individual - what works for one family might not work for another. My advice is JUST DO IT! It may seem hard, especially when your children are still quite little, but the habit will be established. And eventually your oldest child will be eager to teach (and take over if he/she is anything like Julie) his/her own lessons. And every once in a while you will teach a lesson that is magic - the spirit is there, the children are all listening and participating, and it will all be worth it!

Shayla said...

What a fun activity!

For FHE we've decided to have the same lesson that Brighton just had in nursery the day before. You know...reinforcement! He never really pays attention (I doubt he does in nursery either), but we'll keep at it. The nursery manual is called "Behold Your Little Ones" and is really great.

Robin B said...

I'm Shayla's cousin by marriage

We have been using the Nursery Manual for our Family home evenings too. But we are having our 8 year old and 5 year help teach the lessons out of it.

We created a family home evening wheel to show whose turn it was to teach the lesson, pick a song, make a treat,plan a game. I am enjoying it right now because now I don't have to come up with all the ideas my self.

This website is also pretty good resource
http://www.ldssplash.com/fhe_ideas.htm
it has the lessons and visuals that you can download.