FHE ideas and tips

No Lesson today but some tips I thought I would share.

Most people say they have trouble making FHE with kids last longer than a few minutes.

When I share that our FHE can often go for hours people are surprised.

So Here are some tips I've used over the years to lengthen out FHE to more than a few minutes.


:: Journal Writing
Use the first few minutes of FHE to write in journals. (I did this more when I had little children) The girls would draw a picture of anything that happened in the last week in their journals. Then I would write the words above for them. I found this helped me as I was now keeping atleast a weekly update of what they were getting up to.

:: Scripture Hero/Story
This is a new to us this year idea. I was helping in Primary and they were holding up a picture of Adam and Eve and asking who it was. I was shocked when neither my 3 or 6 year old answered! They KNOW THAT!. But then I thought about it, and realized we had moved beyond holding up pictures and sharing the bible stories as our older kids grew and moved into more subject orientated FHE. Having 12 years-3 years old in the family we have to make sure we cover both younger and older learners.

Each week the younger children will hold up a picture from the gospel art kit and tell us about it, ask us questions on who is this? What is this story?

::Whiteboard
We have a fairly large whiteboard that we use often. Whiteboard can be used for pictionary, drawing out the lessons, games, for the little ones to scribble on while we focus on the older ones, or for older children to be scribes {give them something to do}

::Song App
We have the Childrens Sing Along Songbook App for our Ipad. It has most of the childrens songs with the words and a bouncy ball when to sing the words. It also has several photos to go with the songs. When we sing we use the app and our younger child slides the pictures for us while we sing. It makes it fun and they want to sing for a long time! My darling Husband sometimes connects the Ipad to our TV to make it LARGE.

::Dinner
Monday Night is our Fancy Dinner Night. I try to cook a better dinner on Mondays, with sides and with dessert. We set the table with a table cloth and try to make it look nice. We start our FHE before Dinner. We open with prayer and sing Love at Home while all holding hands around the table. This is the opening of FHE for us. Once dishes are cleared we go straight into FHE. It helps extend the length and idea of FHE to our kids and they know that Monday night is family night from about 5:30pm-7pm

::Articles of Faith
We printed and laminated each Article of Faith on a separate piece of paper. The girls take turns choosing an article of faith to hold up, read out, make us guess

:: Games
Some weeks the lessons might be short, or some weeks they just seem to want to keep going so we keep a few easy quick games around to play after FHE lesson is over and after dessert. Uno, Jenga, Boggle etc.

::Testimony
We have a shy girl or two so we take time having turns at practicing our testimonies.


Do you have any Family Home Evening Tips to Share?