Easter

I'm reposting Easter Family Home Evening Ideas over at my personal blog

This week

Easy Passover


Previously:

Spiritual Egg Hunt

Easter Tree

Easter Tomb

Easter Tomb/ Calvary's Hill FHE lesson found here

Use wheat to make a hill/tomb in under a week.

Honesty

We had a little incident at school. The teacher pulled me aside to say that my daughter had stolen drunk another kids juice box. Daughter said she thought it was hers. Teacher asked do you usually have a juice box? Daughter in her naivety says No. Teacher knows kid was lying.


So of course anytime a challenge comes up you do a FHE lesson on it right? After my husband suggested it, I initially balked because I remember an adult telling me once how much she disliked FHE growing up because all the lesson would ever be about is something her or one of her siblings did wrong that week and pointed out to them.

Hopefully we left a big enough gap between incident and lesson, but we did get the guilty child to TEACH the lesson!


Lesson: Honesty

Song: I believe in being Honest #149

Article of Faith: #13.
We focused on the first line... we believe in being honest, true...

What is honesty? What is true? Start discussion.


Object lesson:

I got our 6 year old made a little village out of lego.
We had the green mat, some houses, some lego friends girls, a lego tree.

In her words she told the story of 'The Boy who cried Wolf' -
{I went through the story with her previously in the afternoon}

She had a lego girl go off to the hills and sat under a tree and called to the villagers
'A wolf A wolf '
When the villagers came there was no wolf
{other lego people come and check it out}

The next day the girl went back up to the hill and called out 'a wolf a wolf'
The villagers came again and once again there was no wolf

Later the girl was back out up the hill under the tree when a REAL wolf {lego dog} came along. The girl called out but the villagers did not come because they did not believe the little girl was telling the TRUTH!

The girl was gobbled up by the wolf {tiny lego dog eats girl}


Why is it important to tell the truth?

Sometimes you might tell a lie and not get caught. You might think you go away with it.

BUT eventually you will get caught in your lies and it could:

make you lose friends/family
people will not trust you
might be dangerous (like the wolf)
you will have to tell more lies and it will hurt your spirit

We talked about how sometimes we are frightened to tell the truth so we might lie because we feel we have no other alternative
{dont want to get in trouble with a teacher, if something is broken}

But taking the consequenences is ALWAYS the better way.

If you lie and get found out the teacher/friend/parent learns not to trust you

If you tell the truth the consequence might be hard but that person knows they can trust you to do what is right and tell the truth and you will be better for it.


Establish some positives about Truths

We love it when people in our family are honest
Your parents will always love you even when you make a mistake
honest people make nice friends. Tricky people you should beware of



Closing Song: The Thirteenth Article of Faith #132

Closing Prayer: Child

Treat:

Idea 1:
You can't unbake a cake
Ask children is it possible to Un-bake a cake
{like put it back in a low temperature and reverse the process}
discuss how once a cake is made it is pretty impossible to change.

As with lying or being dishost it is sometimes very hard to undo.

Idea 2:
Using small candies hide them around the house and have children ask questions to where the candies might be hidden in which you TELL THE TRUTH to the questions they ask to help them find the candy. Telling the truth is useful and helps us find our way when people help us.

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?

Love/Valentines

Idea for lesson on Love including Heart Maps and a service and valentines day planning .

Go here  This girl loves to Talk - Love Lesson

Goals and Resolutions

Family Home Evening Lesson
New Year Goals

Opening Song:

Opening Prayer: Child


Lesson

It's never too late to set goals and resolutions.
Because its Summer School Holidays in the southern hemisphere, we are only just now getting back to life and routine here.

So even though late it was fun to do a FHE and set some goals for the year.

I got my children to list things they would like to DO this year

Iceskating
Camping
Rockclimbing
Visit Planetarium
Visit favourite Parks
mentioned a few of their favourite family traditions

We decided that we had enough activities for half a year and will designate one saturday a month to check off the above activities.

Via design mom I heard about these fun questions to ask your children {and keep their replies to look back on over the years}

This year:

Something I want to do
Something I want to read
Somewhere I want to go
something I want to be better at
Something I want

Maybe you can include
spiritual goals, {prayers, scripture reading holding regular FHE}
physical goals {games to play with kids, daily walks together}
Places to go
Mental health/organizational goals {kids helping with chores}



Have fun planning out an awesome year! I find written down goals seem to happen more and better!

Closing Song:

Closing Prayer:

Treat:

Jesus Advent Calendar

Family Home Evening Lesson
Jesus Advent Calendar


Prayer: Child

Song: Once within a lowly stable Childrens Songbook #41

Lesson:

Go here to my personal blog for full instructions Religious Advent Calendar



To make a Jesus Tag/ornament:

Cut pictures from the Ensign Magazine {we borrowed from Grandma's stash}or print some

I just used a glue stick to stick the picture onto regular white copy paper

Cut around leaving a small border of white

Glue onto cardstock. I used what I had on hand - Dark Blue and Gold

Cut again leaving another small border.

Laminate!!!

Cut around lamination, add a bow {12 for $2}by piercing a hole at the top.

Add a string.

Paint some sticks white and use to hang a picture a day for the month of december.

You can talk about what is happening in the picture or add a scripture for extra if desired.


Closing Song: Picture a Christmas Childrens Songbook #50

Closing Prayer: Child


Treat: