FHE: Conference Prep

Since it's general conference this weekend, I wanted to give the kids a heads-up about what will be happening and who we will be privileged to hear from.  We built a fort in the family room and had FHE there today.

We happen to be reading about King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon right now, so I mentioned him and how when he spoke to the people and they turned their tents to him (hence the fort) it was like general conference, but now we get to watch on TV in our own home.

We watched the apostle song.  And talked about what kinds of quiet activities we could do during conference so mommy and daddy can listen.

I found this cute President Monson Scavenger Hunt that might be a fun FHE as well.  I'll probably wait and do it in Spring when my kids are a bit older.

As for this weekend...
I might have my kids play Conference Bingo, but they are probably too young still (4 and 2).  My plan is to cover each picture up with a candy and if they hear one of the topics, they get to take the candy off and eat it.

I'm planning to do something like these activity bags, but I'll put these Apostle Cards in them so when each apostle speaks, I'll read the info about them and then they can do the activity while we listen.

Anyone else have any great conference ideas for kids?  I found a lot of good ideas here and here too.

FHE: Liahona

There were a lot of great ideas online for young kids, like here, here, here, and here, but they all have one main similar element- let the kids find some kind of treat and then compare the Liahona to the Holy Ghost, meaning, it is our equivalent Liahona.

So, here is what we did:

I hid a treat somewhere in the family room, (or you could do outside for older kids), and told the kids that there is a treat hiding somewhere and they have to find it.  I made sure it was too hard to find.

Then when they gave up, I talked about Nephi and his family in the wilderness (we've been reading about it in the Book of Mormon Stories) and how they needed direction to know where to go and remind them that they found the Liahona.  (showed pictures from the Gospel Art Book on pages 68 and 71).

I told them briefly about how it worked- one needs to be righteous and obedient for the Liahona to guide them.  (It would be fun to make your own Liahona to hold, maybe paint a styrofoam ball, but I didn't bother this time.)  I printed out this Liahona image and pretended to get instructions from it and then I gave clues about where the treat was hidden and what it looked like, etc until they found it.  Once they found the treat, while they ate it, I asked them if we have a Liahona to guide us today.  They didn't know and so I talked about the Holy Ghost and how just like the Liahona, it guides us when we are obedient and righteous.

FHE: Where does food come from?

I was really sick this week- stomach bug and a cold (and pregnant) and didn't plan anything.  My husband took the kids out to dinner while I slept at home (was still sleeping...) and kind of had an impromptu lesson about where our food comes from that we eat.

Now when we pray at dinner, the kids often throw in "and thank you for cows" or whatever animal we are eating that night.  It's kind of funny yet sweet.  My son asked me out of the blue one time, "Mom?  What animal do potatoes come from?"

FHE: Brass Plates

I recently decided that we should abandon reading out of The Book of Mormon with the kids, and go back to the illustrated version, because it just seemed like they weren't getting very much out of it, and my 2-year old might actually understand better with the pictures.  (my 4-year old did, perhaps glean nuggets but...)  So, even though we had made it to 2 Ne in the other, we started over in Book of Mormon Stories.

There is a lot of mention of plates in the first part because it starts off telling where The Book of Mormon comes from and then the second story is about Nephi and his brothers going back to Jerusalem to get the brass plates from Laban.  I thought it might be fun to try and make those feel more real and talk about what they are and why records would need to be kept on metal, instead of paper.

All I did was fold a piece of aluminum foil in half twice and give a "sheet" to everyone with a toothpick to "write" with.  While we talked about why the records were kept on metal, we all "carved" pictures and words into our "plate".

I also showed them some pictures from the Gospel Art Book where plates are shown, and a brief 2-sentence summary of what is going on in each pictures.  Pictures #73, #86, and #92.  (making sure to mention that Joseph did not actually translate The Book of Mormon as depicted in that last picture).

I was going to make a book out of them at the end, but my 2-year old decided to rip hers to bits after drawing on it.  We also talked a bit about how the bible was kept (Monks spent their life copying them by hand to preserve them) and I was surprised that my 4-year old knew about illuminated bibles.  (or that they had pictures in them)

I thought it went pretty well :)

FHE: Death

My grandmother died recently and so my whole family attended her funeral last week.  I thought this might be a fitting opportunity to talk about death with my children.

I made a paper-bag puppet that kind of looked like "gi-gi" (as we call her) and I made the analogy of my hand being her spirit and the bag being her body which gets left on Earth.  I thought about making a sock puppet for my hand to be the spirit, but I didn't go that far.

We talked a bit about the pre-existence- how we lived with Heavenly Father as spirits there, and then we got our body.  i.e. our spirits "moved into" our bodies and they dwell there now, on Earth.  We talked about how everyone dies and that means our spirit leaves our body to go be with Heavenly Father again.  We reminded them of Easter and Jesus' death and resurrection and mentioned that we will all be resurrected again one day when Christ comes again to the Earth.

My 2-year old really just wanted to try out the puppet, but I think it was good for my 4-year old.

FHE: Prayer Reverance

My kids have been having a hard time staying reverent during prayers and so I thought I would focus a lesson just on being reverent during prayers- as opposed to general reverence.

I made the print-out boy from this site and called him "reverent Rex".  We started by having him do things like wave hello, jump, wink, blink, sit, etc. while the kids copied him and then we used him as an example of how to be reverent during a prayer.  We all practiced a couple of times

update: all week long before a prayer we would say, "now, remember what reverent Rex does during a prayer" and they were both MUCH more reverent this week.  It was awesome!

FHE: Prophets

This week is president Monson's birthday, and were we not already having another birthday this week, I might have made cupcakes for it...  Nevertheless, I thought we'd have another lesson on Prophets.

This was very simple.  I just printed out a picture of our prophet for my kids to color and while they colored, we talked about what a prophet is, who is our current one, and a little bit about other prophets they might know.

I was so proud that my almost 4-year-old son knew about Daniel and Adam.  The cutest was when he was trying to get us to guess Adam and described him as, "wearing green all the time and helping things to grow".  Adorable!