FHE: John Taylor

This week's topic is inspired by the "Portrait of a Prophet" in the back cover of the friend magazine.  I read through this summary of his life to prep, and then I gave a brief sketch of his life, highlighting the cool story about his watch.

FHE: Emergency Preparedness

I decided to talk about Emergency Preparedness stuff (mostly food storage) on my family blog this month, and thought maybe I should have a lesson on it for the kids too.

I pretty much followed this lesson exactly.

Our practice phone conversations with the "911 operator" (me) were hilarious, yet have convinced me that maybe just telling them to go to a neighbor's is the way to go...

FHE: Plan of Salvation, Revisited

I decided this year that the 3rd Monday of the month would be a lesson on the same things we have been talking about in Young Women's that month.  This month's topic is "The Plan of Salvation".

I remembered our lesson being very successful last year, so I'm just doing the same thing again with minor changes.  My son loves to color now, so he and I (and my 2-year old daughter "helped") colored the pages after lunch as preparation.  Also, this time, I made the destinations be a progression to getting ready for bed as well.  We started in the family room with Pre-existence, went to the kitchen for treats for Earth (our bodies allow us to experience physical things like eating).  Then we went to the bottom of the stairs to talk about Spirit Prison/Paradise.  At the top of the stairs was judgement and they changed into their pajamas (they got new bodies like the resurrection).  Then I had 3 different rooms represent the 3 degrees of glory.  We brushed teeth in the "Telestial Kingdom" which was lit only with a nightlight.  Then we went into the "Terrestrial Kingdom", my son's room, which was lit with a small lamp, and read our scriptures.  Then we finally went to the "Celestial Kingdom", my daughter's room, which was fully lit and the sun was coming in through the window.  There we had a closing song, and read several stories for bed.

They both really liked it- probably the first FHE I can remember my 2-year-old daughter wanting more (she asked if we could go to the next picture a few times before she realized we were done.)  Travelling around the house is a big hit :)

FHE: Love At Home

Because of Valentine's this week, we obviously had to talk about love :)

I talked about how I want our home to be a place where we all feel love.  We talked about how we can show love for each other (kindness, following the rules, not hurting, saying sorry) and things we should avoid so that everyone feels safe and loved at home (no yelling, no hitting, no unkind names)

Then we did the same activity from last year, but I was wiser and had all the hearts cut out and they had already written on them: "I love daddy because..." etc.  We just all brainstormed and wrote a list of things for each person on one heart, rather than listing one on a bunch of hearts, for ease. Then we hung them (and some blank hearts) on our wall and had red velvet cupcakes.

I have a hard time getting my kids to calm down before the lesson starts.

Anyone have ideas?

I think I may start opening each lesson with 1 silly song and 1 reverent song and see how that goes over.

FHE: Brigham Young

Now that I'm on year 2 for regular FHE, I'm starting to look for ways to help me with ideas for FHE topics.  This year, The Friend magazine has "A Portrait of a Prophet" on the inside back cover every month, and I decided to let that be our topic every 1st Monday of the month.  January was Joseph Smith, who we recently talked about in December, near his birthday, so we didn't do it last month, but this month is Brigham Young.

There are a lot of FHE lessons on Brigham Young out there.  I printed out a coloring page from this one.  They also have a link to a fun butter-churning activity, but I think my kids are still too young for that.  I might also save it for a pioneer FHE lesson.  I'm so doing this one when my kids are older.  I like this one as well.  As written, it's best for older kids, but could be adapted for younger ones.

Being in Utah, I think it would be fun to talk about Brigham Young at Ensign Peak in Salt Lake, but that will be when my kids are at least old enough to hike it.  (it's pretty easy.  Maybe everyone is at least 4?) We could also take a tour of the Lion House in downtown Salt Lake City.

Anyway, what I actually did was just read some of the facts about Brigham Young from this Deseret Book lesson while my kids colored this. We made sure to mention that the university where my husband works is named after Brigham Young and that we probably wouldn't even live in Utah if it weren't for him guiding the saints here.

FHE: Temples

I've been reading through the new Young Women's personal progress booklet and I set it down and my 2-year-old daughter started flipping through it and pointing to pictures she knew- "It's Jesus!",  "The Temple!" etc.  I asked her if she knew what the temple was for, and she said, "no," so I decided to change my FHE topic to be on temples this week.

We have a big picture of the Salt Lake Temple in our family room, and I have the special Temple Ensign issue that has lots of pictures in it that I let the kids flip through while we talked about temples- what they are for.  We just talked about how we go there to make covenants and the perform ordinances for ourselves and people who didn't get to have them while on Earth.  We talked about how you have to be 12 to go in, and you have to have a temple recommend, which we showed them.

We did all these while looking through that Temple magazine and pointing out all the temples, but that was too long.  I should have gone through and marked particular pages- a couple temples from around the world, the baptismal font, celestial room, and the page for kids that talks about what you need to do to prepare to go to the temple.  (Though I can see that being a whole FHE on its own.)

After, I had planned to look through our wedding photo album all together, but the kids were done, so we just had treats.

FHE: Tithing

At the prodding of my younger sister, I decided to do a lesson on tithing.  We called it "The Parable of the M&Ms".  (you could also use jelly beans or skittles, etc)

(I copied their idea here minus the banks because my kids are so young we still don't give them money, but maybe when they're older I'd do that)

I brought out the mega Costco bag of M&Ms that we use to refill the "potty treat" cup in the bathroom and started throwing my head back and eating them very deliberately.  Of course the kids were immediately on top of me, trying to stick their hands in the bag too.  "oh, you want some of these?"  (yesssss) "ok, well (pulling out two ziploc bags with 100 M&Ms inside) I will give you these, if you only give me 10 back"  It was an easy decision for them to make and my 4-year-old enjoyed showing off his ability to count to 10 :)  While they ate some M&Ms I told them about how everything we have we owe to our Heavenly Father- bodies, Earth, abilities, everything, and in return, he just wants us to keep his commandments.  One of his commandments is to pay our tithing.  I explained what it meant and then we talked about what tithing money is used for- churches, temples, supplies, etc. and daddy's salary (he works at BYU).  We also talked about how we get even more blessings for paying our salary- so it's more like trading in 10 measly M&Ms and getting back a giant Snickers bar.

I thought it went over very well.  And it was convenient to have the treat built in.