FHE: Bearing Each Other's Burdens

I basically copied this lesson making it more of a "be helpful" emphasis, rather than an atonement/sin emphasis.  I made sure to only write burdens my kids could relate to on the cans.  The kids all really wanted to try carrying the burdens upstairs by themselves.  My 3-year old and 5-year old were able to carry all 10 cans by themselves, though quite difficult for the 3-year old.  However, I think they still understood that it's easier if we all help out.

It was fun and a great analogy.  We'll see if I can bring it up during the week to really get it to stick.  I could see doing this again with older kids and making it more about the burden of sin (which I didn't focus on, since young kids can't really sin...)

FHE: Forgiveness

I just read this story from the March 2014 Friend and we talked about it while the kids ate their treats.  I think it went over pretty well, but I'm still waiting for them to ACT more kindly...

FHE: Baptism

I decided to try letting my 5-year-old be in charge of FHE tonight.  He looked through the April Friend magazine that we got today and chose pg 7 to talk about.  It's about baptism.  So I told them all about being baptized, and we even practiced getting baptized with daddy in the family room :)  We talked about the symbolism of wearing white, and what promises are made and how it relates to the sacrament.  We also talked about getting the gift of the Holy Ghost and why we want it.

Then, my son said he wanted to make play a memory game.  We made it by printing off this sheet twice, and cutting all the pictures apart.  (you could also just google "lds bingo" and do the same thing with one of those bingo cards.)  My 5 and 3-year olds both really loved it!  I'm sure we'll do it again for an activity.

FHE: Daniel and the Lion's Den

Tonight, I read chapter 43- "Daniel and the Lion's Den" in the LDS Old Testament Stories book (though I've just now discovered that there is also a movie I could have shown...) and then we acted it out a couple of times.  We made a little "den" in the corner and the king sat on a certain chair as the throne, etc.  I even had a tutu to put on the lion's face as a mane, but the kids found it annoying, so we didn't end up using it.

It was short and sweet and rather fun.  I'll do something like this again, for sure. :)

PS when I said we were going to act out a story, my 3-year-old said, "can I be the giant?"  referencing when we did this for the story of David and Goliath in January. Yay!  She remembered!

FHE: Child Driven from Gospel Art Book

I had the kids look through the pictures in the Gospel Art Book and pick one they wanted to hear the story behind.  They chose the one with Moses and the snake on the staff when the people wouldn't look to be healed.  Probably would have been better if we didn't wing the story, but it turned out ok.

FHE: Gordon B. Hinckley

We sang the "Latter Day Prophets" song for opening hymn, while cycling through all the pictures of the prophets we've talked about so far.

I read through the back inside cover of the Friend magazine and then talked about the "6 Be's".  I printed out this worksheet I made, cut the 6 Be's apart, and taped them around the room for the kids to find.  We talked about each one as they found them and talked about how we could do that "Be".  We made a goal to focus on one "Be" each day of the week.

FHE: All Choices Have Consequences

I feel like I've been having a hard time with my 3-year-old lately, and I hoped this lesson might particularly help her.

I basically talked about how we were all given the gift of agency as part of Jesus Christ's plan, which means we all have the ability to choose for ourself how we will behave.  BUT all choices have consequences.  Good choices have good consequences and bad choices have bad consequences.  Then I listed a bunch of choices on paper, cut them out and had the kids take turn pulling them out of a bag.  I asked the kids to tell me what they thought the consequence would be and if it was a good choice or not.

Here are some I used:

Playing outside in the winter without a coat.
Never putting toys away when we're done playing with them.
Helping mommy the first time she asked.
Waiting so long to use the bathroom that there's not enough time to get to the toilet.
Sharing our toys with friends or family.
Waking up too early in the morning or staying up too late.
Never doing school work.
Only eating cookies.
Cleaning up after ourselves without being asked.
Always being kind to others.
Reading our scriptures every day.

I added a few more that I thought of from "real world examples" of actual occurrences from the day as well.

Then we talked about what to do if you need to make a choice and you don't know which choice is good or bad.  (ask for advice and/or pray)

This could be a good opportunity to talk about "good, better, best" but that could also be an FHE topic of it's own, I think.

The kids were really engaged and participated well in the discussion.  It's amazing what drawing mysterious things from a paper sack will do for maintaining attention!