FHE - scripture power version 2

This second version of a scripture discussion is what we did for our FHE yesterday. The discussions that I had assigned to my parents and my sister seemed a bit out of reach for our family right now.

We started by singing Scripture Power.
We laid out the 4 Scripture Readers and talked about what is in each book of scripture - the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine & Covenants.

We each said what our favorite scripture story is. Adam's is the Helaman's stripling warriors and mine is Jesus Christ blessing the children, both in the Book of Mormon. SM likes David and Goliath, and RG likes Baby Jesus.

My parents had sent their watercolor paintings of their favorite scripture stories and a letter talking about what they're doing for their personal and family scripture study - we read the letter and discussed their pictures. My mom's favorite story is the same as mine, and Dad's is the vision of the Tree of Life in the Book of Mormon.

For our pictures of the favorite scripture stories, I printed a couple of things off the Friend LDS Coloring Pages Index and we colored.
We closed by singing Search, Ponder, and Pray.

FHE - scripture power version 1

For the Family Home Evening in a Box gift exchange, this is what I sent to one of my sisters and her husband, and I also sent it to my parents.

MUSIC
Sing the song Scripture Power - this link has an mp3 with the music and a pdf with the sheet music and words. This song is not in the regular Primary music book - it was an extra that came with the Sharing Time outline a couple of years ago.

LESSON
Each person share your favorite scripture story or prophet – why this means something to you and how you try to apply those specific lessons in your life.

Read and discuss the following scriptures:
2 Nephi 32:3
D&C 84:85
Mosiah 1:7
1 Nephi 15:24

Discuss the following:
How can you each improve your personal scripture study?
How can you improve your scripture study as a couple?
Set at least one goal for each of these to work on over the next month. Write it in your journal, and assess in one month.

MORE MUSIC
Sing the songs Search, Ponder, and Pray in the Primary songbook and The Iron Rod in the hymnal.

ACTIVITY
Use watercolors to paint a picture of your favorite scripture story.

FHE - helping the missionaries

For Family Home Evening this week, we decided to support the missionaries. We took our lesson from the manual for SM's Primary class (CTR 4) titled "I can be a missionary." We sang "I hope they call me on a mission" and talked about the ways to be a missionary in the lesson outline. SM especially liked the stand up/sit down designation. Adam also printed off a coloring page (which I can't find to link to) of a picture of a child giving a gift to an elderly person.

For the activity, we baked cookies - white chocolate chip and macadamia nut - to send to our friends Elder Mark and Elder Loebs, who were serving here in Vicksburg last spring/summer. The girls drew pictures and I wrote letters to each of them. This did carry over to Tuesday because the recipe I used didn't make very many cookies, so I made more this morning.

FHE - I am a child of God

For our Christmas exchange this year in my family (my brothers and sisters), we decided to do the theme of "Family Home Evening in a box." We got our FHE plan from my brother Eric, and it was from the "I am a child of God" lesson in the Nursery manual.

We sang the entire song of I am a child of God, (it's one of the favorite bedtime songs around here).
We read, and the girls repeated, Psalms 82:6.
We talked about Moses learning from Heavenly Father that he is a child of God - Moses 1:4. I used the picture of Moses and the burning bush in the Gospel Art book.
We went around the room saying that each person is a child of God.
We did the activity verse in the manual.

For the activity, there were coffee filters included in our package that we folded up and cut into paper snowflakes, because everyone is different and Heavenly Father loves us that way. Adam and I had to do all the cutting because even with it being thin paper, it was still too hard for the girls to cut through all the layers. But that was okay. Once we unfolded the first couple of snowflakes for the girls to see what we were doing, they got all excited and were perpetually hovering, saying, "Cut another one!" Then we taped them up on our back door windows.

a series for this blog - Family Home Evening

In my mind, part of making a house into a home - a place you want to be - is more than aesthetic. It's not just how the place looks. It's how it feels. Part of being a Domestic Goddess to create the atmosphere that you want. One of the best ways that I've found to create peace in a home is to spend time together as a family, and have Family Home Evening consistently (FHE).

One of our family goals for 2011 is to do better with FHE - we've just been singing a couple of songs, reading a story from the Friend magazine, and calling it good. Five minutes does not constitute Family Home Evening. I'm planning to put together lessons/activities from the Sharing Time outline for the year which is online here, and the Faith in God materials which are also online but not pulling up for me right now. I'll post our lessons and activities on Tuesdays after we do them, and of course everyone else is welcome to share their ideas as well. Please do! I need all the help I can get! My stuff will be pretty simple - my kids are 4, 3, and 8 months.

If you are not Mormon: Family Home Evening is an official program of the LDS Church started in the 1960s. Monday is designated as family night - no church activities at any level are allowed to be scheduled that day and even the temples are closed. I realize that some of the doctrines are not the same, but as fellow Christians, I hope that you can get something out of the descriptions of lessons and activities that you can use in your own home to create spiritual peace and harmony among your family.