I want to help my kids LIVE the basic principles of the gospel, to focus on the teachings of our current prophets and apostles from the previous General Conference and to provide a time for my kids to work on and pass off their Faith In God activities (soon to be Personal Progress also, I can't believe my oldest is almost TWELVE!).
I have to come clean here, I actually had this goal last year, too. And I didn't do it. For some reason I decided I had to have a specific plan for the whole year all at once. Specific like having every lesson planned out including having everything I needed for every single lesson. When you're starting from scratch, that's kind of overwhelming to put together.
So, I decided to start a little more slowly, just one month at a time. I can plan out 4 nights at once. And I did. Yesterday.
Week 1
The first week of the year, before our lesson, we review the goals we've set individually and as a family to see if we need to make any adjustments in our goals, ask for help if it's needed and to just make sure we're on track (or remind us to get back on track). Also, one of our family goals is to do one planned family activity a month so we talk about it and decide together what that'll be (my kids decided on a family game night for this Saturday).
As I mentioned above, my oldest is turning 12 next month and she's working on finishing up her Faith in God. In the Preparing For Young Women section is asks her to study the 13th Article of Faith and so that's what we did last night.
I found an awesome lesson on LDS Living's website.
First, I had one of the kids try and repeat the 13th Article of Faith from memory. Then I read the Elaine S. Dalton quote (although it was way above the heads of all three boys) and we discussed what virtuous meant.
We also watched the video, it's definitely geared towards little kids and mine loved it.
We finished up our discussion talking about how we can do good to all men and what sort of things are "virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy."
The ending was their favorite, in fact, my kids declared it the most fun family night EVER. I sent them on a scavenger hunt. I told them that when you seek after good things, you will most often find them and handed them the first clue. It only took a few minutes to walk around my house depositing clues and they had a blast.
Week 2
Last fall, we made a tree for our wall and I printed out apostle leaves for our kids to either color or write on during General Conference (we're doing flowers for this April, I'm pretty excited). They worked out really well and have kept conference in our minds as we see our tree in the hall all day. I'm explaining because we use those leaves for our family nights a few times a month. Next week we're going to talk about temples.
Here's a sideways picture of our tree (it's in a longer hallway, hard to get a straight on pic).
It's actually a little funny because what my kids wrote wasn't always exactly the main point, but we still try to focus on what they felt was the most important. I'm pretty sure the leaf for this week was made during President Monson's Saturday morning opening talk when he mentioned the new temples being built. So, it's not really the main topic, but that doesn't matter. Temples are a great topic anytime!
First, we read a quote from the actual conference talk and talk about who gave the talk (we've been memorizing the apostles) and then I'll use a lesson I have or one I've found that goes along with our topic. I found a great lesson at my new favorite family home evening blog, Parenting in the Latter-days.
Weeks 3 & 4
For the last two weeks of the month, we're going to focus on Easter and I'm sticking with Parenting in the Latter-days for both lessons. First, we'll do the Symbols of Easter and then we'll focus on the Atonement (I put parts of this lesson in my Sharing Time ideas for week 2).
I'm excited to try out some new lessons and to more purposefully hold our family nights. If you have any favorite lessons, websites or helps, I'd love to hear about them!!
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