Sharing Time - July Week 3

I'm so very excited about this week, there are so many great ideas and it is such a powerful topic.  As I read through the Sharing Time Outline, which talks about blessings, I was excited, but it felt like something was missing.

I wanted to do a quick overview of the Priesthood.  What is it?  Where does it come from?  And best/most of all, why is it so very important?

Then I found this AMAZING video on youtube.  It's a Mormon Ad by Elder Robert D. Hales and it's powerful.  I love the idea of letting the kids hear the gospel taught from one of their modern day prophets.  His testimony and teaching of the priesthood are wonderful and we'll be using this video for sure during our lesson this Sunday.

While watching the video I'll ask the kids to listen for ways the priesthood blesses their lives.  Once it's over, we'll start our matching game. 

Before primary starts, I'll either hide some cute little cut-out type men (that I found on Katie's Blogness, free to download...my favorite!) around the room or I'll have them ready up front in a jar for kids to pick out.  I'll also have picture that match up with each of the "men" on a board ready for the kids to match.

After getting their cut-out guy, I'll ask the kids to choose which picture it goes along with, and, if appropriate, ask them to tell me about a time they've gotten to experience that priesthood blessing.  Atlhough, I just had a better idea that would allow any child to participate in this part, I can tell them that they can either tell about their own experience OR they can call on someone else to tell about their experience.  They always love to be the "leader" and call on others.

If the six little men isn't quite enough for you, you could always make up your own (even just on little slips of paper if you're as artistic as I am).  I found a great list of all the different priesthood ordinances that bless our lives in this Young Women lesson on lds dot org.  There are 14 different items that cover everything from Baby Blessing to Temple Marriages (and everything you could possibly think of in between).

I thought about finding stories to go along with each type of blessing, but I really think it will be more meaningful to hear first hand stories from the children and leaders in our primary. 

After making our way through as many blessings as we have time for, I'll close with a quote and my testimony.  While reading through some ideas on Sofia's Primary Ideas, I came across a quote by President Faust.  She has a much longer quote along with a link to the talk it comes from, but just this little part really hit me.

"If, through our priesthood blessings, we could perceive only a small part of the person God intends us to be, we would lose our fear and never doubt again."

This is a very simple lesson, but in hindsight, it seems that those that are the most simple are often the most powerful.

Have a wonderful week,
Leah

July Family Home Evening Plan - Week 3

Week 3
I love choosing a family night that goes along with either the monthly primary theme or youth theme. 

For me, it's more fun to do one that goes along with the youth theme because I don't already know what it is (I'm in primary right now) and it helps me to talk more with my tweenager about the gospel and what she's learning in Young Womens.

But, I thought some of you might not have a youth aged child or you might be involved in the youth program and have more fun connecting with your primary aged kids, so I'll put an idea on here for both (although, if you want more FHE ideas that go along with primary, you can check out my Sharing Time posts, many of them center around fantastic FHE ideas I've found that you could use at home!).

PRIMARY
This month in primary we're learning about our families.  We're learning about why it's important to have them, what kinds of things help them grow closer together and closer to Christ, how the priesthood blesses families and about how temples are so very central to the family.  Do you look at that list and thing, holy cow, that's a lot of topics?!  Yeah, me too.

So, let's go another direction (although if you feel your family needs one of those, please by all means, use one of those wonderful gospel topics as a base for your family night!), this month we are also studying the Family Proclamation and there is a wonderful family night about it on A Year of FHE.  It is simple and has some very fun handouts.  Fantastic!

YOUTH
The youth are spending the month talking about Ordinances and Covenants.  I found an FHE on Parenting in the Latter days that would work fantastically for younger children and can be adapted easily to work better with older kids.

She has you tell about Captain Moroni and then fill in your own Title of Liberty.  Instead of, or in addition to, using the standards she has listed, you could use the standards for From the Strength of Youth with your older children.

Good luck!
Leah

2 Months Old

Well, it was almost two months ago that I first posted about my garden.

My tiny, little almost bare garden.

It's not so bare anymore.  Although, there are a few blank spots where I tried something that didn't quite grow.  Or where I've left room for growing things to grow a little more (or a lot with regards to those popping pumpkins and winding watermelons).

I think my favorite thing, second only to the eating the yummy fruit and vegetables themselves, are the beautiful blossoms. 

This is on my bush beans. 

Bee-utiful!

Love from Garden-ville,
Leah

Buying Curriculum

I've finally come to that point again.  You know, the one where I've done all the planning and re-arranging I'm going to let myself do.  All that's left is to purchase next years curriculum.

I really don't like this part.  The buying part.  The clicking the purchase button part (I buy almost all of my curriculum online...on Amazon for the most part, I LOVE Amazon). 

I'm not sure what it is, but I really don't like spending money.  Is that strange? 

It's super stressful and I sort of avoid it by finding other things to do (like write about it).

Even after I've budgeted and planned and have everything ready to go.  Nuts, I know.

Now, getting the boxes is fun.  We love it when our boxes start showing up.  The kids and I all do little happy, clappy dances as we run for a pair of scissors to cut off the tape, open the boxes and pull all our bright, shiny new books out. 

I also happen to love organizing them in our school room.  Arranging it so everyone has their own space on our shelves, sorting through and putting different subjects together and standing back to admire to organization perfection.

Just because that perfection doesn't seem to last past the first day of school doesn't mean I can't keeping dreaming that someday it might.  Right?

Okay, I've got to get clicking ... or maybe I should go fold my laundry first.  It does need to be done, really.

Love from Stressville,
Leah

Sharing Time - July Week 2

This whole month is all about the family and how to make them stronger. 

Awesome. 

After everything is said and done, as primary leaders, we only have so much influence over our children.  They come every week (or not quite, or not at all) to hear our lessons and feel our love, but they are with their families the whole rest of the week. 

Which is a good thing. 

It's an even better thing if we can influence their families to either begin or continue learning the gospel together. 

So for this week, I've chosen a few fun family home evening lessons that teach about both prayer and scripture study to use for Sharing Time.  After going through different parts of both lessons and talking about the importance of exercising these two principles as a family, I'll ask the kids about other ways they can learn gospel as a family.

Even though I'm looking for someone to say Family Home Evening, there are a lot of good ideas and I'll let them brainstorm on it for a minute or two. 

After they get FHE, I'll tell them that I got our WHOLE Sharing Time from a few different family home evening lessons I found online.  Now that they know how to do the games/object lessons/stories, they can do them for their own families so they can learn and grow together!

Prayer
I found two lessons on prayer I like.  They both teach about the principle of prayer differently and they're both fairly short (easier for mass copying).  They're also both from Chocolate on my Cranium.

The first is a little more basic and might be best for Junior Primary.  It goes over where and how to pray.  I love the story of the rameumpton and thought it might be fun to tell the kids I'm going to show them how to pray and then copy what the Zoramites did.  After finishing I could then ask the kids if I did it right.  Then we could go over what Alma and Amulek taught about praying anywhere in our hearts.

The second talks more about having meaningful prayer as a family.  I LOVE the bridge object lesson.  I also really like how it talks about different things we can pray about.  I can get stuck in a rut with my prayers and forget how many different ways I can express thanks and ask for blessings and this is perfect to remedy that problem!

After finishing up, I'll make sure we've talked about how prayer can strengthen our families (and not just by praying together, but praying FOR each other).

Scripture Study
I'll start this section with a quote by David M. McConkie, "Immerse yourself in the scriptures.  We cannot love what we do not know."  I LOVE this quote.  A lot.

I found a fun, short FHE on Homemaking Honeys that's got some really great ideas.  They start with the basics (which is what we should all do) by asking the kids what the 4 books of scripture are?  I thought it'd be fun to make it into a game and expanding just a bit by seeing who can figure out which description goes with which book.  Then match individual books of scripture (like 1st Nephi to the Book of Mormon) and a few prophets to each book. 

This isn't a download and print lesson like the others, so I made my own.  I used the lesson from Homemaking Honeys as the base and added the game for the FHE print out (if you do it two sided it's only 2 pages!) and then I made all the information on the four books of scripture a little bigger to work better for sharing time.  Click on the links below to download the pdf's from google docs.

Scripture FHE
Scripture Sharing Time Game

After playing the matching game, ask the kids to tell you how studying the scriptures can bring you closer together as a family.

Testimony Challenge
After talking about how Sharing Time is really a few Family Home Evening lessons (see above), challenge the kids to go home and teach them to their families!

On Vacation

I'm on vacation right now, visiting my family.  I only get to see them about once a year, which is not nearly enough.

We are having so much fun, cousins are re-connecting, well, connected...they were best friends within minutes of us arriving last week.  It might seem strange, but my favorite part has been sitting around talking, just being together.

My point is that I don't have nearly as much time as I thought.  Or, rather, I don't want to take time away from being with my family to write new posts. 

I'd planned to keep on keeping on, figuring I'd have plenty of time.

After being here for a few days, I've changed my mind and decided to take a short break.  Not too long though, I'll be back to posting about "life, the universe and everything" next week. 

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Leah

July Family Home Evening Plan - Weeks 1 & 2

I've thought about switching from doing a monthly plan to posting every week about our family night plans.  Or maybe, posting after we've done our family night so I can tell you how it actually went. 

I've thought about it a couple of times and each time I think about it I decide that I really like the monthly plan.  It gives me a framework to, well, work from.  Having a whole month planned out actually helps me feel like I'm being flexible because I can choose which topic I want to work on each week (I don't necessarily do them in the order I post them). 

Plus, I'm doing them much more consistently now.  It's so great to be able to open up this page every week and know I've already got multiple ideas just sitting here, waiting for me. 

Before I get started, here's a quick review of my family home evening purpose. First and foremost, our family home evenings are a place for us to be together, helping each other grow. To meet this purpose, I try to plan family home evening's that helps my daughter meet some of her Personal Progress requirements and my son pass off some of his Cub Scout achievements. In addition to this, we focus on teachings found in the most recent General Conference talks whenever possible.

Week 1
We always spend the first part of the first Monday talking about and checking progress on our 2013 goals. If you haven't made any yet, it's never too late! The kids love to set their own goals, see what everyone else chooses and setting a few for our family as a whole. It's a really great experience that we all love.

Last month I talked about some really great family night ideas I'd found that center around our country, which are absolutely perfect for this time of year.  Once you click over, scroll down to Week 4 and you'll find links to each family night on: the Star Spangled Banner, Patriotism, Pledge of Allegiance and the Preamble to the US Constitution.  We'll be doing the Patriotism lesson for our pre-fourth activity.

Week 2
This is my second follow up lesson from last month and is called Hunting for the Good in Others.  It's another file folder family night I'm finally starting to use.

Last month we talked about working on replacing bad feelings in our home with good feelings by treating each other kinder. 

To expound on that theme, this month we'll talk about how we can choose to see the good in everyone.  More than that, that there is something unique about each of us! 

We'll talk about how negative comments can weaken us, but positive ones build us up.  Then we'll tell a story about some big game hunters who learned about the beauty of all God's animals while on a hunting trip in Africa.

It'll be fun, quick and will hopefully keep everyone thinking about how we each affect those around us.

Weeks 3 & 4
Okay, I'm on vacation right now, visiting my family and I'm having too much fun. 

In fact, I'm having so much fun, I don't seem to have time for much of anything else, so I'm going to stop feeling stressed about it and just enjoy my family while I'm here.

What does that mean?  It means I'm going to post my last two family home evening ideas next week, after I'm back home.  It means I won't be posting much (if at all) for the next week. 

But, please check back next week for more fun!!!

Thanks so much for all your kind thoughts,
Leah