I Have a Family that Loves Me

Recently my husband and I thought it was a good idea to teach our oldest (I can say that now that I have two children :) what his last name one. We thought it would be a good idea in case he ever got lost somewhere or something like that. In the process, we started to teach him that mom and dad have the same last name as well as one set of his grandparents. We then taught him that his other set of grandparents had another last name. This is pretty simple for an older child to understand, but for a two year old it can get a bit confusing. We decided a FHE lesson on families might help explain things to him.

First we drew a picture of a family. We showed him a mommy and daddy and some brothers and sisters. We named off these people explaining their relationships to each other (brother, sister, daughter, son etc). We then went around our family and named everyone and talked about their relationship to each other. This talk can of course be adjusted to fit any type of family. If my son was older I would probably have gone into more detail about how some families have step parents etc. But this would probably have confused him out of his mind at the age of 2.

After talking about family member relationships we talked about how families love each other. We then went around and told everyone that we loved them. We would have given hugs too except my toddler is anti-hugs much of the time :)

I Have a Family that Loves Me

Resources for Enhancing your FHE Lesson

If you are looking for a way to enhance your lesson or activity I found this resource through The Friend website.

They have an activities archive where it has a list of different coloring pages, activity pages, flannel board art, hidden pictures, etc. They are listed according to topic and have quite a few. You do have to be careful if you think your activity might be a two page activity. I have found some that are missing the second page. Sometimes by looking at the link though, you can figure out the year and month that the activity was originally included in The Friend and get the second page.

You can get to the archive by going directly to http://www.friend.lds.org/ and on the right hand side you'll see the link or you can click on this link here to go straight to it.

Below the link to the activities archive is an archive of Friend stories by topic. This way if you need story for your child for a specific topic you can look one up there.

Resources for Enhancing your FHE Lesson

Reinforce Lessons from Church

I know this isn't anything new or revolutionary, but we've enjoyed using the handouts my daughter (almost 2.5) brings home from Nursery as the basis for our lesson on Monday night.

I downloaded a copy of the nursery manual here so I look up the lesson based on the handout. I follow the parts of the lesson plan that will work well for our family. I try to ask her questions and allow her to show us what she colored. She doesn't have a huge vocabulary, but I think the repetition and having us help her learn some of the new words is helpful. Sometimes we color her handouts some more after the lesson.

"I remind you that repetition is a law of learning."

President Gordon B. Hinckley

Reinforce Lessons from Church

Reverence During Prayers

This is one of those lessons that comes about because a need is seen. Our boys seriously need to work on being reverent during prayers.

Goal: Being reverent during prayers

Song: Reverently, Quietly

Lesson: Start the lesson by whispering. See if you can get your kids to whisper with you. Tell them that when we are quiet we are better able to hear the whisperings of the Holy Spirit. When we pray, the Holy Ghost can answer our prayers, but we have to listen. Remind your children that when we pray, we want to be respectful to Heavenly Father and Jesus, and that means being reverent. Have your children repeat the word "reverence." Part of being reverent during prayers is being silent and still.

Activity: Practice being silent and still. Have a family member say a short prayer while the other family members practice. Let everyone have a turn praying.

Reverence During Prayers

Holy Ghost

We got this idea out of June's edition of the Friend magazine.

What you do is you blindfold your child. You then tell him/her to walk to a certain location. You don't interfere at all (for younger children, you might want to be close by and get between the child and any sharp corners).

Once your child has reached the goal, bring him/her back to the starting position, keeping the blind fold on. This time, have a member of the family gently tell him/her where to go. We of course had to have our two older children and Mommy and Daddy do it. When it was Daddy's turn, I put up lots of obstacles (like chairs) in his way to make it more interesting :)

Afterward, you talk about the experience. Ask your children if it was easier to find their way with the help or without. Liken the voice to the Holy Ghost.

You can also combine this with a story about listening to the Holy Ghost. Share your own experiences or read a story from the Friend. June's issue has a good story to go along with this. But of course, your own story will be much more interesting to your children.

Holy Ghost