Idea for the New Year

We traveled for a cousin's wedding right after Christmas and just got home. Every night was kind of FHE. We did have a specific game night on New Year's Eve. Tim is starting to get into board games and some of my favorite memories of my grandmother are playing card and board games with her. New Year's Eve is also my mother's birthday. We had a game night/birthday party/new year's eve celebration.

There were fancy new year's hats, sparkling cider, and some of Tim's favorite board games.

Now that I'm getting around to thinking about plans for the new year, I found this 

2015 Primary Study Guide.

It breaks down the monthly primary themes into weekly topics, has daily spots to record scripture study, and has suggested verses or passages. 

I definitely want to use this for scripture study with the boys, and I'm debating using it to guide our family home evenings for the year. At least partly. Stay tuned to see what we decide. :-)

Nice Winners

Opening Prayer: Tim

Opening Song: We skipped it this time...

Tim has been having a hard time with Jake being gone so much for work and is becoming very emotional and overreactive. We have found that it is helpful to basically script him responses and then teach him when to use those phrases. 

This week, we talked about winning. The boys like to race each other and Tim inevitably wins and starts shouting "I WIN!". AJ doesn't realize this and thinks he has won and also starts shouting "WIN!" Tim takes offense at this and shouts "NO, AJ! You LOSE!" Things just tend to escalate from there.

We talked about how when we win, we can be a nice winner or a mean winner. Heavenly Father wants us to always be nice, so we should choose to be a nice winner. Nice winners say "Good job! You won second place!" 

Tim recently learned how to play Chutes and Ladders and had been BEGGING to go play it with Grandma. We carted it over to her house and this gave him a chance to practice being a nice winner. 

With a moderate amount of prompting, he did a great job! Maybe in a few weeks we'll talk about still being nice even when you lose, but that is a harder lesson!

Closing Prayer: Grandma was packing to leave on a trip and AJ was crying to go to bed.... It got overlooked.

Idea for Older Children

Home Evening just didn't happen this week. Both boys and I are sick and hubby is out of town. But, a sister from our ward posted in our Relief Society's Facebook page a great idea for Home Evening (although my kiddos are probably a bit too young).

Here is her privacy edited post:

I just wanted to let you know about this neat opportunity tonight! Brother M will be sworn in tonight at 6pm at B City Hall as a new city councilman! I think it would be awesome for him to have some support from our ward family! Our family is attending and we're making it our FHE for tonight (my scouts are wearing their uniforms, too :)).

If you have an 11 Year old Scout or Boy Scout, attending will pass off a requirement for Citizenship in the Community, which is the merit badge they are working on this month.

If you have a Wolf Cub Scout, attending will pass off Requirement 4F.

I do not have a Webelos book to look at, but I bet there are some requirements that this can go towards.

Anyway, I just wanted to pass this along. Hope to see you there!

The Creation

Opening Prayer: Mama

Song: "In the Leafy Treetops"

During our car ride, we talked about how Heavenly Father and Jesus made our world and all the animals. I read the Old Testament Story about The Creation. 

We drove to PetSmart to see some of the animals that Heavenly Father made. 

This was unplanned, but they were having a clearance on fish supplies, and we wound up buying the boys' a betta fish they named "Aura". 

We added a bit to our discussion about how Heavenly Father trusts us to help Him take care of the animals and Earth.

Closing Prayer: Dad

Snacks: Frozen Yogurt from the shop next to PetSmart

Journals

I have long intended to both improve my journaling skills and to build that habit in my boys. This FHE was a way to try to kick start that.

Opening Prayer: Aunt Laura

Opening Song: "Book of Mormon Stories"

We looked through the Gospel Art Book to find pictures and examples of people writing down their stories. We explained that journals are where we write about our lives, the things we do and learn. We talked about how most of our scriptures came from people writing down those things, just like in a journal. Grandma even read part of an entry from her journal.

Then we gave Tim this journal that I had purchased for him several years ago.

He decided that for his first journal entry, he wanted to write about going to the zoo. 

You can see the letters where he wrote "Z-O-O", and then he drew a picture of a red fish he saw.

 Closing Prayer: Mama

Samuel the Lamanite

Sometimes Monday sneaks up on you and any intentions of elaborate plans are thrown out the window in favor of just doing something. :-)

Opening Prayer: Grandpa

Opening Song: verse 7 of "Book of Mormon Stories" about Samuel the Lamanite

We watched the story of Samuel the Lamanite on the Mormon Channel

We threw balled up pieces of paper at Grandpa, similar to how the Nephites shot arrows at Samuel. Then we talked about how Heavenly Father and the Holy Ghost protected him. We allowed Grandpa to use pillows/sheets/a toy bat to protect himself from our paper balls in a similar way.

Closing Prayer: Tim

Taking Turns

The boys had won tickets from our public library for our family to attend an Omaha Storm Chasers' game (our minor league baseball team). The tickets were good for a Sunday or a Monday. We decided to attend on Monday and make it part of Family Home Evening!

Opening Prayer: Dad

Song: "Taking a Turn is Fun to Do" adapted from "Fun to Do"

On the car ride to the stadium, we talked about how when we take turns, everybody gets a chance to do something. We talked about lots of things that we can take turns doing and that we were going to practice that tonight.

We watched how the teams and the individual players took turns batting and running the bases.

We waited our turn in line to buy our snack and then took turnings taking a bit of the Dippin' Dots or sips of our drink.

The have a really fun family area at the stadium with a carousel, playhouse, and inflatables. We (mostly Tim) practiced waiting for his turn to go on the rides.

The boys had a wonderful time. We didn't actually manage a closing prayer, because they were super tired and fell asleep in the car before we thought of it.