Prayer

Sacrament Meeting was all about prayer today.

It was an excellent meeting. I felt it would be appropriate to post another lesson on Prayer. I have already posted a lesson on prayer on this blog. It is all about the language of prayer.

Click here if you want to go to it.

Locations For and Types of Prayer

Ask your family:

Where do we pray? Let everyone offer ideas of places to pray.

Ask the family to turn to Alma 34: 19-27 and read it aloud.

Where does Amulek tell us to pray? Give some suggestions such as "Could you pray in an elevator?" "Could you pray in the car?" Get the family to relate the scripture to our day.

How often does Amulek tell us to pray?

"We may pray to Him any time. No special equipment is needed. We don't even need to charge batteries or pay a monthly service fee." -Elder Russell M. Nelson, Ensign, May 2003, 7

Use the handout Here to teach the types of prayer. (I know that these puzzles are so simple I'm not sure if puzzle is the right term for them)

Give each member of the family one of the "puzzles" of the different types of prayer. As they put their puzzle together have them tell the family what type of prayer is being shown in the picture.

Take a moment to talk as a family about what is appropriate to occur during different prayers, and what is not.

Close with your testimony of what prayer means to you.

Okay, I also found this CUTE FHE about a Prayer Train on Sugardoodle. My son is SO into trains that I had to put a link to it! HAVE FUN! Prayer Train FHE by Melanie Day

Straw in the Manger

One activity my family discovered last year is "Prepearing the Manger for the Baby Jesus" Click here for the story. All you need is something to represent the manger, slips of paper with everyone's name on it, and a hat.

This is a great way to think more about Jesus this holiday season!

Thanksgiving

This FHE is really just a bunch of Thanksgiving stories and activities for you to choose from. So there some links, and you can choose what will be the best for your family!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Click HERE for Scholastic.com, First Thanksgiving activites

Click HERE for fun "First Thanksgiving" activities and ideas.

"Thanksgiving Surprise" Nov. 06 Friend

"The First Thanksgiving in Utah" Nov. 2004 Friend

Gratitude

My Cousin gave me this idea. In her preschool blog, she suggested that for the month of November you can make a family gratitude journal. We dubbed ours our "Thanksgiving Thankful Book".

The idea is that each night of the month...we started ours yesterday...everyone in the family adds something they are thankful for in the journal.

The catch is that there can be no repeats! This allows for the typical family, food and home entries, but also requires that you dig a bit deeper too in finding new things each day!

(Gideon is in a world of hurt, because he has already said he is thankful for trains!)

Our family has decided to keep the journal for a few years, (till the paper runs out) and make it a family tradition!

General Conference

I am really excited about this online book club my sister told me about.

It goes over one General Conference talk a week. Then in the comments section you can write what you felt about each talk. She posts a new talk each Sunday, and you have all week to read and listen to it. I am excited because I always start out after conference with the goal to read it all before the next one, and always run out of steam part way through.

I am going to try it. If you are interested click the button that says "General Conference Book Club" on the right of the screen!

Trying something a bit different...

So as many of you heard, we are trying something a bit different in our FHE's.


Sister Lifferth First Councellor in the Primary General Presidency said this about teaching our children reverence:

"Begin early and have reasonable expecations" (click quote for entire talk)

We are simplifying our FHE's to make our expectations more reasonable. Before we start we tell the kids that we are reading a story and ask them to try to sit still and listen because we will ask questions at the end.

Tonight we pulled out the friend and read the article "Making Friends, A Family in Tune" (scroll down to page 20)

It was a really cute article about how important the music of the church is for two children. It also talks about how they would play "Name That Tune" with their family. After we asked questions we also decided we would play "Name That Tune". I played the beginning notes for some of the primary songs that I knew the kids know. It was cute! Maddie won the game when she guessed "Feliz Cumpleaños" in two notes!

Spinning Plates

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I feel terrible I didn't get this published till today. My Husband wrote out this lesson on Sunday after I begged him to. (being called to primary I missed the combined meeting with the Stake Presidency.) Then life got crazy on Monday and I didn't sit down and finish it up.

BUT in the true spirit of this lesson, I am not going to spend time feeling guilty about it, I am simply going to do it now. I have a FEW less plates going on at the moment than I did on Monday.

Lesson:


(Show the video...by clicking on the above picture)


In church today (4/26/09) the stake presidency spoke about simplifying our lives. The analogy was given about plate spinners. Our lives are like the plate spinners and the activities that take up our time are the plates.


Go through the family and discuss what each individual's plates are. Talk about which ones are "urgent" and which ones are "the most important." Examples: (Urgent) the test coming up tomorrow, or the book report that was due yesterday that they gave you an extra day on, (The Most Important) reading your scriptures, attending the temple.


The Urgent things have to get done. But sometimes they crowd out the things that are the most important.


Now discuss the things that can be cut out with the proper planning. We also discussed how we can share our plates with others lightening our load. My daughter came up with the idea that if we all pick up a little bit around the house Mommy has one less plate that she has to keep spinning. (I thought that was pretty cool that she came up with that with only a little bit of "direction" from Daddy)

Testify that Heavenly Father wants us to find joy in our lives, and as we take steps to simplify our lives we will be able to find that joy.