FHE: I Am Thankful

For FHE tonight I thought we'd kick off the month of November with a lesson on gratitude. I used part of the Behold Your Little Ones Lesson 15. Click here to go to it. The lesson was a success, so I thought I'd share it with you:

Opening Song
Prayer

Start off talking about how Heavenly Father has given us blessings. He gave us our bodies, our families, plants and animals, the scriptures, etc. We show him we love him by saying "thank you." We also show our friends and family we love them by saying "thank you" when they do something for us.

Show the picture of the Jesus and the ten lepers (in the nursery manual or the gospel art kit) and hold up your scriptures. Summarize the story in the scriptures about the ten lepers (refer to the nursery manual for help summarizing the story in a short and simple way).

Ask "How many of the ten were thankful? Do you think Jesus was sad that only one was thankful?"

Explain how this month we will be celebrating Thanksgiving, a special day where we remember all our blessings. I got this book at the library this week and thought it would be perfect for FHE:

Activity:

I prepared a box with a lid with a slot cut out. I told everyone this was our "Thankful Box." Everyday until Thanksgiving we are going to write something down we're thankful for and put it in our box. We started off tonight by each putting in 3 things. It was very cute to hear Noah's. They were flowers, people, and prayer. We guessed Clara's- mommy, gluten-free food, and clean diapers.

After we did that, I let the kids decorate our box.

And here is our Thankful Box. I think it will do us all a lot of good (especially me) to focus on our blessings everyday and not just on Thanksgiving Day.

Daddy also shared the story of the Pilgrims and the Mayflower. He told it in such a way that kept the rapt attention of a five year old. It was very cute. FYI- The Charlie Brown telling of the Pilgrims is actually very historically accurate, in case you're interested. We have it, but it's packed in a box.

This was a really fun FHE. Miracle of miracles, the kids were really good, Clara especially, and they seemed to actually learn something.

TIPS

Tonight to help both the kids sit down, we asked Noah to be an example for Clara and we asked Clara to sit down like Noah. It actually worked, except we had to remind Clara to sit down about every 3 seconds. At least she didn't scream- that's a plus!