FHE: Work

We had a fun FHE lesson this last week on Work, and I thought I'd post about. First of all, the reason I chose this as the topic was I have been struggling getting Noah to do his jobs everyday. They're not big jobs in the slightest, but I might as well have been asking him to eat slugs. He acted absolutely tortured, as I'm sure most kids do when their parents make them do jobs. So, I wanted to use FHE as an opportunity to teach him why we work and why it's so important.

I didn't have any fabulous ideas for a lesson, so I checked out a good resource for FHE lessons: LDS Splash! to see if they had anything, and they did! They had two versions: one for younger kids and another for teens. The main part of the lesson was teaching the hymn "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel," and it had fun visual aids to help kids learn the song. Click here so you can see the full lesson and print out the visual aids. I made the lesson to fit our family, as I'm sure you would too. Here's what I did:

Opening song: "When we're helping we're happy"
Prayer:------

What is work? Dad and I talked to Noah about work. We asked questions like, Does Daddy work? What does he do? Does he work hard? Why does he work? (at the end of the discussion I had him tell Daddy "Thank you" for working so hard). We asked the same questions about me. Then we talked about when Noah works by obeying Mom and Dad, helping them, etc.

Why do we work? We talked about how Heavenly Father has commanded us to work, and that when we work we feel good, especially when our work blesses others.

We all have work. We talked about how we all have work to do, and that it is important for each of us to do our work. If one of us doesn't do our work it affects everyone else. For example, if Noah doesn't do his jobs and help Mommy, then Mommy has to do it on top of everything else she does, so she'll get very tired. This idea seemed to turn a light bulb on in his head.

Song: "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel"
This was really fun. Noah participated better than I thought he would. I think he liked the pictures provided on LDS Splash!

Noah's Job Chart
In preparation for the lesson, I made a very simple job chart for Noah. It's basically a calendar with empty squares. Every day that he does his jobs, he gets a sticker and a fish point (something I'll explain later). At the end of the week, if he's done his jobs everyday, he'll get a quarter for his money jar.

Activity: Noah's Jobs
Noah has 5 jobs everyday: Put dishes in the sink after meals, brush teeth, make bed, get dressed, and help Mom. They're pretty basic, but he still feels like he's accomplishing something when he does them. He knows that's what his jobs are already, but I wanted to get them more ingrained in his head. *To reinforce them, I did some Google searches on coloring pages for each of the jobs. I was able to find something for all of them. So, for our activity Noah colored each of the coloring pages that went along with his jobs. Not only did he have fun, but I think it helped him really understand what his daily responsibilities are.

Prayer:------

Treat: ice cream (of course!)


Every time I have FHE (we're still not as consistent as I'd like, but we're working on it!) I am amazed at the almost immediate difference it makes. So far, Noah really seems to enjoy FHE, and he participates very well. I can see that he's learning things and is excited about learning. He seems excited to practice the things he has just been taught. For example, this weekend we spent the night at my parent's house. Noah was so excited to get to help Grandpa work in the yard pulling weeds. He felt so proud of himself for "working" so hard (I put that in quotations because, as you can imagine, his version of work is a lot different than ours, but in his mind he was working and that's what counts). I'm so glad he could feel the sense of accomplishment from working hard, and I'm grateful that our words aren't going in one ear and out the other. Our efforts aren't for nothing. Even when we think he hasn't heard a word we've said, he always surprises us. He's learning from us all the time, which is not always a good thing. Some things he's learned from me I wish he hadn't. Anyway, I'm rambling. I just wanted to say how much I am seeing that FHE truly is an inspired thing and that our families will be blessed if we strive to have them each week. Okay, my soap box is done.

*I found a cute coloring pages website. It's called funny coloring. There are oodles of other websites with cute free coloring pages, and they're not hard to find. Just type in what you're looking for and I can almost guarantee you'll find something. Do any of you have a favorite website with coloring pages?

Also, is there anything you would add to this FHE lesson? Let me know. Thanks!

Preparing Our Children for General Conference

It's General Conference time! Yay! It's so wonderful that we have this opportunity to be spiritually fed by our leaders, but how in the heck do we teach our little ones to sit still and listen? I always look forward to general conference, but I also dread it a little just thinking of how I'm going to keep my crazy four year old entertained through it all. I don't have the magic solution, but here are some ideas that hopefully you'll find helpful.

1. Have a bowl of yummy treats you don't usually keep in the house (like mini candy bars). You get to eat a treat after every talk you/your child listens to without falling asleep or being irreverent. This one's great for adults too! I know I'm looking forward to some chocolate!
2. Print off some LDS coloring pages for your little ones to color. Here's a link that will take you to the church's free coloring pages.
3. I found a cool blog called LDS Coloring Pages. One of the posts had some fun conference activities.
4. Make some fun family traditions that help make general conference something to look forward for the kids. My family used to have a big breakfast of Swedish pancakes on the Sunday morning of conference. We only had them twice a year, so it made conference really fun and exciting. I'm going to start that with my little family this year.
5. For FHE teach your kids about the Prophet and Apostles. Click here for the lesson on prophets in the nursery manual. Teach them "Follow the Prophet" from the primary songbook. If you had your FHE lesson on something else this week, just have another one. There's no rule that says you can only have one family night a week.
6. There was an article in March's Ensign on preparing children for general conference. Some of the ideas included: having older kids write what they learn in a journal, talk to your kids every day about how exciting it will be to hear the prophet, complete chores the Friday before, look for conference games and activities in the Friend, and more. Click on the link for the full article.

My final tip is to remember that the best way for kids to learn the importance of General Conference is through your example. You don't have to feel ike you have to prepare a million activities, so don't get too overwhelmed. If they see it's important to you than it will be important to them. I know this from my own experience. My parents didn't really do much. Aside from the Swedish pancake thing, the only other thing they did was turn conference on every T.V. and radio in the house, so you could here conference from almost every room in the house. We knew we couldn't play with friends. We knew it was important. I remember one conference when I was very little, probably four or five. I was playing with a toy, and my mother asked me stop playing for a minute because the prophet, President Benson then, was speaking. I remember thinking that he must be important for me to have to stop playing with my toy. I think that's when my testimony of the prophets began to grow, and it was because my mother's example.

Please share any other tips for preparing our kids for general conference, and I hope you all have a wonderful conference weekend.

Singing Helps

I discovered this book a few months ago at Deseret Book. It's called "Super Little Singers" by Mary H. Ross. I was wanting some fun visual aids for teaching my kids primary songs and other fun songs. This is perfect. It is filled with full-color, ready-to-use visuals and activities for a wide array of songs, from "My Heavenly Father Loves Me" to "The Wheels On the Bus." What you do is cut out the pictures, glue them on to card stock or poster paper and then laminate them. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. If you do one song at a time, pretty soon you'll have a pile of visuals that your kids will love (having Kinkos laminate everything for you will get expensive very fast, so it's more economical to do it yourself). One of the visuals I've done so far is so much fun. It's a tree with lots of little birds (those took a while to cut out) that are separate from the tree. I put a song on the back of each bird, tape the birds all around the living room, and have N go find them all. We sing the song written on each bird and then he puts the bird back home in its tree. He loves it.

The book also includes suggested actions for songs. I'm not always very good at coming up with actions, so that's very helpful. It also has singing motivators, like the birds and the tree I already mentioned. It's a really helpful book.N likes to sing, but he doesn't always like to learn new songs. It helps him when he has something to look at. The only drawback is it takes some time to cut everything out and stuff. I've cut my songs out when my kids are in bed, and I can just watch a movie and cut.

Anybody else have a resource they love for teaching songs? Any great ideas for teaching kids new songs? I'm all ears!

Here Come the 1, 2, 3s

We have a new favorite thing at our house. I didn't have any fun educational kids music, so I got on Amazon and did some browsing. I found a CD made by They Might Be Giants called "Here Come the 1, 2, 3s." It got great reviews by everyone. I like the band, so I thought I'd give it a try. Plus, it was a good deal because it came with a DVD too.

First, we tried out the CD on a long drive. It was an immediate hit for me because the songs have a fun beat and the words are clever and funny (kind of random but that's how that band tends to be).

Then, we tried out the DVD, and it was an even bigger hit with all of us! It's just plain fun, and some of the songs are down right hilarious. My son really likes it. In fact, a couple days ago I was having singing time with him and he requested we sing the "Zero Song." And, after watching the movie and hearing the songs only a handful of times, my son is already better at his numbers. I highly recommend this CD/DVD. They also have one that's called "Here Come the ABCs," which I'm sure is equally great.

For those of you that watch the Disney Channel (we're kind of in the dark ages- we only use TV for movies) you might already know about these songs. I think that's where they originate from. At any rate, they're really fun and a good educational resource.