Sunday, August 7, 2011
Family Proclamation Lessons - Part 3
I am very happy to have finally wrapped up these lessons! So much for my plan to complete them in June! Since family events are the reason they were postponed, I feel alright about it.
Here goes a quick recap of our last ten lessons:
*If you downloaded the lessons before 8/11/11, I have made several corrections, so please re-download.*
I hope you have benefited from these lessons and activities. I would love to hear from you if you use these to teach your own children the doctrine of the family!
Lesson 19: Faith and Prayer
Lesson 20: Repentance and Forgiveness
Lesson 21: Respect, Love and Compassion
Lesson 22: Work and Wholesome Recreational Activities
Lesson 23: Fathers Preside, Provide, and Protect
Lesson 24: Mothers Nurture
Lesson 25: Equal Partners & Extended Families Can Support
Lesson 26: We Are Accountable Before God
Lesson 27: Disintegration of the Family Brings Calamities
Lesson 28: Strengthen Families, Strengthen Society
“(Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of...) repentance, forgiveness... ”
“(Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of...) respect, love, compassion, ...”
“(Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of...) work, and wholesome recreational activities. ”
“By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.”
“Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.”
“In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.”
“We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God.”
“Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.”
“We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”
Since faith in Jesus Christ is fostered through scripture study, I chose to make “PJ’S Pillows” for the kids. The letters stand for: Prayer, Journal and Scriptures. When they put on their PJ’s (or before they take them off), this reminds them to check if they have “done their PJ’S.” The kids picked out their own fabric and are thrilled with the results. Since the girls have nice scriptures (nice big scriptures), they just keep their journals in their pillows. Either way, it’s a good reminder.
Since I didn’t have the pillows done in time for this lesson, the kids simply took their rocks (on which they applied a picture of Jesus from another lesson) and put them under their pillows. Bonking their head on the rock would remind them to pray before going to bed. Next, they set their rock on the floor where they would stub their toe on it if they forgot to pray in the morning. They thought this was all very clever and funny.
We recently had a FHE lesson on repentance, so focused mainly on forgiveness. We used rocks to help demonstrate the weight we carry inside us when we choose not to forgive, and how good we feel when we extend forgiveness.
They each drew smiley faces on this picture. (It’s nice to mix in easy activities with the more elaborate ones!)
I can’t seem to go wrong when inviting the kids to act out a story from the scriptures. The parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrated well how we can show respect, love, and compassion for someone. The girls played multiple roles: the thieves, the passers-by, the donkey, and the inn keeper. Adam enjoyed being the “certain man” who fell among thieves. Andrew made a really sweet Samaritan and loved his cool props!
(I shared several more ideas for activities relating to this topic in my lesson packet.)
Jon taught this lesson for Family Home Evening. He shared pictures and video from his recent excursion on the “Paiute Trail” motorbiking with his cousins and uncle. He talked about how the Souths have a motto: “Word Hard, Play Hard” and how enjoyable and fulfilling it is to function that way.
The plan was to work together as a family that night and then play a fun game, but we ran out of time. We made up for it on Saturday with a family outing to Seven Peaks (ward activity) and lots of weed picking that night followed by root beer floats.
The kids enjoyed guessing how each object related to a father’s role. (I thought of more later.)
The girls helped me make this “Path of Manhood” which the boys enjoyed traversing. Each rock was labeled with a number on top and listed a landmark on the bottom for that age (age 8 = baptism and cub scouts, age 12 = Aaronic Priesthood and deacon, etc. We discussed all these great events the boys get to go through on their path to manhood.
Our lesson and activities the next night were almost identical, relating instead to the role of mothers.
To spice things up, we used boxes for the ages this time with pictures and/or objects inside. We discussed what things the girls get to anticipate on their “Path of Womanhood.”
The kids each held a clothespin as we discussed how vital the roles of man and woman are in the family. One can’t function completely without the other, and being bound by the Lord, they can accomplish anything together.
We then talked about our extended family.
To help the kids understand who their extended family is, I made a blank chart for each side of the family and printed pictures of each member of the family. The kids cut out the people and pasted them into place. This was a fun way to review who their aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmas, grandpas and great-grandparents are.
We talked about ways our extended family has helped us in hard times and how we can help our extended family as well.
This was a short and sweet thought on how we should treat each other with respect and love, and how we are accountable before God for our actions, both good and bad.
This was a good one!
We made these cute outlet covers with words to remind us how to treat each other. The girls helped with this craft since the boys were engrossed in a movie.
Natalie is the queen weeder! Friday, she picked 80 weeds (yes, she counted) and made it to 300 on Saturday night. Sweet!
The kids got to try out their own “calamities” by wearing these “calamity feet”
(A.K.A. “wacky feet”). We were so excited to try them out, that I had to review the message and quiz each child so they understood the bottom line of the lesson: if society lets the family fall apart, hard times will come.
The kids are still playing with their wacky feet. We had to keep the races on the carpet since the wood floor was way too slippery. After all, I wasn’t prepared for any real calamities to happen from wearing these calamity feet!
I wasn’t up to pasting family pictures onto our building blocks, but we used the blocks anyway to build towers and talked about how strong families are like strong building blocks of society. A few kids took turns, but everyone was excited to watch Jon, the master engineer, build a robust tower. Adam begged him to make a second model, which he did.
Here is a copy of my complete lesson and activity plans. I will also post this on my Favorites page for ease of access in the future.
We used toothpicks to demonstrate how standing together as a family makes us strong, and how if each toothpick is like a strong family and society is made up of strong families, then our nation is strong. As President Hinckley said, “I believe that no nation can rise higher than the strength of its families”
(Ensign, Nov. 1988, 109).
Everyone tried knocking the towers over by stomping on the ground... or karate-chopping the air.
The kids loved all of the lessons and were sad to hear that this was the last! We greatly benefitted from studying The Family: A Proclamation to the World!
