Thanks and Giving Tree

As we focus on our blessings this month of Thanksgiving, our family is creating a Thanks and Giving Tree. Each night before bed time we each write one thing we are thankful for on a leaf and on the other side one thing that we did to help someone that day. We have a fun time coming up with our many blessings and recognizing the service performed by one another. This is our tree about mid-month. It should be completely full by Thanksgiving Day. We will take off all our leaves and read our blessings together that day.

Thanks to Chocolate on my Cranium for the idea. They have a print off of a tree worksheet so that each family member can make his own, instead of a big family tree, if you would like. This just worked better for my preschooler and toddler so they would have more room to write.

Day 4-Sun, Moon, and Stars

Opening Song: I Am Like A Star Shining Brightly (CS 163)

Lesson: We headed outside with a flashlight, blanket, and binoculars. Together we read the scriptural account of the creation of the sun, moon, and stars in Genesis 1:14-19. We looked at the stars and the moon with our binoculars.



Activity: With our flashlight as our light, we sat outside in the dark and sang songs and read stories about the sun, moon, and stars. We sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "I See the Moon," and "You Are My Sunshine." We read Goodnight Moon, Happy Birthday Moon, What the Sun Sees/What the Moon Sees, Wake Up Sun, and The Sun and Moon.



Snack: We came inside and ate Astronaut Ice Cream in honor of our outer space creations.


Craft: We made pretend telescopes together out of paper towel rolls. Paint the telescope, add star stickers, and have fun looking through it outside at the stars.


Art: For the 4th page in our book we glued down die cuts of a star, moon and sun.

Closing Song: Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam (CS 60)

Day 3-Plants and Trees

We headed to a local park with a beautiful, wooded nature trail and picnic area to hold our FHE on the creation of plants and trees. We had our lesson, snack, and activity there.

Opening Song: Little Purple Pansies (CS 244)

Lesson and Food: We ate a picnic dinner at the park. All of our foods were plants. (strawberries, grapes, crackers with bean hummus, carrots, popcorn, cucumbers). We read Genesis 1:9-13 as we sat together under the trees.

Then we listed all the plants we could think of together. Being outside and eating fruits and vegetables helped spark ideas.

Activity: We went on a nature hike together and collected plants and pieces of land (rocks, dirt,etc...) in plastic bags to use on our art project later at home.


Closing Song: Leaves are Falling All Around (CS 241)

Art: We came home and created the third page for our Creation Book. Using contact paper, the boys stuck their findings from the nature walk on the sticky side and I folded it over and glued it to their page in the book.

Water, Water!

Opening Song: Give Said the Little Stream

Lesson: Give each family member a glass of water. Ask them who made the water. We read in Genesis 1:7-8 that on the Second day the water was divided and some was on the earth and some was in the clouds. We discussed why water is important and listed all the ways we use water. (bathe, play, drink, swim, cook, help our garden and animals, wash cars, clean, baptize, etc...)



Activity: We played outside in water! It happened to be warm enough to do so here. However if it had been too cold, I would have brought the water table in the kitchen or garage or used small dishpans to play in. Andrew decided to wash the car, since cleaning was something we talked about doing with water. The evening ended with a huge water fight between Daddy and Andrew.



Learning Activity Outside:
Simple Water Cycle Experiment
1. Give each child a cotton ball to hold. Tell them to pretend that they are holding a cloud.
2. Ask them how does the cloud feel: heavy or light, soft or hard.
3. Instruct the children to place the "cloud" (cotton ball) gently over the cold water. Explain that water that has evaporated has traveled up to the cloud and it is a lot colder up in the sky, so the vapor turns into water, and it is filling up the cloud. Ask: Can you see the "cloud" (cotton ball) filling up with the water.
4. Ask the children to gently pick up the "cloud" (cotton ball) from the pan. Ask: How does the "cloud" feel now? Light or heavy. Warm or cold? What is happening with the water? Yes, the water is dripping from the "cloud". Why? The cloud cannot hold all that water, is too, too, heavy. What do we call when water falls from the clouds because they are too heavy with water? Yes, you are right, rain! It is raining! And what happens to the water? Yes, it is coming right back into the pan, and the pan could be a stream, river, ocean or the ground.



Art Activity: (after we dried off and put on our jammies we did art). We made the second page in our book. We glued clouds (cotton balls) to the top of the paper and water (blue freezer wrap) to the bottom. Ryan went a little crazy with his clouds, and we finally had to cut him off. He loves to glue!



Dessert: We enjoyed blue jello (water) and whipped cream (clouds).
Closing Song: "Rain is Falling"

Let There Be Light

We are teaching the boys about the creation of the Earth. We are focusing on one day at a time, so the next seven weeks will be centered around those themes. Feel free to join us!

Lesson: I turned off all of the lights in our home for the lesson. I pulled out a flashlight and we read about Day One: The Creation of Night and Day in the Children's scriptures. We also read the story from the Bible together in Genesis 1: 1-5. After we had read it through one time from the bible, I gave everyone a flashlight. Each time I said the word "light," they got to turn on and off their flashlights. We read through it several times.



Song: We sang "This Little Light of Mine" together while we made our flashlights dance.

"This little light of mine,I'm gonna let it shine,
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine,
This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine,
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!"

(Ryan is using the flashlight as a microphone).

Scripture Memorization: Genesis 1:3 "And God ^asaid, Let there be ^blight: and there was light." For some reason the novelty of flashlights allowed us to accomplish a lot this evening and so we twirled our flashlights while we repeated this scripture over and over until we knew it by heart.

Art Activity: We are making a Creation book over the next 7 weeks. So tonight we did the first page. We gave each boy a piece of yellow and a piece of black paper. We glued them to our first page. It was Ryan's first experience with a glue stick and he loved it!



Activity: We played Flashlight Hide-N-Seek. Each parent took a boy and we took turns hiding in the dark house with our flashlights. Only the call to dessert to get them to stop. (Mommy and Daddy had fun, too).




Snack: Not very creative, but we ate chocolate pudding (night) and topped it with whipped cream (day).



Closing Song: We sang the chorus to "The Lord is My Light" .

The Good Samaritan

Opening Song: Kindness Begins With Me

Attention Getter: Give Each Family Member a Band-aid. Ask them to think of a time they were hurt. How did they feel? Who helped them? Let them put the Band-aid on the place that got hurt. (My kids love Band-aids). Tell them that you are going to tell a story about a man that was hurt and about the kind person who helped him.


Lesson: Read The Good Samaritan Story from the Children's Illustrated scriptures. (I chose to skip the part about them beating him up when telling the story to my little ones. I just said he was hurt). After I read the story we used Flannel Board Pieces to retell the story. (My mom had made some for us previously, but the link is to a set available to print online).




Activity: I had a larger image of the injured man that we laid on the flannel board. (just enlarge from the flannel board pieces or draw your own). We talked about how we can help our friends and family when they are hurt. We wanted to give the boys a chance to practice how to show compassion in different situations. We gave several examples of how to handle the situation if we hurt the person on accident (running into someone when playing chase), on purpose (pushing your brother), and when a friend falls and gets hurt. We walked through the appropriate behavior. After each example we let the boys place a band-aid on the hurt man to help him feel better.

Closing Song: Love One Another

Snack: We actually ate birthday cake in honor of two family members who live far away and share the same birthday. A themed suggestion would be heart shaped cookies.



Reality: This final picture is just to show that our FHEs are normal. By the end of the lesson, Ryan was finished and had laid down in the middle of the flannel board to let us know.

A New Baby

Our family held a special FHE to share our exciting news with our two little guys!

Opening Song:"I Lived in Heaven"




Lesson: We talked about where we lived before we came here and how Heavenly Father chose each of us to be part of our family. I showed a picture of Heavenly Father and Jesus and a picture of the earth. We talked about how there were other children who are also part of our family, but that they still live with Heavenly Father. When it is time for them to join our family here on earth, they come as babies. I showed pictures of our boys as newborns with mommy.




Activity:I had prewrapped several baby items like gifts. (baby rattles, bottles, nose syringe) As the boys unwrapped each item, we discussed why a baby would need these things. We talked about how much each of them has grown and discussed things that they can do now that they are big. (walk, feed themselves, color, blow their own noses, etc)... We talked about what they can do to help a baby.

Then we told the boys that we were going to have a new baby join our family. (Andrew decided it should be a sister, since we don't have one of those yet).



Activity Song: We sang "Once I Was a Baby" (to the tune of Once There Was a Snowman) From the Sunbeam Manual (we crawled on the floor like a baby and then grew taller).

Once I was a baby, baby, baby, once I was a baby, small, small, small.
Now I'm getting bigger, bigger, bigger. Now I'm getting bigger, Tall Tall, Tall.

Snack: We ate watermelon. (Insert your own pregnancy pun here). The real reason why though is because my grandma found out she was expecting my mother because she got sick eating watermelon. (The only time she was ever sick in 7 pregnancies).

Closing Song: "Families are Forever"