FHE with young kids #18 -- Honesty and lies, getting all tied up

Honesty is always a good lesson for toddlers and preschoolers. We've found that our 4 year old has lied to us a few times recently. We're not sure he understands why that's bad, despite our best efforts. Usually it's just simple stuff, like telling us he pooped in the toilet when he really didn't.

We played a game where I had a cup of water and some food. I had mom ask me if I finished my water. I said I did. Our kids realized there was still water in my cup, and I told them that I lied. Mom started wrapping twine around my hands and tying me up. Then mom asked if I finished my food, and I said yes. The kids saw the banana wasn't finished, and I admitted I lied. She tied me up more. Mom asked me if I pooped, and I said I did. The kids ran to the bathroom and saw the toilet was empty, and I admitted I lied.

I explained that lying hurts people and it makes people not trust you. We lose our power and it's like being tied up. The way to get untied is to start telling the truth.

Then mom asked me a bunch of questions and I told the truth to all of them, and I got untied.

Our oldest thought it looked pretty fun to get tied up and tell lies. Uh oh!

I told him it's not fun and it really hurt. He didn't believe me, so I tied him up really really tight and made sure it hurt.

That convinced him!




Got this idea from here:

http://thatgoodpart.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/fhe-honesty/

FHE with young kids #17 -- The Bully cartoon

One particularly lazy Monday, I saw this bully video on the mormon channel on our Roku, and it was basically our entire FHE. I think we watched it 3 times.



It is a fun cartoon with some complex subjects. Being nice to other people even when they're not nice to you. Generally when you're nice to people, they are eventually nice to you. Sometimes people are mean because they are struggling with hard things like not having any friends.

Our 2 and 4 year old kept on requesting to watch it in the days after this FHE.

FHE with young kids #16 -- Tithing

A while back we got a bunch of coins from a mardi gras parade. It seems like all kids love playing with coins. For one home evening, we just decided to talk about tithing. Our kids are still young enough where they love to count. They thought it was a fun game to count ten coins and "give one back to God". Then we really spiced things up and gave them 20 coins and saw if they could figure out how many coins they should give back to God.

It was fun. Not sure how much actually stuck, but they might be more familiar with the concept of tithing in the future.

FHE with young kids #15 -- The hardcopy scripture books

We realized recently that our kids never see us read the scriptures. We do read them, but both of us read them on our tablets. I can imagine if I were my kids, I would probably think that my parents were just playing on their tablets and not doing anything productive. I think years back when everyone read the hardcopy scripture books, that sort of visualization provided some sort of foundation. Kids see people reading these fancy books and then they think scriptures are important. That's missing with iPads, though!

So we really just wanted to help the kids understand more about what scriptures are, and that some people read them on fancy books and some people read them on their electronic devices.

We had to go find our hard copies and dust them off and then we showed them to our kids.

Notice the book of Mormon is upsidedown... :-)

Then we played a fun color by number game from LDS.org

https://www.lds.org/bc/content/shared/content/images/magazines/friend/2011/05/fr11mayf01-color-by-numbers.pdf?lang=eng

This was the result:

It was a fun little night and I think it was important for our family.

FHE with young kids #14 -- The ten lepers

Had a lesson about the ten lepers the other day. It was great. Started out by looking at the following picture, talking about leprosy, and coloring in all the dots on everyone with a marker. The kids loved that.

Click on the picture to go to the PDF at funtasticfamilyhomeevenings.com

Then we read the story about the ten lepers in Luke 17

Then we watched this awesome lego movie about the 10 lepars. The kids loved loved loved it. We watched it many times since then.





Talked about gratitude, saying thanks, etc. A succesful FHE!