Small and Simple Things ~ Family Home Evening

Today for our blog post we will be continuing the blog series of Small and Simple Things~ Daily things we can do with our family that are simple and make a huge impact! We have been going off of a beautiful quote from Elder L. Tom Perry, which you can find HERE . The part of the quote that we are focusing on today is this, " Parents must bring light and truth into their homes by.... one family home evening" .

What is Family Home Evening or FHE as it is commonly called ? President Hinckley tells us in this quote :

" We have a family home evening program once a week ( Monday night) across the church in which parents sit down with their children. They study the Scriptures. They talk about family problems. They plan family activities and things of that kind. I don't hesitate to say that if every family in the world practiced that one thing, you'd see a very great difference in the solidarity of the families of the world." (Boston Globe Interview, August 14, 2000)

Another quote in the same Ensign article talks about what the Lord expects of us as parents. It's important!

" The Lord expects us to have Family Home Evening- one night a week to gather our children together and teach them the gospel. Isaiah said, ' And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord.' That is the commandment : All thy children shall be taught of the Lord. And the blessing, ' And great' he said, ' shall be the peace of thy children'. ( Isaiah 54:13) " ( meeting in new caledonia June 17, 2000)

You can read the rest of that fabulous article on Family Home Evening by President Hinckley HERE

                                                       ( image from inevergrewup.net)

It is important to do this each monday night. Be consistent. A small and simple thing we can do that will have powerful effects and blessings on our family. Once a week. It can take 15 minutes, it can take hours if you want! Each family is different and will have to adapt FHE to their specific family. Parents of toddlers can do simple lessons , I have pinned a bunch of cute ideas to my Family Home Evening Pinterest board.. there are simple lessons for toddlers, lessons that require some work and fun, lessons that are good for teenagers, lessons that go by specific topics and things like 55 plus fhe ideas and lessons for the year! I have also pinned some really cute free printable charts for FHE and some cute crafts to make FHE boards for the family. Put it in a prominent spot! We have been so incredibly blessed with so many resources for family home evening ! Now that we understand the importance of it, and how to go about doing it, we can discuss some great resources! First of all, here is my pinterest board for Family Home Evening... I will continue to add to it, because I'm addicted to Pinterest hehehe!


Follow Jaelle Kaylor's board Family Home Evening on Pinterest.

The church has had a Family Home Evening Resource book out forever... I remember my mom using it when I was little and I used it with my kids too, a link to that is HERE

A website that I adore and I have had a button on the sidebar for it here on the blog for a really long time, because I love it so much, is A Year of FHE . This woman is crazy talented and has taken a lot of time to write up hundreds of FHE lesson plans and she has them listed by topic etc and she has over 400 coloring pages to go along with the lessons and a bunch of cute freebie printables for your own use for your family. The lessons and coloring pages are free, it's just a crazy awesome site. It makes it so incredibly easy to plan FHE each week.

Living Scriptures has an amazing site at www.ldsfamilyfun.com and they have tons of family home evening lessons that go along with the DVD's from Living Scriptures. It has links to download all of the activity books that go along with the Animated Scripture DVD's and more... it just has tons of great resources for FHE and it is so much fun to use the DVD's as part of FHE . We are doing that right now as a family, watching the prophet series and learning about our prophets. But this website makes it so simple to be able to use the DVD's and then apply them to real life now, and to be able to have the downloads to the activity books and lessons ? Well that's just awesome. Remember The special codes are still available for you to use... from 7:30 am - 2:30 pm MST contact Misty and give her the code M98B and tell her that JL from LDS Parenting sent you. From 1 pm - 8 pm MST contact Paula and give her the code P9CN and tell her that JL from LDS Parenting sent you. They will set you up with a free gift and then help you be able to get set up with the dvd's and they are always running awesome promo's where you get free stuff ;) The number is 1-800-727-0828. 

The Red Headed Hostess site also has an amazing bunch of products to help you with FHE... you can go HERE to see just a few of the products that can be used for Family Home Evening. Until December we have been given a code to use that will give you a 25% off discount, one time use per customer, you just load up your digital cart and then at the checkout enter the code : ldsparenting 

So basically, we have a ton of resources for FHE, we know why it is important and we know how to do it. So let's make this a habit. A small and simple thing we can do each week to teach our children and gain blessings as a family. 

Happy Parenting! Love, JL~