Family Home Evening

For years our church leaders have encouraged us to hold a weekly "Family Home Evening."  Each Monday night is set aside for time with our family.   No church meetings are planned for Monday nights.  We try the best we can to avoid scheduling other conflicting events as well.  The format for the evening isn't super important.  What is important is spending time together.  Our typical family home evening goes something like this:

Opening Song

Opening Prayer

Lesson

Activity

Closing Song

Closing Prayer

Treat

One child is in charge of conducting the meeting, and each of the above items is assigned to a different family member each week.

For the most part the kids love it and look forward to it.  Even the older ones are engaged most weeks.  This is video from two different weeks of activities.  The first week we played a game where everyone is assigned a color.  One person stands in the middle with a rolled up newspaper.  Mom or Dad calls out a color and the person with the newspaper has to remember whose color it is and whack that person on the head.  The person who is about to be whacked has to call out a different color before the person in the middle gets to them.  Once the person in the middle whacks someone in time, that player becomes the new person in the middle. With our group, some accommodations need to be made.  For Sophi, one of us would hold her and she would hold the newspaper with her feet.  Then Parker got a better idea...

The second week we played the dice game.  Very simple.  Everyone has a piece of paper.  There is one pencil in the middle of the table.  Each person takes turns rolling two dice.  When somebody gets doubles, they pick up the pencil and start writing out the numbers 1 through 100.  When somebody else gets doubles, they grab the pencil from the previous person and they start writing.  The first person to write every number up to 100 is the winner.  As you'll notice, it can get pretty animated (especially when you're playing with Graci:).  Conner and Christi were a team.  Christi rolled the dice, and when she got doubles, Conner would braille the numbers.