Fun Family Home Evening Ideas

Tonight we had a fantastic Relief Society meeting with ideas for Family Home Evenings. It was so fun and FULL of wonderful ideas. I want to remember, so I'm going to share a few.

• Repentance: Have the family sit in a circle around a big bowl. Make sure they're sitting on a hard, easy to clean floor. Tell them the rules of this game are that they can pick what they want out of the bowl, if they want, but they cannot look up or they're out. Slowly drop pieces of candy into the bowl above the family. Start throwing more and more until it's a frenzy, then drop an uncooked egg. Once everyone is covered with egg, talk about how we can think we're doing something that's innocent, but can turn bad. Then wash the egg off and talk about how we can be clean again after we repent.
• Write family histories...especially good to have OUR parents write theirs. Include pictures.
• Use the Gospel Art Picture Book or Kit and tell stories from the pictures. Kids can do this really well.
• Make Family Home Evening fun and not a time for lectures. One of my favorite stories of the night, the mom was frustrated with the family leaving food, garbage, clothes all over the house, so she hid chocolate balls in one daughter's sock drawer, popcorn in another daughter's closet. That night she exaggerated making a mess finding the candy and popcorn....throwing the socks in a comical manner, then in the 3rd daughter's room, she said how warm she was and took her sweatshirt, socks and boots off, throwing them all over the room. After the rooms were sufficiently messed up. The mom asked, "When you're at school, do you drop stuff on the floor and expect your teacher to pick it up?" "Do you leave your garbage all over the lunchroom table?" "Why do you treat our house this way?" It was a good respect lesson, and not a lecture.
• Memorize the Proclamation to the World.
• Write your own Family Proclamation with goals you have as a family.
• Involve children in sharing and teaching the lesson. (This is where I struggle, personally...) It doesn't matter what they teach, as long as they feel excitement for the lesson and a sense of responsibility.

There was SO much more, but this was the few things that I truly appreciated.