It has been awhile since I have shared a family home evening idea. For those of you who don't know what family home evening is, you can read a brief explanation on my Toddler FHE- My Family Loves Me post. Sometimes for FHE we just do fun things, but sometimes we use that time to work on things Sweet Girl may be struggling with. In this case we were working on using magic words.

I started by telling Sweet Girl I had a magic wand that would help me get the things I wanted. I waved my magic wand and said "Daddy give me that book." Of course he knew not to give it to me. We tried again, and when it didn't work I told Sweet Girl we must be missing the magic words. I whispered the magic words to her and together we said "Daddy, please hand me that book." This time he handed the book to us. From there we talked about how real magic words are words that are nice, make others happy, and help others want to help us. We learned about magic words like thank you, sorry, and saying yes when we ask her to do things.

It was really simple, but Sweet Girl still talks about that lesson. Whenever she uses a magic word, she makes sure to point it out to me just in case I missed it.

Family home evening is one of the best nights of the week. Since my kids are little we are pretty much home together most nights, but it's nice to have a special night set aside to do something together. For some simple and really great ideas for a family night lesson and activity you can also go to lds.org and look at the manual Behold Your Little Ones. It's for the nursery class on Sundays, but the lessons are great for family nights too.

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I am so excited to finally be able to share this project with you! It is one of those projects that I have spent a few minutes on here and there over the past few months. I had a really hard time figuring out exactly what I wanted the finished project to look like so there was a lot of starting and stopping and asking Husband's opinion and staring over again. Now it's finished and I am so excited.

 I have posted about a couple toddler family home evening ideas that we have done with Sweet Girl. The idea of the family home evening board is just to keep organized about whose turn it is to do each part. There are about a billion different ways to make one, but I liked this ideas because it was pretty easy and affordable and not too big. I wish I had more pictures to show my process, but there really wasn't much to take pictures of.

Here is what you need:
Cookie Sheet- Walmart (Isn't that where I get everything?) for $5
Vinyl- It doesn't take much. I used cream and red.
Chip Board
Stick on Magnet Tape
Scrapbook Paper to match your word color
Ribbon

1. I used my Cricut to cut out a whole bunch of test fonts, sizes and wording options before I finally settled on this. I think I used Doodletype for the cream colored words and Makin' the Grade for the names, and the house is actually a gingerbread house from Christmas Cheer.

2. I used some pieces of chip board I picked up at a craft warehouse sale and have been holding onto for the last 3 years. Glad I finally found a use for them. I stuck pieces of the magnet tape on back to hold them in place. This was my final layout before I started sticking things on. The nice thing was that the vinyl peeled off the cookie sheet really easily it I placed it wrong.

3. Before I stuck the names on I decided the chip board was too plain as a solid white, so I glued on pieces of dark grey scrapbook paper. It wasn't cardstock, but it was heavy paper.

4. Finally Husband helped me drill holes in the top and I threaded the ribbon through.

We still need to work on filling the blank rectangles, but that takes time. For now we just have to double up jobs. Sweet Girl is usually in charge of the treats, which means I make something and she passes them out. I really liked the Love at Home on the bottom. It is the title of an LDS hymn about how everything is more beautiful when there is love at home. So true.

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A couple weeks ago I posted about how our family is trying to be more consistent at having one night a week where we spend time together in a family home evening. For our family home evening we sing, play and teach. Recently I started wondering how much we are teaching Sweet Girl about Jesus. Even though she is still very small, I think it is important for her to start learning about Jesus and how important he is.

To start teaching her we played a game called "Jesus Looks Like Me." I printed off pictures of different body parts and put them into a box. Sweet Girl pulled them out one at a time. First she pulled out the picture of the eyes. I asked her where her eyes are, then I held up a picture of Jesus and asked her where Jesus' eyes are. At then end for our activity we sang the song "Head Shoulders Knees and Toes."

These evenings have been a lot of fun so far. We spend a lot of time together as a family, but these evenings are special. It gives us a chance to remove all other distractions and focus on our family. It is also the perfect setting for teaching Sweet Girl all sorts of important things. Plus we have fun and eat treats. What's not to love?

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Many of you are probably very familiar with the concept of Family Home Evening. For those of you who aren't, it is one night each week set aside for families to be together. Families can do whatever they want together that evening, but a basic outline generally includes singing a song or two, having a lesson, a fun activity, family prayer and of course a treat. Lessons can be about anything. Growing up I remember lessons about Jesus Christ, service, not fighting with each other, etc.

Husband and I decided we should get into the habit of have Family Home Evening, we've been a little hit and miss. But it can be really hard thinking of a lesson for an 18 month old to sit through. I decided to make a lesson/game that Sweet Girl could relate to. I printed off pictures of a few of our family members, and put them into a bag labeled "My Family Loves Me." Sweet Girl pulled pictures from the bag and we talked about who that person was and how they love her. (Note- This is not our entire family. Husband and I both come from families with 8 children in them. I just printed off what could fit on one sheet of paper and I can add to it later.) We talked about how important families are and how we can be together forever. It was really fun, and I think she liked seeing pictures of people she knows.

Sweet Girl was in charge of the treats, so I helped her make our favorite chocolate chip cookies.

 

And they were delicious!

Let me know if you have other simple ideas for a family home evening with a toddler. I would love to hear them!

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