When we found out last year that church would be shortened to two hours, I was really excited. But the added responsibility of teaching in the home by following a designated curriculum was a bit daunting. I appreciated that the Church provided the materials, but I wasn't really sure about the best way to incorporate this mandate into our family routines.
We'd been in the habit of reading the Book of Mormon and saying family prayers in the evenings at bedtime, so for the first several months of the year we switched our evening family scripture study to something out of the week's Come, Follow Me lesson. Then on Sundays we tried to have a more formal sit-down lesson and write in the CFM journals (decorated composition notebooks) we made at the beginning of the year.
Unfortunately, our evening scripture study wasn't always meaningful, and our Sunday lessons weren't consistent. So at the end of the summer we decided to try something different.
A week before school started I began teaching sit-down mini-lessons in the mornings after breakfast. The hardest part about this is getting everyone to come to the table and participate, but we mostly make it work. Sitting down, and making sure everyone can look at scriptures have been very helpful and I feel like these morning mini-lessons are much more effective than our nightly routine had been. We also still try to have a longer lesson on Sundays, with Ben teaching, and include some dedicated free-journal-writing time (with the assistance of treats).
I like that we have more energy in the mornings than we do in the evenings, and we're also more likely to all attend, versus the evenings when we often aren't all under the same roof when we need to start getting everyone to bed. But we've decided to still do family prayers in the evening with whoever is present, and we often take a minute to answer a question that one of us proposes. The question might be What kind thing did you do for someone today? or How did you apply the topic we discussed in our morning lesson? or, as Luke proposed last night, Did you play China or war? (which none of us understood, but answered to the best of our abilities).
I feel like we've been blessed for making an effort to get the most out of Come, Follow Me as a family. I have felt inspired as I've taught and it's been a great way to start the day during the week. Our longer Sunday lessons provide a solid punctuation to the mini-lessons and whatever we learned in church that day. I'm thankful for this program and the opportunity to have more Gospel-learning in our home.
We'd been in the habit of reading the Book of Mormon and saying family prayers in the evenings at bedtime, so for the first several months of the year we switched our evening family scripture study to something out of the week's Come, Follow Me lesson. Then on Sundays we tried to have a more formal sit-down lesson and write in the CFM journals (decorated composition notebooks) we made at the beginning of the year.
Unfortunately, our evening scripture study wasn't always meaningful, and our Sunday lessons weren't consistent. So at the end of the summer we decided to try something different.
A week before school started I began teaching sit-down mini-lessons in the mornings after breakfast. The hardest part about this is getting everyone to come to the table and participate, but we mostly make it work. Sitting down, and making sure everyone can look at scriptures have been very helpful and I feel like these morning mini-lessons are much more effective than our nightly routine had been. We also still try to have a longer lesson on Sundays, with Ben teaching, and include some dedicated free-journal-writing time (with the assistance of treats).
I like that we have more energy in the mornings than we do in the evenings, and we're also more likely to all attend, versus the evenings when we often aren't all under the same roof when we need to start getting everyone to bed. But we've decided to still do family prayers in the evening with whoever is present, and we often take a minute to answer a question that one of us proposes. The question might be What kind thing did you do for someone today? or How did you apply the topic we discussed in our morning lesson? or, as Luke proposed last night, Did you play China or war? (which none of us understood, but answered to the best of our abilities).
I feel like we've been blessed for making an effort to get the most out of Come, Follow Me as a family. I have felt inspired as I've taught and it's been a great way to start the day during the week. Our longer Sunday lessons provide a solid punctuation to the mini-lessons and whatever we learned in church that day. I'm thankful for this program and the opportunity to have more Gospel-learning in our home.
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