Tower of Babel

A few months back my Relief Society asked me to teach at Enrichment night about some simple Family Home Evening lesson ideas for Toddlers and Preschoolers.  Frankly I had felt fed up with trying to keep my two little ones sitting still during Family Home Evening.  It felt impossible and my brain couldn't come up with ideas.  But I did some research on Pinterest and found some really fun ideas that I am going to try and that I shared at Enrichment. I'll share some of the ideas at the end of this post.

One of the lessons I found and that we did with the kids was on the Tower of Babel.  We talked to the kids about the Tower of Babel while they colored this picture which I found on the internet.

 

Earlier in the day I made a chocolate cake in a 9X13 pan along with some frosting and cut it into large square pieces.

 We built our own Tower of Babel with chocolate cake and frosting.

Lizzie started.

Here is Jeff after I took a turn.

Ben is getting ready to put his on

Ooops!  Down it came.

Now it is time to eat it.

The kids loved the lesson.  Success!

(Erica wasn't with us for this FHE.  Normally we do our FHE on Sunday because she is almost always with us on Sunday but she had something going on at her mother's that day.)

Here are some other ideas I found that I will be using in the future:

·                  David  and Goliath - Tell the story of David and Goliath.  Make paper rocks and throw them at daddy

·                  Masterpiece Maker - Watch "Create" on lds.org (2 minutes).  Create something out of peanut butter playdough and snacks.

·                  Family History - Go through pictures of grandparents, cousins and other family members and practice saying their names

·                  Jesus Calms the Storm - Tell the story of Jesus calming the storm in Luke 8: 22-25.  Next create a storm in your living room.  Use musical instruments to make noise, shake a blue blanket to create a storm on the water, turn the lights on and off to make lightening.  When you hold up a picture of Jesus all of the noise, lightening and winds on the waves obey Jesus and stop.  Memorize Luke 8:25  together("for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him.")  Sing Master the Tempest is Raging.  Make Banana Boats for a treat.

·                  Book of Mormon Battles - Get out your Lincoln Logs and plastic army guys for this one. Read your favorite Book of Mormon battle story.  As you read slowly, set up and elaborate re-enactment of the scriptures by building forts, strategically placing little soldiers, cutting up wavy strips of blue construction paper for rivers, make mountains, build trenches, etc.  Alma 56 would be a good one to act out.

·                  Lehi's Dream - Have a large poster board, pencils, markers, crayon, stickers etc.  As you tell the story of Lehi's dream to your family, have each family take part in drawing a part of it.  Also talk about the interpretation of the dream by Nephi.  For the treat try a new fruit that your family hasn't tried before.

·                  Obedience - Get an animal of some sort (a sheep, cow, goat--something that lives on a farm would work the best) and make some sort of fence around the animal.  Ask the kids, or just explain (depending on ages), why we keep the animals in fences-- they could get lost, hurt, not be able to find food... if they were on their own. Parallel the fence to rules and commandments that we have.

·                  Temples - Create temples out of play-dough.  While the temples are being made show pictures of temples and talk about why we have temples.

·                  Creation - While you read the scriptures about the creation when each day is read a person goes into the kitchen and adds an ingredient(s) to a bowl and on the final day it is mixed all together and baked.

My ideas came from the following blogs:

http://nataliesfhespot.blogspot.com/

http://ldsfhe.blogspot.com/

http://fheplanner.blogspot.com/

http://mormonmommymft.blogspot.com/