Jan 28- Feb 3: Matthew 3, Mark 1, Luke 3

This past week was incredibly stressful for me for a number of reasons.  I found myself on my knees on more than one occasion.  So, focusing on the light of Christ and my personal testimony of His life was much needed.  I was confiding to a friend and she gave me such wise counsel that the Lord will always provide a way.  I carried this with me and by the end of the week, my burdens were lifted.  Over the past several weeks, our family has been blessed by so much unexpected charity, kindness, and support from others.

We went to Las Vegas over the long weekend so we only had one night of family study this week, but it was much needed to get out of town and have some family time together.  We enjoyed viewing the lunar eclipse last Sunday night and had a campfire with some extended family.

Two thumbs up for campfires, s'mores, and the moon!

This coming week focuses on the accounts of Jesus Christ's baptism and a call to repentance to prepare our hearts for receiving the fullness of the Gospel.

Link to the Come Follow Me manual

supplemental videos from lds.org media library

New this week!  This link has the entire New Testament coloring book in one file!  Save to your computer so you have the whole thing.  This week goes with page 4.

This is a sharing time lesson and activity on repentance from The Friend

Suggested songs:  Baptism, When Jesus Christ was Baptized, This is My Beloved Son

Link to the February printable posters from Cottage Charm Design (I absolutely love these!)

Jan 21-27 John 1

The recent Church policy changes have been such a blessing to our family!  Our son turned 11 in early December.  Just a few days later, we received the communication from the Church about the policy change regarding youth moving up to young men/women at the beginning of the year they turn 12.  Our son was then eligible to receive the Aaronic priesthood, so he was ordained the first Sunday of 2019 as a Deacon and was able to participate in passing the Sacrament for the first time last Sunday.  What a blessing it has been to our family and to see him continue to mature and grow!

We had a great discussion this week about the birth and early years of Jesus Christ.  We used the object lesson from "littleldsideas" and wrote goals for the year on our hand prints.  I also posted the poster from the link I posted last week and put our hand prints above it on the door we use to exit the house each day.  These visual reminders will remind us of our goals and help keep us on track!  I'm excited to see where this year takes us!

Links for next week's lesson in John 1:  Link to Come Follow Me manual

supplemental videos from lds.org media library

Light of Christ coloring page  after coloring this page, you can use a q-tip to dab vegetable oil on the paper to give it a stained glass look and display it in a window

Suggested hymns:  He Sent His Son, This is My Beloved Son, The Lord is My Light

Link to the printable poster (like the one in my photo above) from Cottage Charm Design

Hope everyone has a great week!  

Jan 14-20 Luke 2, Matthew 2

How is everyone's study going?  I will admit, this week was a little tricky.  I was so excited to start this week's lesson after the excellent Sunday school discussion we had for the first week of the new church schedule, however, we realized we weren't as prepared as we should have been for our Sunday night study.   It ended being a little scattered, but we learned what we could do better next time, so Monday night went much smoother.  What we should have done in preparation for the Sunday discussion was have the older family members read the scriptures individually ahead of time so we could spend our time together discussing them and then watching one of the supplemental videos with the younger family members.  Reading 2 long chapters in one sitting with everyone is not realistic for our family.

I will say my girls were very interested in the videos and enjoyed learning about Mary and Elizabeth.  So then on Monday night, we had all read the scriptures on our own, so we discussed the second part of the lesson while the little girls colored a picture of Mary and the Angel.  We were able to have a great conversation and work through the Angel/Mary table I put together.

Where was the baby while all this was going on?  I honestly can't remember! 

Between after-school activities and our church callings, there really isn't much time for us to meet all together as a family the rest of the week.  So, I was trying to think of ways to review the content throughout the week. I thought at dinner each night, we could go over the "goal" for the week that we and then on Saturday night we could recap the scripture story so everyone has it fresh in the their minds to participate in class.

I found this great idea on Pinterest from Cottage Charm Design, a poster you can print with the scriptures/theme and write in your family goal for the week.  This is a link to the January printables, and then I assume there will be a new post with each subsequent month.  I plan to print this each week, we can fill it out Monday night and I can put it in a plastic sheet protector for us to review the rest of the week.

Another great resource I found was from Chicken Scratch n Sniff, tons of great ideas and things you can print.  She also has a Facebook group called Come Follow Me for Families, I joined but then had to unfollow the group because there were just too many posts clogging my feed.  She is trying to do a weekly post and have everyone comment on it so there aren't so many posts, but that doesn't always happen.  There are a lot of people out there planning to do something with their families every night, as I mentioned before, that's not realistic for us.  It's very easy to get wrapped up in all these great ideas, but I'm going to try to stick to the Cub Scout motto of "Keep it simple, keep it fun".

Now, on to the links and PDFs for this week!  

Supplemental videos this week from lds.org media library

PDF pages from the New Testament coloring book  Luke 2 coloring page    Luke 2 maze

Another great idea this week is an object lesson from Little LDS Ideas  link to Facebook page
She explains it in this You Tube video, the idea is inspired by the Family Home evening ideas for this week in the scripture Luke 2:52, How can we increase in "wisdom and stature" as Christ did?  She suggests measuring/tracing everyone's body or hands.  Then you can think of goals for this year maybe a goal that goes with each body part or if you trace hands do one goal for each finger.  Then at the end the year, you can look at them and see how you did. You can also remeasure your body or retrace your hands to see how much you grew in that year.  The minimalist in me is going to go with hand tracing on this one!

If you are looking to find hymns to go with each week's lesson, someone put together this great document with all of them listed for the whole year  Come Follow Me hymns

Have a wonderful week!

January 7-13 Matthew 1; Luke 1

So we were able to find 2 days this week to work on some of the content of the first lesson.  The notebooks were a big hit with the kids, and as you can see from the photos, my younger girls were able to draw some pictures and tell me some of their impressions to go with the topic.

After the first lesson we had, we assigned everyone that could read on their own to read the scripture story for one of the Family Home Evening lessons in preparation for the meeting.  I thought it would be a good idea to post it on the whiteboard to remind all of us.

I have some other ideas I want to try as we progress through this new, exciting program.  After we discussed the FHE lesson from Matthew 13, we talked about specific action items we can all do to help cultivate "good ground" in our home.  I thought about it later, but putting together a circle map or other graphic organizer that could be posted as a reminder for the things we want to work on would be good.

Now, on to next week's lesson!

Here's the link to the supplemental videos on lds.org media library  Jan 7-13 video resources

Here's the link to the powerpoint from Sugardoodle  Powerpoint lesson

I made a table to go with the angel and Mary from Matthew 1:18-25/Luke 26-38
Angel and Mary table

Family History Tree printables to go along with the Family Home Evening for Matthew 1:1-17
Family Tree 1   Family Tree 2


I would love to hear what is working for your family and hope you are feeling the blessings of this new curriculum as much as I am!

Dec 31-Jan 6 We Are Responsible for Our Own Learning

First of all, you are going to want to bookmark the link to the LDS media library.  They have organized supplemental videos for each of the weekly lessons  here

Also, if you have ever used the Sugardoodle website to plan a primary lesson, you've probably come across David who puts together wonderful powerpoint presentations for every Primary lesson.  Well, it looks like he is back at it and has posted a powerpoint to go along with this first week of Come Follow Me here  

For Family Home Evening, you can show this video on the Parable of the Sower

and the kids can do this connect the dots/coloring activity from the New Testament coloring book pg 9.

Click here for PDF

How this started...

Every year before Christmas, I do some light decluttering around the house.  As I was going through the cabinet where I keep art supplies, coloring books, etc, I came across the New Testament scripture stories coloring book that I had purchased several months ago from Deseret Book.  I had used the Book of Mormon coloring book with my kids for Family Home Evening lessons and it had been quite successful, so I had purchased the New Testament coloring books with the same idea in mind.  Then I thought...I bet some of these coloring activities go with the lessons in the Come Follow Me booklet! So I sat down with both booklets and started to cross reference lessons with coloring pages.  If I couldn't find anything, I searched some of the other coloring books I had and also searched activities from the Friend magazine.

I'm sure there are probably other resource sites doing something like this but I was unable to find any that had what I was looking for or they wanted to charge a monthly subscription, so I decided to put this blog together.  Feel free to share this blog and comment if you have found any other great free resources.

I'm excited for the new curriculum and for the blessings that will come as a result of us taking the time to study with our family each week.  I'm hoping to designate a block of time on Sundays for our family to work through the personal scripture study portion together.  I'm going to get a notebook for each family member to either write or draw a picture for the sections that ask you to record your impressions or answer questions.  For our FHE nights we will read and do activities from the studying together as a family section in the Come Follow Me.

What are you looking forward to with the Come Follow Me curriculum?  What is your plan for your family?