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!