Family Home Evening - Prayer and LDS Taboo Game

Since the Stake Presidency asked our family to focus on prayer, scripture reading, Sabbath day observance and Family Home Evening for the next couple of months, I decided to have our Family Home Evening lesson tonight focus on individual prayer.  The challenge in our family is appealing to all ages - 3-17.  I assigned Elisabeth to find songs on prayer that we could sing, and except for the fact that Leilani fell asleep in the middle of it (she was snoring), it went fairly well for our family gatherings.

We talked about prayer - when we should do it, how we should do it, etc.  We talked about how it is a habit like brushing our teeth, and how it can protect us like brushing our teeth protects our teeth (and we are probably the only family that had to endure an argument that brushing your teeth really doesn't protect your teeth because an undisclosed family member hasn't brushed their teeth in months, and they don't have any cavities).  We also likened prayer to a sandwich, and talked about the bread (Dear Heavenly Father and Amen) and what goes in between (things we are thankful for, things we need, repentance, etc).  The kids also got a reminder on how we should shut our eyes, bow our heads, fold our arms and LISTEN while the prayer is being said.  I found a quote that I liked that appealed to the teenagers, and got my point across quite well about praying on a daily basis.  It is:

At the end I gave them prayer charts to color and decorate.  I laminated them and told them that we would talk about how well we'd done every week at FHE.  This is the prayer chart I used:

But there are a lot of different styles out there.  I actually used different ones for my primary class - they were smaller and only had prayer on them.  I wanted these since we are focusing on scripture reading also.

 

For our activity, we played an LDS version of the game Taboo (where you have to get your team to guess a word or phrase, but there are a list of "taboo" words that you can't use in your description).  I got the game at this link:  http://www.bookofmormonbattles.com/Games/Taboo.html  (but there are many other versions on Pinterest). 

This website also has a Catch Phrase disc to print out with LDS words, and an LDS version of the werewolf/mafia game (Gadianton Robbers).  Since we are focusing on keeping the Sabbath day holy, I am trying to print out a bunch of these games for the kids to use on Sundays only.  To keep the day focused on gospel things.  It didn't take me that long to download, print (29 pages with 6 questions per page), and laminate the cards.  Cutting them all out took a little longer.  They don't fit into the Taboo card holder, but they are not double sided either.  Other websites seemed to do better on the sizing issue.

Overall it was a successful night.  Now to see if everyone can remember to do individual prayers daily.