20+ Ideas for memorizing the Articles of Faith

Memorizing the 13 Articles of Faith can seem like a mammoth task to anybody - old or young...I personally still get a bit muddled up trying to quote #10!!

So a while ago I printed up the Articles of Faith on A4 card for my kids and laminated them (of course!), they are now regularly used around the home - in bedrooms/kitchen/before family scripture study/FHE to help and remind us of them.

Recently I made some smaller cards which have the first letter of each word each of the Articles of Faith, this is great to help the older children, and super for popping in your Sunday bag to help keep them entertained during sacrament.

Thought I'd look online and find some other great ideas to help my children (and me) become better at learning and memorizing them...lots of links & pictures are below. 

 Articles of Faith Memory Quest -- lds.org

Articles of Faith flashcards -- All Things Bright and Beautiful

1st Article of Faith -- LDS scripture study for kids

8th Article of Faith -- LDS Games

6th Article of Faith crossword -- lds.org

Articles of Faith cards -- Latter-day chatter

Article of Faith posters -- A year of FHE

Cross Connections: 10th Article of Faith -- lds.org 

13th Article of Faith fill in blanks -- LDS Games

4th Article of Faith maze -- lds.org

4th Article of Faith -- lds.org

1st Article of Faith -- LDS Games

Articles of Faith bookmark and other activities -- 3 dinosaurs

2nd Article of Faith crossword -- lds.org

Activity Book:Article of Faith -- LDS Greats

Articles of Faith keys -- Finch Family Games

11th Article of Faith crossword -- lds.org

Teaching the Articles of Faith -- The Giggly Girls Guide

(LOADS of great ideas to help learn AoF in the link above)

Articles of Faith Jeopardy -- Shannon Makes Stuff

4th Article of Faith poster -- lds.org

Articles of Faith Punch Card -- about.com

1st Article of Faith coded message -- lds.org

Articles of Faith badges -- about.com

Articles of Faith Ice Cream Chart -- about.com

Hope you and your family enjoy learning the Articles of Faith

again and again and again :)

Christmas 'Tag'

Several weeks ago a good friend of mine, popped over for a play day....and boy did we play!! ;)

We were chatting about how we wanted to help spread the Christmas cheer into our local communities and to be more unified as church members, and this idea was miraculously born!  Somehow it all came together soooo quickly and we couldn't stop high fiving and squealing with delight to each other (no joke!!).

Materials needed

Tag

Long ribbon

Red sharpie (felt tip)

Sakura Souffle - white (my new found love)

Distress Ink Pad - walnut stain

Christmas 'Tag' poem

1. Write Christmas 'Tag' using the red pen and then use the white Sakura Souffle pen to make snowflakes...this pen is magic, when you write it will be clear but wait for a couple of minutes and it will magically turn white!!! LOVE!!!

2.Then use your distress ink pad to dab along the edges of the tag and the poem, then use a glue stick to attach the poem.

3. Thread through a long piece of ribbon (I love red and white gingham for anything Christmassy) so that the gifts can be attached, mine measured about 50cm.

4. Attach your small gift that can be posted through a letter box eg a christmas decoration, candy canes, chocolate bar, cd, bag of sweets, dvd etc.

5. Next, post your Christmas 'Tag' to your friend, family or someone in your community and quickly run before you get caught!!!  Or you could also put it in a jiffy bag and send it through the post to someone further afield.

And not forgetting (because I almost did, lol!) here's the poem that you need to attach to the back....

In case you can't read that, here it is.....

You've been 'tagged' in this Christmas game,

Now find somebody else to 'tag' the same.

Attach a small gift to post through their door,

And see how the Christmas cheer spreads even more!

This is a great activity to do as a family (my kids love being secret gifts ninjas...yes they hide, crawl, roll just to get to somebody's front door, haha, love it!!!) or youth group and doesn't cost much either, but helps to share the Christmas feeling with everyone.

Merry Christmas....and please let me know how your tagging goes, or if you're a lucky one to get tagged too!! :)

Sweet Words to the Soul

We've been playing this 'game' at the dinner table since February, at first we did it every day and now over time we probably play it just once a week.

It takes no preparation, just a family sitting around a table eating dinner together...and it doesn't even need that!!  We tend to do it when we've finished our meal or when we are waiting for pudding/sweet to be served (that makes us sound posh, like we have servants to tend to our every need, oh how I wish!!)

Anyway back to the real world where my kids are delightful, treat each other nicely and are angels all the time....oh how I wish, lol.  Seriously though as I was reflecting on one of my children's behaviour and how negative comments seemed to be outweighing the positive ones, this idea just popped into my head (I love it when that happens).

The first time we played the game, I told everyone to stay seated after dinner and to look at the person opposite them and say 5 nice things about them and then for the receiver to do the same.  Luckily we have eight people in our family, so we were all paired off.  But if this doesn't work for you, then you could do it so that they say the 'sweet words' to the person to their left??

Some of our children had compliments flying here, there and everywhere...while some were struggling to come up with just one!!  And even then, the so called lovely words were actually being a bit nasty....'Mum, dad, was I ever like this??!!!?'

So the next day we did it again...we heard 'yay, I love this game' vs 'groan, moan, not again!!!'  But it was lovely, as they sat there the words were making them smile inside and out, so that the once grumpy faces were erased.  Soon the negative feelings towards the game changed and everyone was making sure that they sat opposite different members of the family each night so that they could hear what they had to say about them.  Our two youngest children proved to be the most popular to sit opposite, everyone loved being on the receiving end of their compliments as they were sooo from the heart :)

I love hearing my children say nice things to each other, and watching the heart of the receiver soften as they are being said.  It's also nice to stop as a parent and just look at your beautiful child and see them full of goodness no matter what sort of day you've had with them.

The words of Proverbs 16:24 are still true today...

 Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.

For Peace at Home

I can't believe it's been two months since Conference, time is just flying by!!?!  I loved conference and didn't know where to start with the things I've learnt and the FHE's and activities that we've got planned....soooo excited, can you tell??!?  We decided to start with Elder Richard G. Scott's talk entitled 'For Peace at Home'.

As Elder Scott spoke the words below in his talk an image popped into my head and I sketched it down in my notebook so that I wouldn't forget.

I’m sure you can identify the fundamental principles that center your home on the Savior. The prophetic counsel to have daily personal andfamily prayer, daily personal and family scripture study, and weekly family home evening are the essential, weight-bearing beams in the construction of a Christ-centered home. Without these regular practices it will be difficult to find the desired and much-needed peace and refuge from the world.

I'm still not super duper at doing graphic images but I'm good at sharing (lol) and hopefully getting better at it as I go?!!  Well this is what I came up with.

to download file

click here

We used this talk as our guide tonight for FHE, there was sooo much in the talk that we could focus on, and I didn't want to leave any of it out, so I broke it up into smaller bite size chunks/topics so that the kids could take it all in.

I stuck a picture of the Saviour in the centre of a piece of paper and after we had read each of the quotes from the talk, we discussed them and then wrote on the paper what we could do to make Christ the centre of our home.

This is now stuck on our kitchen door as a reminder of what we are going to try to do to make our home more peaceful (here's hoping!!) and Christ centered.

For the activity at the end of the lesson, everyone got a strawberry lace and we put a big bowl of Cheerios in the middle of us all.  One by one we had to say something that made us 'cheery' (aka happy), and then we could put one cheerio on our lace...we set a time limit of 5 minutes to do it, so everyone was trying to think of things to say as quickly as they could.

It started off well with the kids saying things and quickly threading on their Cheerio so that they were ready for their next go.  It was only as we were half way through the game that the older kids noticed that every time they were saying something my three year old was repeating it and handing a Cheerio to his dad to thread on...hence his lace had lots more than the others, then everybody just went for it and shouted out lots of 'cheery' things with no waiting this time...it was really funny, and we had such good giggle at it all.

I really enjoyed the lesson and game tonight, but more so the game...it wasn't particularly peaceful, but hopefully we heard some of the things that makes others in our family happy, and will look for ways to make them cheery in the future.  Playing the game was easy, but the further it went on, the harder it got...but as I heard some of my children's answers it made me reflect on lots of wonderful things in my life that have brought me so much happiness and joy.  We are all so blessed in so many different ways, we've just got to stop, look and think and we will find things that make us 'cheery', no matter what our circumstances  :)

Scriptural Easter Egg Hunt

I've been asked to cover my Primary's music time this Sunday and thought I'd do an Easter Egg Hunt, so I cut out some brightly card into an egg shape and wrote different songs on...I had some left over and thought I could use them for us tomorrow to help us read the Easter story.

I looked in John chapter 20 to see what verses etc I could group together and write on the eggs and couldn't decide as it was all so lovely (cheesy but true).  So I grouped them according to the six paragraphs already highlighted in the King James Version.

Egg 1 - John 20:1-10; Egg 2 - John 20:11-18; Egg 3 - John 20:19-23

Egg 4 - John 20:24-25; Egg 5 - John 20:26-29; Egg 6 - John 20:30-31

We are going to hide them around the room and one of the children has to find number one first and then we will read/discuss those scriptures and then we can find the next one etc...once we've read them all the children can then hunt for their chocolate eggs.

Happy Easter everyone xx

Two Instant FHE games

I think I've got a bit of a wild imagination as I regularly conjure up games out of nowhere for our kids to play after our FHE lessons...though this only occurs when my brain is actually in a fairly functional mode, lol!! ;)

You need no preparation and no supplies, so you can play them in an instant.  The two games are entitled....Sleeping Lamanites and Are you Reverent??

The idea for this game came from the story found in Mosiah 24 where the Lord made the Lamanites sleepy so that Alma and his people could escape.  

 19 And in the morning the Lord caused a ^adeep sleep to come upon the Lamanites, yea, and all their task-masters were in a profound sleep.

Basically the aim of the game is for a Nephite to sneak pass all the 'sleeping' Lamanites on the floor without waking them up and escape from the city....aka get from one side of the room to the other without being detected by the people lying on the floor.  

The Lamanites lay face down with their eyes shut (no peeking!) and they are allowed one 'twitch' each...a 'twitch' is when they move their arm or leg to try to touch the passing Nephite (very funny to watch by the way).  If they miss that's it, no more twitches for that person....and if somebody does manage to touch the Nephite then they get to be the next one to try to escape the city.  I hope these instructions make sense!?!!

We played this one just this Monday after we'd a rather irreverent day at church, but we have yet to see if it's sowed other thoughts into their heads of crazy things to do during sacrament or whether it's taught them how to sit reverently, hopefully it's the latter!! p.s. I don't expect my kids not to move during church, but hopefully musical chairs is a thing of the past :)

Right how to play...one (or two) people stand at the front, while the rest of the family sprawl themselves across the settee doing things that aren't particularly reverent...eg fingers in ears, upside down, on phone, sleeping etc.

The one/two ask those on the settee "Are you reverent??", to which everyone should respond in unison "No!!"...of course, you always get someone that answers 'yes'.

Then they have a certain amount of time (we chose a minute) to get them looking reverent either by physically moving them or by giving instructions eg turn round, feet down, fold arms etc...the latter worked better for the younger ones.

We have really enjoyed playing these simple games together over the years and hopefully will have many more years of them to come, and maybe your family will enjoy them too??!

I am a Child of God games

'Build a Beetle' is one of our family favourite games, so I thought I'd change it a bit to coincide with this years Primary theme, and we love it!!  Click on the link below to download the game and the instructions and get drawing some crazy stick people :)

Click here to download files for

I am a child of God game and Instructions

If you would like an easier version of the game, I found a similar type of game on Pinterest.  I downloaded the image and then typed the words above... 

gingerbread dice game

kinziekreations

I laminated both games to make them more durable and to save on photocopying...and the added bonus is that my kids love using the felt tips and then rubbing them out...the simplest of things amuse my kids!!?!

I am a child of God Totes

Include a die and felt tips and you have a great pressie and activity for all ages.  If you want to be extra crafty you can also make a 'I am a child of God' tote for the game to go in too.

Nephite vs Lamanite game

This game is basically naughts and crosses but with Nephites and Lamanites on the reverse side of the relevant symbols.  I made a drawstring bag to keep the playing pieces in with the square grid printed on one side and the title of the game on the other.

This is what it looked like on my computer screen.  I then printed them off onto my calico fabric using my 'How to print onto fabric using your printer' post as a guide.  Just a note when making yours, make sure you leave enough space around the edge to allow for seam allowance and more space/fabric at the top so that you can make it into a drawstring bag.  I also used the same technique for printing the cartoon images and lettering.

Unfortunately I can't share my file of this as I got my pictures from a disc I bought years ago called 'LDS Clips 10,000' by Inspire Graphics :(  But hopefully there might be some free ones that you can download on the web??

I made this for my sister's family for Christmas and they love it, now I've just got to crack on and finish making the one for us.  It makes a great family gift and doesn't cost too much for the materials etc...just takes a bit of time (and love) to get it made :)  It's also super for a FHE game and a Sunday activity.

Sunday 'cans'

I was buying for my sister (and her family) this Christmas, and she said she'd like some 'reverent' toys and activities for a Sunday.  So I looked through my pins on Pinterest to get some inspiration, and got loads, now which ones to choose!?!??! 

I decided to do some Sunday 'cans'...a small 'can' full of ideas of activities that can be done on a Sunday, plus a big 'can' that can be used to store games/book/activities etc.  I used the tutorial below from 'Shabby Beach Nest' blog to help with the general idea for making my lollipop sticks for the smaller can.

Shabby Beach Nest

101 Idea 'I'm Bored' Jar

I used some ideas from the Friend magazine to help come up with a list of activities that were appropriate for a Sunday....

20 Things to Do on Sunday

Flannel Board Sunday Box

Sunday Box: Sunday Can  

The 'Sunday Cans' labels and list of ideas can be downloaded below and then printed on your chosen paper or card.

Sunday Cans File

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD

Cut the paper into equal strips, then apply lots of DIY Mod Podge to the back of the paper/card strip...

Hold the large lollipop stick and the wet paper/card strip up to the light/window and line them up so that the words are central and push together hard, smoothing all out bumps.  Then lay them out to dry.

Once dry, trim off any excess paper using scissors and then brush around the edge with sandpaper, it gives them a nicer finish as you can see from the lollipop sticks as the top of the photo below.

I made some blank sticks as well so that my sister could write on activities/ideas that I hadn't listed.  

For the cans, I used my DIY Mod Podge again to stick the card to them, and then I brushed the Mod Podge all over the top of the card too, just to make sure they were stuck on real tight...and they're done!! :)

He Truly Loves Us

What a giggle we had last tonight for FHE, it was one of those good ones....so here goes :)

Some of the children have been using rude and cheeky words to each other (nothing too serious, in case you're worrying, or wondering), which hasn't made for a nice atmosphere in the home when they've been said, so we decided we needed a conference talk that was apt for this....and Paul E. Koelliker of the Seventy's talk jumped out at me, maybe it had something to do with the title 'He Truly Loves Us'.

I shared how Elder Koelliker had spent some time with two missionaries and as they were reflecting on their day and the people they had met they had these 3 questions....but before I read the quote below I asked everyone to listen for 3 concerns that the missionaries had-

 “How can we help each individual develop a desire to know more about Heavenly Father? How do we help them feel His Spirit? How can we help them know that we love them?”

I actually ended up having to read this 3 times as the two youngest children kept being a distraction (nothing out of the norm there then)...but we got the right answers in the end.  We then jumped to the next story about another couple of missionaries that knocked on somebody's door and got this reaction -

The door opened, and a rather large man greeted them in a less-than-friendly voice: “I thought I told you not to knock on my door again. I warned you before that if you ever came back, it would not be a pleasant experience. Now leave me alone.” He quickly closed the door.

 We talked about how these Elders would have felt and what their reaction could have been....and then we read what they did -

As the elders walked away, the older, more experienced missionary put his arm on the younger missionary’s shoulder to comfort and encourage him. Unknown to them, the man watched them through the window to be sure they understood his message...as he witnessed the expression of kindness between the two missionaries, his heart was instantly softened. He reopened the door and asked the missionaries to come back and share their message with him.

As we discussed how this simple action of Christlike love helped to share the gospel, we shared how our thoughts, actions and words can be an example to others....and now this is where all the giggling begun with our game.

We had one of the children sit at the front of the room with a headband on...or in our case a length of spotted fleece, while another child handed out one small piece of card and pen to each family member.  All of us had to then write a nice word at the top of our card that described the person sat at the front.

One by one we put our card in the headband and tried to describe the word by sharing things the person does to be the word we had chosen and then the person wearing the headband would have to try and guess what the word was...it was lovely to hear everyone share different examples of how this person was being a good example to them, and it was also great because everybody was using good words towards each other...and the children couldn't wait to picked to go next.

You might be wondering where all the giggling came from but we laughed because the fleecy headband made people's hair go funny and kept slipping down, some of the explanations of words were hilarious as were the guesses....I think we will have to remember to play this game again sometime soon, and not just to get our kids to use nice words but to have a good old laugh together :)

We summed the evening up by reminding everyone that we can be good missionaries through the way we act and the words we use, and that through these simple everyday things we can feel His love as will others around us.

Our Top 10 Rainy Day Activities

 I'm really hoping the sun will shine for the whole  two weeks of half term but I have a feeling that the  'April Showers' will make an appearance soon :(  So I find it really handy to have a few games/activities that are quick and easy, and will help to disperse the feelings of cabin fever....even if it's only for a few minutes.  Below are mine and the kids top 10...and they work, most of the time!!

1. Keep Fit Stations - make several posters of different fun exercises that kids can do and then stick them around the house...put some music on and let the kids go from one station to the next.

2. Spring Cleaning - give the kids a wet rag each, and ask them to wipe down surfaces, doors and skirting etc....I know it sounds like slave labour but my kids love it!!  And if they are a bit older, give them the real cleaning sprays...my kids go to town when they have these and clean everything in sight...I actually have to ask them to stop, would you believe it!!
3. Make their own board games - stick several pieces of paper together to make a large game board, give the kids some felt tips/crayons and let them go for it.  We've had princess, aliens, trivia and not quite sure what games :)  Some of ours are still being used a couple of years on.

4. Wallpaper murals - Get a roll of plain lining paper and unroll it and let the kids draw a never-ending mural...and what's wonderful is they can keep going to their hearts content.  It's also great for them to show you what they've been learning at school, my kids did one and then took it to school to show in assembly....if I'd realised this was the outcome I wouldn't have been so flamboyant in my drawings, hahaa!
5. Movie time - an all-time classic, we rearrange the furniture, put on a movie, turn down the lights, and cuddle up with treats and popcorn....and you might even be able to sneak in a little nap too, woohoo!!
6. Card and craft making - make and decorate a card for a relative, neighbour or friend, then post it when the sun comes out...or let the kids go crazy with your recycling, some glue and sticky tape.
7.  Baking - I can't say I've done alot of baking with all 6 kids at once, normally only a few are interested at the time...but all six have enjoyed the finished product, mmmmm!!
8. Build a tent - yep, you've guessed it, get all the blankets, duvets and a stash load of pegs and turn an area/room into a soft, comfortable but somewhat haphazard tent. 
9. Lunch abroad - eat your lunch/snack in a room you wouldn't normally, the kids will love the change of location and hopefully you will squeal with excitement too.
10. Invite friends over - I know this might seem like you are putting more fuel on the fire, but 90% of the time this actually works out for the best...my house has actually been quieter and calmer with 11 kids than it is with my 6!!!  Who would have thought it!!?!?!

I hope you and your brood have fun during the upcoming April showers??!!?  
Good luck :)