Making Lessons Work

Trying to make family home evening—especially the lesson—more meaningful to our three teenage children, we held a family council to analyze the positive and negative aspects of our present procedure. Our children complained that they had already learned and relearned most of the material in Primary, Sunday School, and seminary classes. So we took a new approach.

When lesson time came, my husband presented the subject, expressed his feelings on its importance, and then had the children tell us everything they knew about it, agreeing to count it as a completed lesson if they could cover all the points in the manual. It was amazing what happened! The challenge of trying to remember everything put new sparkle into our discussions. It was enlightening for us to realize how much they did know, and enlightening for them to find out how much they didn’t know. They took pride in sharing their knowledge with us and listened with fresh interest as we covered vague areas. Lesson time soon became our family’s favorite part of the evening.—Sara Brown Neilson, Sierra Madre, California