Family Home Evening Helps: Family Night Themes

With our young children, we have found that short, repetitive lessons provide our most successful family home evenings. One year we devoted 13 weeks to learning the Articles of Faith. Each Monday night we’d discuss the meaning of a particular article of faith. Then the following week we’d practice reciting it every day at breakfast. During the subsequent family night we’d repeat all the Articles of Faith we knew and add the new one. Our Primary-age children soon learned all 13, and our one-year-old even chimed in on “We believe.”

Since we like to choose themes for family night, we have also studied the missionary discussions, the Ten Commandments, President Hinckley’s Six Bs, and the 15 latter-day prophets. The Gospel Art Picture Kit (item no. 34730; U.S. $30.00) makes this last idea particularly easy to implement since the back of each picture contains information about each prophet. The pictures could also be checked out from your meetinghouse library.

Successful family home evenings don’t necessarily require a lot of advance preparation. Your family may want to add more activities, but we have found that starting with simple lessons helps us to gather consistently each Monday night.

Anita Wells, Aspen Hills Ward, Sandy Utah Granite South Stake

Illustrated by Beth Whittaker