Family Home Evening Helps: Homemade Games

My family has found that personalized, homemade games can be a fun way to teach the gospel, focus on family heritage, and strengthen family bonds.

With a little preparation, your family can enjoy several word and name games. You can use words from gospel vocabulary and titles of hymns and Primary songs. You can also write down words, names, or short references to stories from the standard works. Another idea is to use the names of heroes from world and Church history, as well as names of your extended family and ancestors. With this last game, try to go back several generations, and have fun looking up any ancestors you aren’t familiar with.

For each of these games, write the applicable words or names individually on craft sticks or small pieces of paper and have a timer on hand. Each round is played for a minute or two, and most of these games can be played four different ways:

• Divide into teams and describe as many words as you can in the time allowed as your teammates try to guess the words.

• Use charades to act out the gospel words or the people in your family.

• Mold in clay an item for others to guess.

• Divide into two teams, and have a player from each team draw the concepts while team members guess for points.

For all of these games, the team with the most correctly guessed words after a few rounds of play wins. Your family can determine any special rules and the reward for winning. But everyone wins when family time is strengthened with simple activities like these that make gospel learning fun.

Melodie M. Webb, Utah

Illustration by Beth Whittaker