Prayer Sandwich

{Last night's FHE visual aid. Clearly we start at the bottom with the sandwich and work our way up.}

A few months ago, we decided to take on the following quote from The Family: A Proclamation to the World to be our own Family Motto:

Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.

For Scripture Time in February, we used the first sentence of this motto and in March moved onto the second.  Moving forward, I thought it would be a good idea to focus each month on the 9 principles outlined in the motto.  Last month, for April, we focused on Faith in our FHE lessons and Grace chose Mark 11:22 as our scripture for the month.  For one of our FHE lessons, we dressed the kids up in the "full armor of God" and talked specifically about having a shield of faith.  I really should have taken pictures!  The "armor" I scrounged up consisted of a knit hat for the helmet, an apron for a loin cloth, an old fleece vest of Scott's for the breastplate, rain boots for shod feet, my rolling stick for a sword, and a giant saucer sled for the shield.  I will be interested to see if they remember anything about this lesson other than how funny everyone looked dressed up as they each took turns.  Haha.

{Scripture Time occurs each morning before the kids rush off to school and consists of repeating our scripture of the month, singing a hymn that goes along with the scripture, and doing prayers and hugs.  Short and sweet.  Kind of like me.  Hahahahaha.  Each month I have a different kid pick out our new scripture.  In theory, they would do this prayerfully so as to learn how to follow the promptings of the spirit.  In actuality, I usually guide them to a scripture that will work/just choose it for them.}

For the month of May, we are focusing on Prayer and Sophie has chosen Mark 11:24 --

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

 Technically, it kind of still refers to faith, but it does talk about praying and this is what Sophie chose, so we're going with it!  {Not so coincidentally, it's only a couple verses down from Grace's scripture last month.  Haha.}  As I alluded to yesterday, last night's lesson was on learning how to pray.  We talked about how saying a prayer is like building a sandwich -- we start by addressing our Father in Heaven and end in the name of Jesus Christ, with everything in between divided between giving thanks and asking for blessings.  Pretty simple.  And I technically recycled the idea from the lesson I taught in Jane's primary class a month or so ago.  I will say that drawing out all the sandwich ingredients and involving the younger ones in holding up the pictures engaged everyone a WHOLE lot more than I expected it to.  And even though I could see Ethan rolling his eyes over on the couch, he was still listening -- AND EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY not causing any distractions or freak-outs while I was teaching the lesson.  All in all it was a family home evening for the record books!  Hahaha.  Feel free to steal my idea.  :)

{This month's song for Scripture Time is Did You Think To Pray, in case anyone is wondering.}