Family Home Evening Lesson Idea

Last night for our family home evening lesson, I wanted to teach a lesson about scripture study to children ages 4, 7, and 8. I was trying to think hard about what kind of object lesson might grab their attention. After some pondering, I had an inspiration.

I asked the children to write instructions for something they knew how to do that they thought was kind of complicated. The instructions had to have at least ten steps. The 4-year-old doesn't write yet, so I had him draw pictures (he drew a person putting up a force-field to deflect grenades and bombs... that's certainly a complicated thing to do!).

When everyone was done, I had them read their instructions out loud. Then, I started to ask the following questions:

1. Are there steps in your list that if someone doesn't know how to do, they would have to learn first?
2. If the person your teaching won't learn those prerequisite steps, will you still give them these instructions? Why not?
3. Once someone is ready for these instructions, can they learn them just by reading them? Will they be able to really understand without actually trying them out?
4. How will you feel if the learner asks for help if they obviously haven't even read these instructions?
5. How will you feel if the learner asks for help if they aren't making any effort to understand and try out the instructions?
6. How will the learner's questions be different once they've really learned the instructions and tried to do them? On a related note, how will their ability to understand your answers be improved?

Both of the older children were able to think about these questions and understand the ideas. We had a good discussion (and we let the 4-year-old continue to draw his grenades). Then, it became fairly easy to apply these things to the scriptures.

1. Before God can teach us certain principles, we have to learn more basic ones.
2. If we can't learn the basic ones first, He cannot give us more light and knowledge
3. We won't learn principles by just reading, or even studying; we must apply
4. God is hesitant to answer our prayers before we've exercised faith through studying the answers he's already given us
5. He would really like us to have given the existing Word some real thought and attempts to obey it
6. Once we've worked hard to know the existing Word and apply it, our prayers will be more meaningful because the questions we ask will be more appropriate, and our minds will be more prepared for His answers.

It was a really nice Family Home Evening and the children enjoyed both the activity and the subsequent discussion. As a side note, it fits well with the "Preach my Gospel" chapter on effective scripture study.

And we topped it all off with Daddy's homemade pumpkin pie (from scratch!). Can't get much better than that!