Our Fhe Outline

[Guest Swart]

I noticed this part seems to be DEAD! So I thought I would make a post here.

Since my wife and I are both converts to the church, neither of us had a FHE background in what to do and how to run it. At first it was complete chaos but we persisted. The chaos lasted about a year of very irregular FHEs with our kids. Finally, I threw the book out the window and concentrated on having a fun time with the kids. At about that time I was called into primary as a teacher (quite a shock for me at the time), but I managed to learn a few things and put them into practice in FHE. Some of the things I learnt were:

- kids under the age of 8 have at best a 2 minute attention span for anything meaningful.

- kids over 8 probably have a 3 minute attention span

- cater to the youngest without boring the oldest

- delegate responsibility for small things

- short attention getting activities on a regular basis

- use a points system and a rewards system

- food and games go a long way: but only at the end

Once our FHE became FUN. We couldn't miss it. The kids started pestering us for FHE. If fact, they sometimes ask for two in a week!

Our FHE outline

• Fun song
• Opening Prayer
• News time: each family member gets 2 minutes to talk about their week
• What's on this week: A run down on what the family is doing over the next week or two.
• Scripture reading by one of the kids (they choose their own)
• Open discussion time (whatever needs to be discussed, or just what any of the kids want to talk about) 5 minutes but sometimes can go for 2 hours
• 5 minute lesson
• Father's blessings (if requested or needed)
• Closing song Of a spiritual nature
• Closing prayer
• game
• food
• bedtime

[StrawberryFields]

Wow. I sounds like you have this mastered.

[iamalighthouse]

what we do is we each have our own assignment.

1 person- Conducts

2 person- opening song

3 person- opening prayer

4 person- lesson

5 person- family counsel (where we talk about whatever we need to)

6 person- testomony (those who want to share their testimony)

7 person- prayer (we found out 2 songs was too much the kids don't like it)

8 person- activity

9 person- refreshment

we have 11 people in our family i'm 16 the second oldest and then my sister's husband lives with us. we have an agenda that has who does what and it changes every week. and only the people who are old enough to understand what all the categories are are the ones that have an assignment. the two youngest don't.

that's worked for us and if someone has to be gone then we have it without them. we've been doing this for about 4 years.