I ran across some ideas the other day that I thought would be easy for any last minute Family Home Evenings or Primary Singing Times.
1. Candy Cane Fishing - Make a simple fishing line and hook (pipe cleaners work!!), put numbered candy canes in a glass, and a child fishes one out. The numbers can correspond to certain songs, or questions about The Nativity.
2. Christmas Bells Matching Game - Have 2 sets of 12 Hershey's Kisses with numbers 1-12 written on the bottom. Sing Christmas Bells (CS 54). Each child gets one or two tries to find a set of matching numbers on the bottom of your bells. Once all the matches are made, have 12 pictures having to do with the story of Jesus' birth. Whoever has 1 tells about picture number one, and so on.
3. Christmas Card Puzzles- Let the children cut up old Christmas cards into 10-12 pieces (4-5 pieces for younger children). Have them put their Christmas Puzzle in a Ziploc bag and pass to another family member. Who can put their puzzle together the fastest?? After, have each family member share a favorite memory about Christmas or something they love about the story of Jesus' birth. Switch puzzles and repeat a few times!!
4. Christmas is the Best! Jenga - Each family member shares their favorite part of Christmas before they remove their block! If you have older children, you can add a small letter sticker to some blocks, so when they pull out a block with, say a T, they have to come up with a Christmas word starting with T... like treats or temple where baby Jesus was presented!
" Sometimes it seems that our efforts to have a perfect Christmas season are like a game of Jenga—you know, the one played with small wooden blocks that are precariously stacked up to a tower. As we try to increase the height of the tower, we pull out one wooden block before we can place it on top of the delicate structure.
Each of those little wooden blocks is a symbol of the perfect Christmas events we so desperately want to have. We have in our minds a picture of how everything should be—the perfect tree, the perfect lights, the perfect gifts, and the perfect family events. We might even want to re-create some magical moment we remember from Christmases past, and nothing short of perfection will do.
Sooner or later, something unpleasant occurs—the wooden blocks tumble, the drapes catch fire, the turkey burns, the sweater is the wrong size, the toys are missing batteries, the children quarrel, the pressure rises—and the picture-perfect Christmas we had imagined, the magic we had intended to create, shatters around us. As a result, the Christmas season is often a time of stress, anxiety, frustration, and perhaps even disappointment.
But then, if we are only willing to open our hearts and minds to the spirit of Christmas, we will recognize wonderful things happening around us that will direct or redirect our attention to the sublime. It is usually something small—we read a verse of scripture; we hear a sacred carol and really listen, perhaps for the first time, to its words; or we witness a sincere expression of love. In one way or another, the Spirit touches our hearts, and we see that Christmas, in its essence, is much more sturdy and enduring than the many minor things of life we too often use to adorn it." President Uchtdorf Of Curtains, Contentment, and Christmas 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment