What I love teaching my children

Elder Richard G. Scott has said, "Great power can come from memorizing scriptures.  To memorize a scripture is to forge a new friendship.  It is like discovering a new individual who can help in time of need, give inspiration and comfort, and be a source of motivation for needed change."

We always have a scripture that we are memorizing, because I have had this happen with the scriptures that I have memorized and have a testimony of this! Plus, I have always loved teaching my children.  This is what our white board looks like right now:

Usually we have the scripture written smaller so that we can write other things on the board that we want to remember or focus on during family scriptures and devotional, but this is a longer memorize than usual!  Also we are learning all of the Articles of Faith again because we haven't worked on them since Maddie was younger.  I was inspired to do this by my younger sister, Heidi, who has eight children (and one on the way this month!)  She says that all of her kids down to her two year old have all of the Articles of Faith memorized.  I'm not doing as well, because my four year old only knows some words here and there - we must not do them often enough - but Nolan and Isabelle now know through #6!

I love the hymns and the primary songs and feel that they are a form of scripture.  It seems that throughout my life these songs have popped into my head at the most opportune times helping me through discouraging times, mundane times, unmotivated times, and even helping me express myself during times of gratitude or great happiness!

Sunday during Sacrament Meeting, Nolan was sitting beside me as we sang, "Put Your Shoulder To the Wheel".  He didn't know all of the words, but I could see that he really enjoyed that song!  And I thought to myself that perhaps that could be a good song for him because lately he is somewhat of a....shirker:)

Soooo, for FHE we worked to begin getting that song into ALL of our heads!

This is something that I used to do with Kami, Caden and Maddie when they were small.  We memorized even more hymns this way than I had remembered - they were reminding me of more and more.  Some of the ones I remember learning this way are: "Joseph Smith's First Prayer", "Count Your Blessings", "Let Us Oft Speak Kind Words", and "All Creatures of Our God and King".

We don't do anything elaborate, I just read the hymn and as the kids see a picture in their mind, they volunteer to draw a picture of a particular phrase from the song.  Then we place them in order on some card stock, and start singing the song once per day while a young "helper" points to each picture in a timely way.

The kids drew up some pretty cute prompts! Abram's: I wrote the word "help" in bubble letter and boy did he go to town getting it all colored up!:

Isabelle's: look at the "shirker" on the hammock:)

Caden's "push every worthy work along":

Shawn's "the fight with sin is real (above) and Kami's "It will be long, but must go on" (below):

Nolan's "With all your might and zeal" (above) - check out those muscles!! and Nolan's "put your shoulder to the wheel" (below):

Maddie's ;Then don't stand idly looking on (above) and Belle's below:

Belle's

Aren't those darling?  I love it!  And this hymn is becoming a new friend already:)