Super Reader FHE

If you haven't heard of the show "Super Why" this is nowhere near as cool.  But, my boys love the show and I was inspired yesterday to have a little Super Why activity.  At first I thought maybe for primary, but then changed my mind to use it for FHE.  It was a hit with the boys :)  I cut out some green foam masks just like Super Why's and planned the lesson to be a whole adventure with finding our own "super story answer" by looking in a book.  Our story was from President Monson's talk on Sunday in General Conference about when he was young and started a fire with his friend even though he wasn't supposed to.  So, when we got to the part of the story where the fire was out of control, we identified that as our "super big problem!"

The boys put on their super reader masks and we "flew" together into a book.  Which happened to be the Book of Mormon. 

Look at the excitement on Brayden's face!

We used a story from the area we've been reading and it was about when Jesus came to the Nephites. 
The story starts with a big storm and thunder, so Brayden helped me with some flickering lights.  Then it was dark for 3 days, so we closed the bathroom door and were in pitch black.  We decided it was scary and we should help the story by finding a flashlight.  Low and behold, there were super letters with the flashlight! Go figure.  We were on our way to our super story answer!

The next part of the story was when they heard the voice of the Lord and wished they had repented and come unto him before.  So, we found out biggest picture of Jesus and went to him.  More super letters were waiting to be found!

Then we got to the part when they couldn't understand the voice of the Lord until they listened.  So, we looked to a picture of Christ on the wall for our next letters. 

Finally, the people heard Heavenly Father introduce Jesus and he came to the temple.  So, I explained that Jesus was there where they could see him and they could see how tall he was. . . the next letters were on their ducky measuring thing hanging on their wall.  And we finally had all the super letters from this story.  We had to review that the story was about people who had to repent and listen to Jesus in order to find peace and happiness. 

Off we went to the super duper computer where we put our letters in order and found our super story answer! dun dun dun. . .

OBEDIENCE!!  But why?  Because if President Monson had been obedient he wouldn't have gotten in trouble with the fire.  Then we watched the 45 second clip on lds.org from Monson's talk and raised our hands whenever he said "obedience/obedient."

General Conference

Another successful General Conference this past weekend.  You just can't beat hearing living scripture from a living prophet and apostles all weekend long! Of course, I can't pretend that I really listened to all of it because Motherhood doesn't stop even for other important things.  However, I lived up to my goal after last conference and re-read all the talks over again at least once, so I am determined to do it again.  The things that stand out in my mind are:
- Perry's talk on Agency and Obedience
- what I do is important because I am important (from Elaine S. Dalton)
- and that we should go out of our way to be a true friend (can't remember who said that).  Due to an experience today I translated into we should go out of our way to do what's right.
- and due to my calling as primary chorister, I also quite enjoyed the phrase "children who sing are happy children" which was from one of the Seventy on Sunday afternoon - Falabella or something like that. 
 I really should just go get my notebook and look up who said everything, but it's good memory practice to see what stands out :)

Anyway, conference has messages for everyone in every circumstance, so if you weren't fortunate enough to watch it during the weekend, go look it up now!  In fact, you can just click here for a shortcut.  You will receive peace, comfort, direction and answers.  Kind of important stuff.

I went a little overboard in my planning this session, but I actually liked it.  I learned a few things to make it even better last time, but I loved having so many snacked planned and ready and changing them up every session to keep our tummy and mouths happy too. I tried having mostly healthy snacks available all the time and all the sweets were "listening treats" for if they heard specific things (like Jesus, family, prayer and temple and music).  I did learn that I had too many listening treats the first session and we tried just one at a time for the other sessions. I also tried to have several activities, but I learned that we need to review the activities before conference next time because I didn't want to sit and explain things to the boys once it started.

Here's some of our setup and snacks.  And here's a special thanks to my special boys for enabling us to watch as much as we did!  They are great boys.  It elated me to hear Brayden shout with joy when he would see the prophet!

Saturday snacks

Treat snacks.  The pictures reminded us what to listen for.  The hugs were if the speaker got emotional.  The snickers were for when a speaker made people laugh :)

We borrowed the seminary cords so we could watch on our big screen.

Our apostle activity found from lds.org (I enlarged it a bit)

A little bike practice in between sessions Saturday while Zander napped.

Our completed conference activity

 We had fun with the Bells again too.  It was nice for our kids to be able to have some extra interaction on long days in front of the TV :)  And it was nice for us to share a special time with some good friends too!