Jonah and the Whale Family Home Evening

 

Today for FHE we focused on something that my little family could use some work on...the principle of obedience.  To help learn about that principle we taught the kids the story of Jonah and the Whale.

I made the printable above to hang up in our kitchen all week long so we can ask ourselves..."WHALE" you choose to be obedient?  

He he...I thought that was so clever ;)  My husband just thinks I'm a dork :)

This FHE did take some prep work, but you could definitely do without some of this stuff.  I knew I would use it later in the week for our ocean life theme so I didn't mind putting in a little more effort than usual ;)

First up, I got a few clothes pins and painted them different colors.  Then I printed out pics of my kids and glued their heads onto the clothes pins :)  My kids really got a kick out of these...I think we will be using these a lot more in the future!

I thought it would be fun to make a whale that we could play with and act out the story of Jonah with.  I originally thought of making one using a paper bag, but wanted something I could cut a mouth in.  Thanks to the wonderful world wide web I found a great idea in THIS blog.  I made a few changes to work with what I had, but I overall I think our whale turned out just great!

I just used an empty milk jug and cut a mouth out of the bottom.  Then I stuffed white tissue paper in the top to make the tail and turned him on his side.  I spray-painted the entire thing blue and once it was dry poked a hole in the top and used more white tissue paper to simulate the water spouting out of the blowhole :)  2 eyes later we had our very own Wally the Whale (that's what the kids named him :)

To get started we read the story of Jonah from our Old Testament Stories Book.  If you don't have these books...don't worry!!  You can go online and watch the stories with the illustrations and everything!  You can get the story of Jonah HERE

After we read the story of Jonah we talked about obedience and if Jonah was obedient.  Then we talked about WHY obedience is important and who we should obey.  The kids had a lot of fun taking out little Jonah and putting him in the whale as we read, and then taking him back out and clipping him onto the "dry land" after he repented and obeyed Heavenly Father

Then we did a little activity for the kids.  We let each child take turns going and picking up their clothes pin.  Then we would describe a situation, and if the child had obeyed in that situation they could be clipped on the basket, but if not...into the whale they went!

I always love using real-life situations to help my children understand a principle on their level.  It seems to stick with them longer, and give them a point of reference that we can draw on when the need arises.

Overall it was a quick, but good family home evening!  I love teaching my children from the scriptures and helping them see how they really ARE applicable in our lives.  I love the scriptures and am grateful for the chance I have to bear witness to my children of their truthfulness.

Thank you so much for checking out Blue Skies Ahead!  There have been so many kind comments about our FHE's lately, and I really really appreciate them!  Thank you and have a great day!