The Iron Rod FHE...a repeat :)

Hey everyone!  How are you all doing this week?  We are surviving ;)

The sickness that everyone has been dealing with hit us last week, and yesterday...it finally got me!  My husband knew it was bad when I told him at 6 last night I didn't have anything prepared for FHE...SO not like me ;)  Thankfully, he is awesome and in tune so we ended up watching a conference talk our bishop had mentioned at tithing settlement and having a great discussion on it.  

HOWEVER, if you are following along with us on our quest to delve into the Book of Mormon, I wanted to repost a lesson we did months ago that would have been perfect to do last night.  This week we should have been learning about Lehi's Dream and the Tree of Life.  We did this super fun, simple activity to help our kids better understand the dream, and the Iron Rod.

  To start off I made this printable that we will have displayed for the rest of the week as our FHE reminder.

Since our kids are still very young, we tried to keep it very simple.  I found some great clip art HERE that worked perfectly for us.  I had my girls color all the pictures and cut them out.  Then as we
discussed what each part of the dream symbolized we taped it up on our magnet board.  We talked a lot about how important it is to hold to the iron rod and stay on the straight and narrow path.  Then we did a great activity to drive the concept home just a little bit more :)

I got a big, yellow rope we had in our basement and tied it to our front door.  Then we blindfolded the kids, spun them around a few times, and WITHOUT holding the rope told them to find the front door.  It was so funny to watch them...but really poignant too.  They were all going in the wrong direction, tripping over their own feet, and always scared to take the next step.  Not one of them was even CLOSE to the door when they took their blindfolds off.

Then we blindfolded the kids again, but this time I had a big yellow rope tied to the door handle.  Paul held the other end so the rope was tight and the kids were able to hold the "Iron Rod" all the way to the door.  Even though they were still blindfolded they pretty much ran to the door with no hesitation!

I loved those precious smiles when they reached their destination!!

I love object lessons...they just really strike a chord with me.  It was so interesting for me to correlate the fear my kids felt when they had nothing to hold on to and weren't sure which way to go.  Then to see the sheer confidence and joy they possessed when they were holding fast to the rope...it became so clear to me.  Life is always going to be hard, scary and difficult.  But by following the word of God, we are able to leave the fear behind and embrace the plan our Heavenly Father has in store for us.  I bore testimony to my children that I have the same desire Lehi had...for ALL of my family to partake of the precious fruit, the gift of eternal life.  And the way to do that is by holding fast to the Iron Rod and staying on the straight and narrow path.

Once we were ready for dessert all that talk about fruit was getting to me...so we made our families favorite fruit dip to go with some sliced up apples :)  I got this recipe out of a ward cookbook...aren't those always the best ones?!

Thank you so much for checking out Blue Skies Ahead today!  Please leave a comment if you have any great FHE's that have been a success in your home!  I am always looking for creative and interesting ways to get my kids excited about the gospel :)