FHE Tips and Tricks: The Schedule

At the beginning of 2013, I decided I'd had enough of the "who is in charge of planning FHE tonight?" game. About a week into the new year, I received a prompting on how to fix that problem and make our FHE a more regular occurrence with less frustration and contention. 

To be clear, this piece of inspiration was 50% the Spirit and 50% how my mom ran our home when I was growing up. Every month, she would type up a schedule with our FHE assignments: prayers, songs, lesson (as well as topic), and treat. My dad, as the patriarchal priesthood leader in our home, was always in charge of calling us together and conducting the evening (but we all knew Mom was really in charge). My mom started doing this in my early teen years. Even though she and my dad are now empty nesters, it always warms my heart to go to their home and see their FHE schedule on the fridge.

It seemed sort of pointless to me, however, to assign out all those things when it was just Scott and I and baby Kevin. So I decided, why stop with a month? Why not plan out a whole year of lessons? And our FHE schedule was born. 

How to put together an FHE schedule in five easy steps:

1. Pick a theme

Starting in December, Scott and I start brainstorming ideas for themes. A theme could be anything from a family scripture to a motto or a quote. Our first year our theme was "Establish a House" and we used the scripture found in D&C 88:119. Little did we know that we would be buying our first home that fall. In 2014, we chose a favorite scripture: Mosiah 2:41, "Consider on the Blessed and Happy State of those that Keep the Commandments of God." Let me tell you, I needed that reminder of the blessings and happiness that come from keeping the commandments as I spent 2/3 of that year miserably pregnant. This year we decided to take our theme from Preach My Gospel: "My Purpose." We both knew our purpose as missionaries, but we have been blessed to take these words and change them from not just helping others come unto Christ, but helping our children come until Christ. And, when I created our schedule during the first week of January, I didn't know that three months later we would both be serving in new (and rather large, daunting, missionary-work-centric) callings. There is an inspiration that comes as we prayerfully select our themes. We do not know what our years have in store when we start them in January, but our Heavenly Father knows our needs perfectly.

2. Split the the Theme into monthly topics

Once we found our theme, I took the scripture (or saying, in this year's case), and broke it down into monthly topics. For example, when our theme scripture was D&C 88:119, this is how our year was planned out:

January: Organize Yourselves
February: Prepare Every Needful Thing
March: Establish a House
April: A House of Prayer
May: A House of Fasting
June: A House of Faith
July: A House of Celebration (as you can see, I modified things a bit!)
August: A House of Learning
September: A House of Glory
October: A House of Order
November: A House of Gratitude
December: A House of God

In 2014, we followed a similar pattern and broke the scripture up into phrases, focusing on a phrase or principle each month. This year we have broken our theme (My Purpose) into the basic topics of the gospel, filing in with the other lessons from Preach My Gospel as needed. 

3. Schedule out the dates for the entire year:

Before I break into finding lesson topics, I find it is easiest to write out the dates of every Monday underneath our monthly topic. This way I know how many Mondays we have to plan for and can consider things like birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.

4. Fill in the dates with FHE Tradition Nights 

There are certain Family Home Evening lessons and activities that have become annual occurences for us. These include: 

• Goal setting on the first Monday of the year
• A lesson dedicated to our yearly theme (the second week of the year)
• An emergency preparedness lesson in February
• A General Conference Review the Monday after conference in April and October
• A family service project night (usually in May)
• A family faith walk (usually in June)
• A trivia game night (usually in August)
• A family readathon (usually in September)
• A home organization evening (usually in October)
• A "Thankful Chart" creation lesson in the first week of November
• Our gifts to Jesus lesson, held a week or two before Christmas
• A Year in Review lesson on the last Monday of the year
• Birthday lessons (sometimes this is a lesson about a certain person in our family, sometimes it just means that the birthday boy or girl gets to pick a special activity)
• Bucket list activity nights (where we look at the activities we wanted to do together during the year and go do one of them)

We also take one night a month to focus on a specific type of lesson. In 2013-2014, we used these as Family History nights. For the first year, we just talked about people in our family history. For the second year, we focused on our eight grandparents. Most of the time, these lessons were our failures. The family history lessons were the first ones to go when something came up (like a special challenge from the bishop or a local activity we wanted to do instead, or a home improvement project that needed doing). When they did happen, they were wonderful. 

This year, in an effort to include Kevin in the teaching portions of our family home evening, we decided to only hold one Family History lesson (in June, after I attend a family history conference with my mom's side of the family). Instead, she is in charge of teaching one lesson a month which focuses on a scripture story that relates to our monthly theme. She and I take a few minutes that day to pick a picture out of the gospel art book or talk about something she learned in nursery the day before that she would like to share her testimony about. Last week she gave the lesson on prophets. Usually this ends up being more of a question and answer session, where she holds a picture and we talk about the story or principle, but she has a sense of ownership over these nights that I think is important. Once Sly gets a little older (aka able to at least listen if not sit still through an entire FHE lesson) he will have a chance to teach some of these lessons also.

5. Plan lesson topics and assign teachers

Using the monthly themes, fill in the rest of the Mondays for that month. For us, this usually means that we plan 2-3 theme-related lessons per month. We simply alternate whose turn it is to teach, unless it makes more sense for one of us to teach a certain lesson. During our period of non-existent FHE, the reason was usually that we couldn't decide who should be in charge or what our lessons/activities should be about.  With our schedule, we avoid all that because we know (well in advance!) who is in charge of what lesson. Sometimes, if Scott has an especially busy week at school or I'm not feeling well, we will substitute for each other. 

Here is an example of how our months have worked from each of the last three years:

August 2013: A House of Learning

5   The Importance of Learning (Mom)

12  Trivia Game Night (we invited some friends over to play wii Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit)

19  Family Readathon (we each picked a favorite picture book and read them together)

26  Family History Lesson (Miner-Mom; this one was about my grandmother who LOVED to read and learn)

December 2014: These Things Are True

1   The Nativity (Mom and Kevin)

8   Family Activity: Ogden Lights

15 Testimony Night (finish the Book of Mormon)

22  Gifts to Jesus (Dad)

29  O Remember Remember: Counting our Blessings (year in review lesson)

March 2015: Receive the Restored Gospel

2   First Vision, PMG Lesson 1 (Mom)

9   Family Activity (Kevin's choice, for her birthday lesson)

16 Priesthood Restoration (Dad)

23 Temples (Mom)

30 Scripture Story (Kevin and Mom)

Putting the Whole Document Together

After I go through and plan everything out, I format it all into a one-page document so that it can be easily hung in a page protector on our fridge. The page includes a title ("2015 Fowler Family Home Evening Schedule"), our theme, and each month and its theme bolded with all the dates and lessons/activities listed underneath.  We usually assign out prayers and songs and treats the day of (a week in advance if we are lucky). Those things are easier to figure out than the lesson, especially when your three-year-old only knows four songs and is the appointed song leader each week (because she can do that part and refuses to say prayers). 

Want to see an example of our schedule? Let me know.
(I am working on creating links to my schedule examples, but that is more work than my brain can handle this week. Come back later.) 

This is our third year of using our schedule pattern, and let me tell you, it works. Do we always stick to the schedule? No. Things come up. We like to be flexible. We also like knowing that if there isn't any specific lesson that needs to be covered (like teaching your two-year-old obedience and honesty after a bad week of tantrums), we can simply look at the schedule on the fridge and it is all planned out for us. No scrambling needed.

This is not a copyrighted plan. Use this method if you think it would work for you and your family! You don't have to wait until next January to start! The important thing is to be gathering as families consistently. 

A Few Words from Elder Bednar

And here's the witness of an Apostle if you don't believe me: 

"Sometimes Sister Bednar and I wondered if our efforts to do these spiritually essential things were worthwhile. Now and then verses of scripture were read amid outbursts such as “He’s touching me!” “Make him stop looking at me!” “Mom, he’s breathing my air!” Sincere prayers occasionally were interrupted with giggling and poking. And with active, rambunctious boys, family home evening lessons did not always produce high levels of edification. At times Sister Bednar and I were exasperated because the righteous habits we worked so hard to foster did not seem to yield immediately the spiritual results we wanted and expected...

"...Sister Bednar and I thought helping our sons understand the content of a particular lesson or a specific scripture was the ultimate outcome. But such a result does not occur each time we study or pray or learn together. The consistency of our intent and work was perhaps the greatest lesson—a lesson we did not fully appreciate at the time."

Start this week. Gather your family. Share a lesson. Protect your home. Unite your family.

I know these things are important. I know they have made a difference in my family. If you are stuck, ask for help. I love putting these schedules together!

Obviously this kind of schedule works best for families with children at home, but it can be modified to fit any kind of family (even an apartment full of roommates, a newlywed couple, or emptynesters).

PS- Thanks Mom. You created a monster. My children will be calling me "The Family Home Evening Attila the Hun."

Have any questions, comments, concerns about FHE? Post them in the comments!