I feel very strongly that our children need to be strengthened spiritually as much as possible each day. Here are some of the ways we've incorporated gospel topics in different games.
The Gospel Game- we made this up as a family. The children take 10 washcloths or dishtowels and make a path with them across a room. They begin at one end and I sit at the other end with a small bowl of candy. I ask gospel or scripture-related questions, like a trivia game. Each time they answer correctly, they step forward onto the next washcloth. Sometimes I only ask verbal questions, such as "What was the name of the lady that married Isaac?" I ask questions appropriate for their cognitive abilities, so Daniel (aged 3) will have questions such as ,"What age do we get baptized?" or "What color do we wear in the temple?". Sometimes I hold up pictures from the Gospel Art Kit (available from the LDS distribution centers or websites) and I'll ask them to tell me what story is depicted in the picture. This game is perfect for Sunday afternoons. When the children reach the end of the path and arrive where I am sitting, they receive a small candy such as a jelly bean or skittle. I let them repeat the game as often as they would like.
Sunday Stations- This is my daughters favorite activity. We set up 'stations' around the room with different activities to do. Some stations may have a stack of illustrated scriptures to look at on the couch. Another station may be Biblical coloring books and crayons. Another station may have puzzles made from cutting out scriptural pictures from the Friend magazine and mounting them on card stock. Another station may be with the Singing Can, an empty metal can that is full of wooden craft sticks. Each craft stick has a primary song title written on it. The children draw out a stick and sing the song listed there.
Bedtime stories- This time is valuable for discussing scriptures. The children don't usually want to sleep, so they LOVE to stay up and listen to scripture stories. Our favorites stories are either scripture stories, stories from my childhood or ancestral stories (very valuable for passing on family heritage and creating emotional bonds for the lives and experiences of grandparents, etc), or 'pretend' stories where I make up a story where the children magically transport to a scripture story and they have to investigate the area and gather clues to find out what story they are in.
For example, they magically go to Bethlehem and I describe the living conditions, common foods, clothings, etc so they can decide what time period they are in. Then they see the bright star at night, and later hear shepherds in the streets proclaiming the Savior's birth. I like to drag the story on multiple nights, so in this story they can't find the stable where the Christ child is staying. They look and look and go to the temple to see him and talk to the prophetess there who tells them that the family had already left. When they try to follow the family, they find out Joseph has taken them to Egypt, so the children have to prepare a caravan and load the necessary things to travel over the desert. They learn about desert lifestyles here, such as the foods eaten, living arrangements, working with camels, etc. It's all really fun and sometimes one story can take a week or more to reach a conclusion. I don't do these stories very often because they take so much time, but we do really enjoy them when we do them.
Other favorite topics for this type of story have included:
Traveling with Nephi's family in the wilderness, retrieving the brass plates and Ishmael's family, and building the boats later.
Living with the Jaredites during the Tower of Babel and traveling with them to the Promised land.
Being part of the Anit-Nephi-Lehies and joining the army of Helamen.
Any scripture story will do, just make your children a minor character of the story, observing what major events are occurring.
Other great ideas for bedtime stories (especially for nights when I"m not feeling well or have homework to finish) are the audio stories of the scriptures. These are FREE on the LDS website. Just download the files and burn them onto a CD. They have the complete stories of the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and D&C. They are so GREAT for exposing the children to scripture heroes in a low-energy way. We placed a small CD-player on the boys' closet shelf and I just push play after we finish prayers and goodnight kisses. This is one of our top favorite tools! These can also be played in the car while running errands, or on car trips. We love them!
When our children were very young (less than 3 years old) I taught them to enjoy scriptures by giving them something sweet while we read. The ancient Jews did this with honey when they taught their children from the Talmud, and I find it to be very effective with tiny children. The physical reward of a sweet taste makes them want to sit and read more chapters. I'd give them one chocolate chip at the end of each chapter. Occasionally we still do this, but not often.
For older children, I've really enjoyed a method pioneered by Nathan's aunt. They give each child their own copy of the scriptures ( I think it's only $1 at the LDS distribution center) and for important events we draw a simple picture on the verse. The children color the picture while I read the verses and we discuss what it means. Sarah and Matthew LOVE this! They beg us to read more and more because they don't want to stop. nathan's aunt has published several books with specific verses and the pictures to draw on them. We ahve several books filled with pictures for the Bible and Book of Mormon and D&C. Unfortunately, the books are out of print now, but the concepts can be applied for anyone. For example, in the Bible we draw rolling hills along the bottom margin of the pages that talk about the Sermon on the Mount. I'll see if I can get some sample pictures up so it makes more sense.
Nathan is really fantastic about doing formal scripture study, where we gather as a family in the living room and read a chapter out loud together. Anyone who can read takes a turn reading. Sarah and Matthew can read a verse or two aloud with us. Nathan is so great about explaining hard concepts or defining unfamiliar words for our children.
We read a scripture verse each morning right before leaving for school. We talk about the verse as we drive to school and talk about how to apply it that day. For this we use a simple 'Scripture-A-Day' book that looks like a daily calendar. Each day we turn one page and read the verse.
We drive for 20 minutes to get to church each week, so we sometimes sing Primary songs together while we drive. It helps prepare our minds for the Spirit and calms the children so they can be reverent. After we park in the parking lot, we say a family prayer asking for the Spirit to be with us in our meetings and for our hearts to be receptive and humble, and for our eyes to be open to service opportunities within our ward that day. I find it to be really helpful. On the drive home, we ask the children what they learned about in class, and we all discuss what our lessons contained.
In an effort to have more meaningful Sundays, we've started inviting the ward to come to our home on Sunday evenings to sing hymns together and enjoy desserts. It's been really nice. Nathan always makes a great dessert, like Angel food cake, soft cinnamon rolls, etc. We sing for an hour and then eat and enjoy each other's company. We used to do this at a friend's house in the country. We'd sit on their wrap-around porch on big porch swings and rocking chairs and we'd all sing to guitar accompaniment. It was SO fun and we all have fond memories of the experiences. Our friends moved, so we decided to start hosting this at our own home. We've made some really good friends this way; it's such a fantastic way to get to know people from church. I love exposing our children to these experiences!
Family Home Evening is of course one of the BEST ways to teach gospel principles and have fun together. We share a spiritual story, an object lesson, etc. We always have a family activity with it, like a game or some fun activity(such as playing a quick board game together, play Red Light-Green Light, Uno, etc), then we have dessert.
I think the key is to have as frequent exposure as possible to the scriptures and gospel topics. It's also important to have positive expereinces with the scriptures that will create fond memories. Don't force things, beucase then they will resent it and you will have an antagonistic rather than apathtic reaction from your children. Whether I am right or not may remain to be seen, but I hope these suggestions are helpful to you!
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