Helpful Articles/Documents for Planning FHE

For our last Primary activity, we decided to do a little something special to promote Family Home Evening in each of the children's homes. Thanks to still having a large amount of money in our budget, we decided to purchase a board game for each of the familes in our Primary (which is about 15 families). So, at the party each family was given a board game to take home, along with a FHE packet that we put together of informational Ensign articles, quotes on FHE, etc.  The packet contained the following:

*A copy of The Family: A Proclamation to the World
*Various Quotes from previous First Presidencies on Family Home Evening
*Ensign Article: Four Tips for Family Night
*Family Home Evening/Keep It Simple
*Ensign Article: Family Home Evening Suggestion Box
*200 + LDS FHE Ideas (Taken from MormonShare.com: 100+ LDS FHE Ideas)
*Planning FHE for the Year
*Family Home Evening Agenda

These are all really helpful in planning and organizing your Family Home Evening Lessons. The document Family Home Evening/Keep It Simple suggests to "Have a Plan" with what you are going to do each week. I decided to do this and have started trying to plan for my FHE lessons based on the following schedule:

Week 1: Lesson based on the Monthly Primary Theme
Week 2: Lesson based on a story from the Scriptures
Week 3: Lesson based on any Gospel Principle
Week 4: Have a Game Night/Movie Night
(If occurs) Week 5: Lesson on another Gospel Principle
**Plan on having a special Holiday lesson the week of any given holiday**

So, far this has worked and has made it easier to plan a lesson. My goal is to try to plan at least a month in advance what each lesson will be, so I won't be hurrying to find something the night of FHE.  I have found in the past that when I don't have something planned, we don't do FHE, we miss a week, then it turns into another missed week, and so forth.  Sure this does take a little work, but in the end it makes it easier to be consistent with our Family Home Evenings. Just an idea you might want to consider to if consistency is a problem your family has too!!