This week for family home evening, Ella was in charge of the activity. She's never been a fan of simplicity of succinctness, instead choosing to concoct something of her own. Because I know that many people find it a constant challenge to come up with new ideas for FHE, I decided to take some notes so I could write up Ella's activity so you can use it in your home. Hopefully I captured all the vital details for the activity - if you find yourself confused by any of the steps, we can go to Ella for clarification. This is designed for a family of four, so you may need to make a few adjustments depending on your family size.
Materials needed:
- A broad range of candy. Leftovers from Halloween will do nicely.
- Paper and pen.
- Lego animal minifigs, one for each person.
- Two hats, bags, boxes or something you can draw names out of.
Preparation:
- Gather 5 hard back books of a reasonable size. The topic of the book does not matter.
- Write the name of each person on a slip of paper and put these in a hat.
- Ask each person to select their favorite Lego pet, and put these in the other hat. Make sure you remember who chose which animal.
Activity:
1. Draw a name out of the hat. (Person #1)
2. Ask Person #1 to name their favorite candy. Based on their selection, chose a candy theme. (In our case, this was "chocolate and peanut butter".)
3. Hand out (or let people chose) from the candy selection an appropriate piece of candy matching the candy theme. Things will go somewhat smoother from here on out if there is a diversity of candies picked.
4. Everyone gets to eat the candy. Yum!
5. Collect the wrappers.
6. Draw a second name out of the hat. (Person #2)
7. Ask person #2 to pick a book (Book #1) from the stack of books.
8. Draw another name from the hat (Person #3)
9. Set Book #1 on a table and lay out all the candy wrappers on top of it. Explain that this book represents our pre-earth life as spirits.
10. Have Person #3 select a book (Book #2)
11. Use book #2 to smash all the candy wrappers.
12. Take the candy wrapper of the oldest person out from between the two books. Explain that while the wrapper is in your hand, this represents a baby in the womb. Then set the wrapper down on top of book #2, which represents birth.
13. Choose another name out of the hat (#4) and have that person select a book (#3).
14. Complete the gestation and birth of each other person/wrapper, in age order of course, by taking the wrappers one at a time, holding them in your hand for a few seconds and placing them on top of book #2 (which is still on top of book #1).
15. Once ever wrapper has been born, take book #3 and smash all of the wrappers with it. Explain that the squishing represents death.
16. Pick a Lego pet out of the second hat. (If you haven't exhausted names from the first hat, presumably you would still use those names until everyone has been chosen.)
17. Ask the person whose favorite Lego pet you have selected to pick a book (#4).
18. Move all the wrappers to the top of book #3 (death) moving each wrapper in age order. Explain that the oldest people will die first. Look right at the oldest person in the family during this part.
19. Smash all the wrappers with the 4th book. Explain that this book represents the Spirit World and move all the wrappers to the top of the 4th book.
20. Draw a lollipop from the hat. I lost track of what the purpose of this was, or if the lollipop somehow indicated a specific person, but in any case, this is used to select the 5th and final book, so it doesn't really matter who it represents, because there's only one book to choose from at this point anyway.
21. Explain that all of us (the candy wrappers) will be resurrected.
22. Smash all the wrappers with the 5th book and state: "This represents Jesus' love."
23. Conclude by asking everyone to consider the stack of books and what the represent.
24. Ask each family member to throw away their candy wrapper before going to get ready for bed.
THE END.