FHE - Tree of Life

We fell off the FHE horse for awhile, but are coming back around.  We decided that we are just going to go through the Book of Mormon and tell the kids each story in order.  Since the kids are so young we're just focusing on familiarizing them with the stories (with a pinch of lesson) and getting in the habit of having FHE.

This was our third week.  Our first week I made puppets of a bunch of characters from the Book of Mormon and we've used them every week to act out the stories we tell and they've really held the kid's attention a lot longer than me just telling them or reading them the story.  This week we told the story of The Tree of Life.

Material used:
- puppets of Lehi, Sariah, Laman, Lemuel, Sam, Nephi, a crowd of people, and a building.  I got these from searching lds.org for "scripture figures", printing them out and gluing them to popsicle sticks.
- popsicle sticks to make the iron rod.
- cookies for our delicious treat found at the tree of life game.
- animated clip of The Tree of Life (found here -> http://www.ldsfamilyfun.com/fhe/lessons/fhe_praiseworthymedia.htm)
- Book of Mormon Stories book.

We started the lesson (after the prayer) by using the Book of Mormon Stories book as a reference to tell the story as we acted it out with the puppets.  

Then we watched the clip and talked about what the story means.  We talked about what things we could do to hold on to the rod and what things we could do to fall away and go join the group of people in the building.  

We then played a game.  We built an iron rod out of popsicle sticks leading to a poorly created tree (made of tissue and popsicle stick).  Each kid picked a character they wanted to be, and then put their character at the beginning of the iron rod.  Then I asked each one a question, giving them scenarios to choose from.  Each question was personalized and aimed at behavior they have been working on recently.  Like Libby's questions went something like this: "If you are outside and Garrett bugs you do you bite him or come tell Mommy?"  One of Garrett's was, "It's time for bed and Daddy says it's time to stop playing nintendo.  Do you say 'yes, sir' and go to bed or do you throw a fit?"  Keira got one about doing something wrong and whether she should fess up to it or hide it.  Each question they got right advanced them down the iron rod toward the tree of life.  If they got a question wrong they went away from the rod for a turn.  At the end when they reached the tree of life we rejoiced and they got a cookie.

We closed by singing one of their favorite primary songs and a prayer.  If they were older we would have sang The Iron Rod, but because they didn't know it we stuck to one they knew.  Afterwards they had fun just playing with the puppets.

Next week... we learn about Nephi building a ship!