Sidewalk Chalk Love Notes

For Father's Day, we decided to tell Daddy that we love him in Sidewalk chalk. My husband really likes words of affirmation to let him know he is loved. So the Friday before Father's Day, we went out and decorated the driveway to tell him why we loved him. It was something all three children could do...even if the one year old kept trying to eat dirt...

I wrote "We [heart] you Daddy!" and the kids decorated around it. Brayden made a stop sign so cars would know to not run over the writing.

Daddy loved it! This is something you can do during nice weather months. You could even go to a home of a neighbor and tell them how great they are in sidewalk chalk (but you might want to be pretty sure your neighbor won't mind).

Sidewalk chalk is always fun, but it seemed to be extra fun with a goal in mind.

Teaching Service

Each week, we have a night we call "Family Home Evening." We take this time to sing a hymn and have a lesson prepared by a member of the family. We include prayer and scripture study. We talk about family business and also do an activity together.

One week, my husband taught about service. He gave us each hearts and told us to do secret service for our family members. When we completed the task, we were to put a heart down so the person would know a secret service agent had been there. An example would be if your child picked up Daddy's socks for him, he could put the heart down where the socks used to be. Maybe that would be service for mom? ;)

Soon after, Brayden came home from church with this heart pictured above. He had done this in primary. Great minds think alike I guess :)

This is a fun way to get your child excited about doing service for family members.

Straw Bed for Jesus

This idea came from my husband's parents. The idea is to make a soft bed for Jesus to lay in, one piece of straw at a time. My father-in-law made a manger for us (note that a manger is what animals eat out of...not the stable...so we are talking a little bed). They then gave us a bag of straw. The goal is for family members to do service, and for each act of service, they get to put a piece of straw in the manger. We will be doing this from Thanksgiving until Christmas.

If you don't have wood-working ability, you could use a shoe-box instead. If you don't have access to straw, you could cut some strips of paper up (if you did that, you could even write the service down on the paper).

I thought this was a fun idea for keeping our focus on Christ and on service during the Christmas season.

For more detailed lesson layout of this idea, see this post.