Weekly Recap: With Come, Follow Me 2019

Oops. I wrote this in early January, and forgot to publish it. Here it is a couple of weeks late!

My kids are awesome! For months and months I've been talking about moving bedrooms so that M's room would also be her exercise room. It was her exercise room and the playroom. But there were so many toys in there that I haven't wanted to start. M asked if she could start! I said yes and she proceeded to motivate her siblings to help. It took them about a week, and they did such a great job! Their rooms are organized, M doesn't have to worry about anyone leaving a mess in her exercise area, and everyone loves the new arrangements. The best part is that I only had to give final approval and help move bed frames.

We celebrated on New Year's Eve with our traditional pigs in a blanked made with Little Smokies. We also had spinach artichoke dip with celery and cucumbers. The kids watched three movies, some fell asleep early (like me), and the three girls slept in the living room (a tradition.) J opted to sleep in his own bedroom since he doesn't share with anyone anymore!

Dad finally changed the light switch in the hall downstairs so it doesn't keep burning out light bulbs. It has a dimmer now, which is much nicer when used as a night light.

School highlights:

We only had two days of school this week. For geography we looked over our country reports to make sure we are caught up. We discovered the lessons skipped over the first section of the reports, so we'll do that next week. M is finishing up the final project for her graphic design course, and J is finishing up his coding course. He has been learning a little about 3D printing over the Christmas break.

Come, Follow Me 2019:

We're only one week into this, but I wanted to write down some notes on what's been beneficial and unnecessary so far.

Our church has created a curriculum guide to help individuals and families study the New Testament in their homes, and deepen their testimonies and conversion in the process. We'll study this through 2019, then cover another book of scripture the next year. We started the first lesson on Dec. 31st.

Since this was during the last few days of Christmas break, we spent more time on Come, Follow Me each day than we likely will be able to in the future. We finished reading the Old Testament on Dec. 29th, so we focused on the first lesson and its scripture stories this past week. We talked about the story of the rich young ruler, how we can be doers rather than just hearers, the parable of the ten virgins, the sharpen your ax story from Tad R. Callister, how to study a single topic, the parable of the sower; pretty much everything in the lesson. Some mornings we spent an hour talking before we realized how much time had passed.

I feel it was a great start. Everyone participated and enjoyed our time learning together.

I am a visual person, so I am drawn to all of the pretty teaching kits being advertised right now. But the Holy Ghost kept whispering to me that those aren't necessary, especially the ongoing expense of the subscriptions, and that the manual has everything I need if I just focus and study. As I've taught my family this week and studied for next week I can tell you that is completely true. I had a few dollars in my PayPal account and two sites I've been watching with lesson plans to purchase or subscribe to, so I tried them out just to see. Below are my notes on what I'm going to use and what I may refer to once in a while.

Necessary for me:

Come, Follow Me manual - Everything is right there. I have been reading through the lesson, then reading through the scriptures, then going over the lesson one more time with the scriptures together as I focus on each question. I've learned a lot this way and feel this is really all that is necessary.

LDS Media Library Collections - The church has put together collections of videos in the LDS Media app and site that correspond with each lesson.

Will use regularly:

The New Testament Made Easier - A book I was given, probably the last time we studied the NT at church. This is full of tips and helps and includes the JST. I have part 1 and will need to pick up parts 2 and 3 later in the year. Between this book and the Meridian podcast, I am finding all the little tips from the paid Red Headed Hostess study guides (below.)

Meridian's Come, Follow Me Podcast - A 30 minute weekly presentation on each lesson. I discovered I need to focus on what they have to say, there's a lot of helpful information that isn't found in the scriptures, such as information about Jewish culture. I sit down with a coloring page and a blank page for notes while I listen.

Helpful sites for occasional use:

Don't Miss This Weekly Study Sheets - You can sign up for this weekly email or just download the free study sheet. There is also a weekly video which I found insightful, though I discovered they taught a couple of things with a different understanding than other sources.

Cranial Hiccups - She's collecting links to Latter-day Saint resources for each lesson.

Chicken Scratch n Sniff - Also a collection of links that pertain to each lesson, as well as book suggestions, worksheets, discussion questions. Includes free resources and printables from her site.

Meridian Lesson Helps - I just learned about these today, so I'll start reading them and see how helpful I find them.

Paid helps:

Love, Pray, Teach - I bought one lesson kit. The kit is cute but smaller than I expected. The best part of it is the 7 day lesson outline. I felt there were too many coloring and journaling pages, but then again we are using our own journals and only half of my kids love to color with lessons. I feel this kit would be helpful for busy families who have less time to plan ahead about what to teach and when to teach it, or families with younger children.

The Red Headed Hostess - These kits are gorgeous and packed full of printables, images, activities, and teaching helps. Be prepared to use a lot of ink if you want to print out each kit, or parts of it. I picked a few pages I'd like to use, showed some images from my tablet, and used the study guides in my studying and little bits of them as I taught my family. I love these study guides, they give tips on looking closely at verses, marking verses, clarifying what you learn, and questions to answer as discussions or journaling guides. But considering the amount of pages in each kit that I'll actually use, the cost for these is too high.