Sabbath Day

[natickgirl]

We've had church canceled 3 of the last 5 weeks due to snowstorms, We have ward members who live 1/2 hour away from the church, so if the roads are bad, church is canceled. Keeping the kids (7, 9, and 11) occupied with Sabbath-appropriate activities for the ENTIRE day is challenging. We had our own little sacrament meeting, complete with paper program, prayers, hymns, sacrament (with permission from the bishop), and talks--but that only takes an hour at the most. We also played some board games, watched a church movie, did crafts, and read books. I know we can also write letters or call relatives. Any other suggestions???

[Dia Minha]

Wow, Natick, I had never even thought of church being canceled due to snow. It makes sense though, when you live so far away from the building. It sounds like you do an amazing job with Sabbath activities.

Have you thought about having the children prepare a sharing time or a primary lesson? There are tons of ideas online at LDS.org. Each of your kids could prepare a part of sharing time, such as teaching a song, playing a game, and/or learning a scripture story and present them just like the presidency does in Primary. You could even follow the theme for the month by looking up the Sacrament Meeting Program Outline. There are suggestions in there for Sharing Times as well as in the Friend. You can also access all the Primary lesson manuels and everything else you can think of.

They also have new games and coloring pages you can do online at LDS.org. You know those fun find the hidden objects, pictures? They now have those online. You click on the object in the picture, it matches itself to the object on the list and then the computer colors it. After you find all the hidden objects the entire picture turns to color. Not really a "Sabbath activity", but it does come from the friend.

And then there is always working on Faith in God. We find Sundays the perfect day to pull out their books and look through to see what they still need to pass off. There is always Articles of Faith to memorize and many of the other activities can be completed in an afternoon and used for FHE the next night. We have even done some of the more religous cubscouting stuff.

When we had church early in the day, the afternoon would seem really long, nice, but long. We started preparing FHE on Sunday afternoons to make a good use of time.

You can do a lot of Family History online now as well. With your kids being a little older they might find it fun to find ancestors even if their temple work has already been done. Sometimes you can even access enough information to where you can locate journal entries and newspaper articles. I don't know how. My husband does it all the time.

Creating a journal jar would be cool to use on Sundays as well. There are lots of different websites that have journal entry prompters all ready to print out. The kids could write their enteries or you could voice or video record them. Wow, I like that idea. I think I need a video camera so we can do this. I think it would be a blast. You could even call grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and have them talk to you about any of the prompters and record them. It would make a very fun and interesting family record for years to come. I often wish we had my Grandpa on tape telling all his stories. I really need to get my mom's while I still have the chance.

Anyway, I hope this helps. It sure has helped me. Those last couple of suggestions just came to me while I was writing. I feel like it was the spirit telling me how to make better use of my Sundays. I do not like the 1:00 session, because it just seems to break up the day too much, so I find myself not getting any of the good stuff that I use to do. I really need to make a better effort.

[bookworm]

Dia, those ideas are fantastic! I think it's time for my family to re-commit to keeping the day. We actually do a pretty good job, but sometimes the kids run around a little wild for want of a structured activity. Thank you for the ideas!!

[Erudite]

Dia, these are excellent ideas and I'd say very inspired too! We too have been thinking of how to turn Sunday into the Sabbath, even when we have church (we get bad ice storms where we are and church has been cancelled once a year since we moved here...we cross a highway to get to church, not pretty when there's serious ice on the roads). We just switched to the 1pm time for 2009 and are still working to figure it out again, but found out yesterday that we'll be switching buildings in March and that sends us back to the 9am time. I was happy about that because I hate the break-up of the day too, but then realized that means long hours of Sunday to make Sabbath.

But just 2 weeks ago, I found a 4 pack of journals (at Walmart) when I was looking for a journal of my own and I bought it with the intent that the kids begin writing in journals each week. All but my youngest are old enough and I could be the scribe for him. So I love the idea of the journal jar!

I find it tough to WANT to figure out how to help the kids keep the day. I'm SO ready for a break from making sure they do what they're supposed to be doing during the week...you know, homework, chores, piano practice, etc. It's a nice rest of me just to let them do what they choose to do and that means a rest for them from the weekly stuff too. But really what happens is that I get on my computer to do an hour (which always turns into 2 or 3) of family history work (which our Stake President challenged us to do on Sundays) and they all veg in front of the TV often playing games too. Which is nearly what they did on Saturday evenings too (Saturday days are clean rooms and use up whatever computer time they've racked up during the week), so I don't know that that is particularly "keeping it holy", you know? Am I the only one with this struggle?

[natickgirl]

Great ideas, Dia. Thanks. I find that if I'm busy in the kitchen (which I usually am) or if I turn on the computer at all--even for lesson materials--that my kids take advantage of it and watch TV or play computer games all day. We have some "Sunday" movies that they are allowed to watch, but they would watch them all day if I let them. I need to provide structure & consistency so Sunday doesn't just become another Friday night.

We have the 1:00 schedule this year, too. It's much better for us than 9:00, because I actually get to see my husband before he leaves for meetings. I prefer the 11:00 schedule...not too early, not too late.