A great family night

In our church, we set aside one night per week (for most families, it's usually Monday) to have a night with our family. We call it Family Home Evening. The purpose of this is to teach us how to get along with each other and to like each other, and ultimately, to learn how to want to hang out together. For this time, our family usually sings an opening and closing song, has an opening and closing prayer, and has a short little lesson. After that's over, the highlight is having treats. Then we play with the kids a few extra minutes before bedtime. At our house, we're lucky if we keep the kids' attention for 15 minutes, but it seems good. Tonight, we went over to a friends' house and had a combined Family Home Evening with their family. The lesson we dis turned out great! We did a flannel board story of The Good Samaritan. Here is the link where I printed the pictures from to make the pieces with. I just printed out the pictures on a piece of cardstock, and then I colored them and covered the entire back of the paper with rubber cement (Make sure you don't miss any or it might be a critical piece that falls off in the middle of the story.). Then, I stuck a paper sized piece of flannel to the back. After that, then I used some good paper scissors (But NOT my fabric scissors) and cut out the pieces.

To make the flannel board itself, I cut a good sized but not huge piece of cardboard, probably about 24" by 18". After that, I painted the card board really well with the rubber cement. Then, I very carefully, but quickly due to the drying nature of rubber cement, spread flannel over the entire board but I left about an extra inch and a half of flannel hanging over each side. I turned over the cardboard and painted two opposite sides with the glue and then pressed the fabric down over them. Then I painted the other two sides including the parts already covered by fabric and I pressed the fabric over those. The corner fabric will fold up on itself and stick. However, for good measure, I taped down the edges with packaging tape. Wherever there was a lose end of the fabric, I taped it down to the cardboard.

Although this process seemes involved, this doesn't have to take long. This worked a lot better for me because I wasn't trying to make it perfect. All of the kids loved it, and the older ones helped me read it from Luke 10 while the younger kids helped me put up the pieces. I might try a different one in a few weeks since it worked so well.