SPIRITUAL MONTHLY THEMES

I made a list of all the spiritual things I wanted to teach my children, but it grew so long that I became overwhelmed and discouraged. How on earth could I possibly teach all of that to my kids? It seemed hopeless. I knew I needed some way to organize it (to make sure I got through everything), but I felt lost. Soon after, I was using the For the Strength of Youth Pamphlet and it dawned on me, “Duh! Prophets of God did the same thing you did! They already made the list for you of EVERY thing you need to teach your kids and it’s right here in this pamphlet!” And sure enough, everything I had listed fit into one of their topics. Yes, I felt dumb, but also empowered.

At that same time, I was reading a book called "The Entitlement Trap" by Richard and Linda Eyre (I HIGHLY recommend it) and they mentioned how they did monthly values with their kids. We had kind of started doing this. We realized one family home evening on anger management was not going to make a huge difference so we did it for a month and it started making a BIG difference.

My husband and I got out the For the Strength of Youth Pamphlet and there were 16 or 17 topics in the table of contents. We combined some of the topics and came up with a list of 12 principles to teach our kids and assigned every month a topic.  

Here is our list of topics by month (and our reasons for doing it in this particular order). FSOY stands for "For the Strength of Youth" so you can tell which FSOY topics go with each month:

MONTHLY THEMES

MONTH	THEME
JANUARY	KINDNESS, PATIENCE “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all! FSOY “Language”
FEBRUARY Month of love	Law of Chastity FSOY “Dating” FSOY “Music and Dancing” FSOY “Dress and Appearance” FSOY “Sexual Purity” Teach Kids the Meaning of True Love
MARCH preparing kids for general conference in April – knowing how to listen to conference with the spirit, gain a testimony of the principles taught, etc.	TESTIMONY (prayer, scriptures, Faith) HOLY GHOST & REVELATION (be humble and receive correction well) FSOY “Go Forward with Faith” Preach My Gospel “How Do I Recognize and Understand the Spirit?” chapter 4 Preach My Gospel “What is the role of the Book of Mormon?” chapter 5
APRIL (they know friends well enough to do missionary stuff)	Plan of Salvation and Missionary Work Agency and Accountability (Potential, Self Worth, Love of God) FSOY “Agency and Accountability” Preach My Gospel – 2nd Lesson (Plan of Savlation), 3rd Lesson (Gospel of Jesus Christ) Preach My Gospel “How do I find People to Teach?” chapter 9 Preach My Gospel “Teaching Skills” chapter 10
MAY	Honesty and Integrity FSOY “Honesty and Integrity”
JUNE (don’t let them be lazy in the Summer)	Hard Work and Self-Reliance (Dependability, Goal Setting, commitment) FSOY “Work and Self-reliance” Preach My Gospel “How do I develop Christlike Attributes?” Chapter 6 Preach My Gospel “How Do I Use Time Wisely?” Chapter 8 Preach My Gospel “Keep Commitments” chapter 11
JULY (no school – more time to do service projects!!)	SERVICE (Unselfishness & Sensitivity, Be “others oriented”)  FSOY “Service”
AUGUST (right before they start school)	Relationship skills (Family (loyalty, support) and Friends – listening, Being a good friend, being a good example to friends, friendship skills, compliments, conversational skills, phone calling skills, take care of the one, LOOK for those who need help) FSOY “Family” FSOY “Friends”
SEPTEMBER (right before conference)	Prophets and Obedience (Courage to follow prophets, be example, be in the world not of the world (entertainment and media, music and dancing) FSOY “Entertainment and Media” Preach My Gospel – First lesson
OCTOBER (right before Holiday snacks!)	Self Mastery & Moderation (Physical, Emotional and Mental Health (Education), Tithing, Finances, Thrifty) FSOY “Education” FSOY “Physical and Emotional Health” FSOY “Tithes and Offerings”
NOVEMBER (Thanksgiving)	Cheerful Attitude (especially during TRIALS, Humor, optimism, look for the good, no murmur or complain) GRATITUDE FSOY “Gratitude”
DECEMBER (focus on the Savior)	Repentance, Atonement, HOPE, justice and mercy FSOY “Repentance” FSOY “Sabbath Day Observance” – a way to draw closer to the Savior every week

We will do at least four family home evenings on every monthly theme, but we will also really focus on LIVING that principle every day that month, setting some goals, and BECOMING better in that area. It takes 21 days to form a habit and I hope this system will allow me to help my children truly develop Christ-like attributes.

At dinnertime we remind the kids what the topic is (which is super easy because I have the monthly theme and quotes on the theme right on the kitchen wall) and ask some questions to check up on how they’re doing. We say something like this, “Hey kids, our theme this month is Patience and Kindness. How were you patient today?” Of course, my kids are so little that we have to tell them how they were patient, but they love to hear their parents tell them how amazing they are!

I really love this system because then I'm not constantly worrying about what we should do for family home evening every week. It has been such a chore in the past (a good chore, but sometimes I really couldn't think of anything for a lesson). This way I know that all of my family home evenings this month are on a certain topic and that makes it way easier to prepare.  

I think the real beauty is that the themes repeat themselves each year. May will always be integrity and I hope my kids associate May with being more honest. January will always be on kindness and patience and I hope my kids will really focus on that every single January. And as the kids gets older, we can go into more depth on each topic.

DISPLAYING THE THEME IN OUR HOME

When I made the list of spiritual things I wanted to teach my kids, I started collecting quotes on all the various subjects I had written down. I planned to have them framed and hang them up around my house, but the number of quotes soon reached over 100 and I knew I was in trouble! After I planned 12 monthly themes, however, I knew it would be easy to just rotate the quotes according to the value of the month.

I bought 4 white, magnetic dry-erase boards from Walmart, laminated some cute scrapbooking paper to put over them, and used the first one to display the monthly theme and the other 3 to display quotes that go with that theme. I love it because I can change quotes around my house whenever I want and my house will help me teach my kids the gospel – even if the kids aren’t listening to me they can read a quote on the wall!

 

I found a blog that is AMAZING (http://spirituallythinking.blogspot.com/). This awesome sister has posted all of her favorite quotes (there are hundreds of them) and she makes them super cute and FREE to print off and use in your house. Every month I search her blog for quotes that are relevant to my monthly theme.