New Focus and Devotional Boxes

Rock and I got to go to the Celestial Education conference yesterday.  It was inspiring and I got to meet some friends that I have gotten to know through blogs.  I loved that.  I wished I could have talked to them longer, but it was still neat to hear their comments and see them "for real life".  It was neat to be around so many people who are trying really hard to figure out how Heavenly Father wants them to raise His children and who don't just take things for granted.  I was also able to get myself my own copy of the Celestial Education video.  They mentioned that they are in the process of making it available on the site.

A friend asked me the other day what I was doing differently because of what I've learned through the video.  There are several things, but mostly my focus has changed.  Before, my focus was on teaching the children to love learning and to be curios about the world around them and to want to know more.  Now, I would say that my focus is on teaching the children to love their Heavenly Father, learn how to communicate with Him, and learn the things they need to do to accomplish His will for them in this life.  This does not mean that I'm not teaching them "temporal" things, but as the scriptures say,

And behold, all things have their likeness, and all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me. -Moses 6:63

As Michelle Stone so beautifully put it:  the light of the Sun encompasses the light of the moon and of the stars.  A Celestial Education covers all of the good things in a "Terrestrial" and "Telestial" education.  The scriptures teach us what Heavenly Father would have His children learn and why.  I came across a great verse that put the "why" so beautifully in my scripture study a couple of days ago:

Teach ye diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory, in principle, in doctrine, in the law of the gospel, in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand;

Of things both in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth; things which have been, things which are, things which must shortly come to pass; things which are at home, things which are broad; the wars and the perplexities of the nations, and the judgments which are on the land; and a knowledge also of countries and of kingdoms—

That ye may be prepared in all things when I shall send you again to magnify the calling whereunto I have called you, and the mission with which I have commissioned you - Doctrine and Covenants 88:78-80

One thing I have incorporated into our day is devotionals. I've always done a devotional (at least since I started homeschooling and off-and-on before I started), but I've struggled with where to put it in our day. At first, I was doing it as soon as we were up in the morning, right after breakfast, to get our day started off right. It was a little long though, and by the time we were done we all felt kind of lazy to get up and start our morning work. Then I tried doing it in the transition from morning work to free time. That worked pretty well, but there was some contention in our morning work that I think could have been avoided if we had taken the time to have some spiritual thoughts in the morning. I also tried to fit a lot into the devotional and their minds started wondering towards the end.

Anyway, here's what I've done:

I considered splitting the devotional in two and do some in the morning and some in the afternoon, but part of the difficulty of having a devotional was that we would all have to gather all of our supplies (a folder with our current hymn and memory verse, scriptures, journals, pencils) and then clean it all up when we were done. Half the time we skipped some parts because we didn't have all of our stuff gathered. I didn't have the energy to do this twice a day (three times, if you count our family scripture time in the evening). When I was sick in bed last weekend, I thought of a solution that has worked really wonderfully so far.

I made "Devotional Boxes".

 Each box has a set of scriptures, their journal, a pencil, a doodle pad (for when I read), their folder, a set of spiral-bound notecards (to write down the verses we are trying to memorize), a compass, a poetry notebook, colored pencils, and crayons.

It has been so nice.  We take our box out for devotional time and put it away as soon as devotional is over.  Now I can have our three devotionals everyday and it doesn't seem like such a hassle.  I like it because it gives us focus in the morning, afternoon and evening.  If I don't take time to focus a little in the afternoon, I've found that by 3 or 4 o'clock my spiritual batteries are dim and I struggle to keep feeling uplifted through the rest of the evening.  I think this is the reason that in the scriptures we read,

Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening. -Alma 34:21

I also like this one:

Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice. -Psalms 55:17

This is how I split it up. Maybe it's too much. So far it's going well, but I need to try it longer to see if it will work in the long run.

Morning Devotional (at 8am - before breakfast):
-Hymn
-Prayer
-Lesson (I share any insights from my scripture study that morning or a short article from the Friend or Ensign)
-Recite Article of Faith
-Recite, write, or pass off a memory scripture
-Read a short fiction story that teaches a value (mostly for Bazinks)
-Write in our journal (impressions, thoughts, things to do or work on).

Afternoon Devotional (at 11:30am - ideally right before lunch - but sometimes it's after ;-))
-Spanish Hymn
-Prayer
-Read a poem and discuss it (this discussion is usually very short)
-Recite, write, or pass off a poem (or stanza of a poem) we are memorizing
-Read a non-fiction story (Story of the World, biography) and discuss the gospel principles in it.
-Check our journals to make sure we do whatever we set out to do that morning

Evening Devotional (after dinner)
-Family Hymn
-Family Prayer
-Family Scripture Study
-Write in our Journal (such as what we're thankful for that day, what we've learned, how we've seen the hand of the Lord in our lives that day, etc,)
-Read from a classic together

I should admit that we still skip certain parts in the devotionals here and there because I forget and we're stll trying to establish the habit, but it's going pretty well and I think it's a family habit worth establishing.