Category: Making Church Easier

Several years ago we had three young children and were struggling to have family scripture study.  I was an overwhelmed mom who had no idea when to do it or how to get my kids to sit still and listen.  Then, twice within a few months I heard two different talks that mentioned holding family scripture study during dinner time.  When I heard the first talk I thought that sounded like a good idea.  Then I quickly forgot about it. The second time I heard it, it stuck with me.  We almost always have dinner together as a family and the children are already sitting!  So, I purchased an inexpensive copy of the scriptures so it would be okay to have them at the table with messy kids and we started reading a few verses from the Book of Mormon each day.  That worked great for us.

As we continued reading and had another child, I began to feel like this was not enough.  We did our best to hold Family Home Evening and daily scripture reading; but, I had a nagging feeling that I needed to be teaching them more-more doctrine, more testimony.  I wrote down a list of all the things I wanted to teach my children and pondered a way to fit it all into our family scripture study.

After a few weeks, I saw something (this post)  that gave me a great idea.  I gathered everything I wanted to teach the kids and put them in a basket.  I sat the basket on the counter right beside out table so we could see it at dinner as a reminder to study.  It also sits out all day so the kids can grab something out of it anytime they want to read or study.

Then, I found an old spinner game piece laying around the house from a fast food kids meal and converted it to a gospel study spinner.  I had a space for all the things I wanted to study during scripture study.  Our kids already had a specific “prayer day” where they say the family prayers that day (or they can pick someone else to say the prayer once that day), so I let them spin the spinner on their day.  Wherever it lands is what we study that day.  It’s fun for the kids, it adds variety to our study, and we are able to learn a lot more.

The spaces on my spinner are:
–Book of Mormon-It’s on there three times because I feel it’s really important!  We read a few verses wherever we left off last time.
–Scripture Story-I have the old gospel art kit that has scripture story pictures on the front and the story written on the back.  I put them all in a notebook and the kids open up to a story and we read and talk about it.
–Basic Doctrines-These are the basic doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that are emphasized in Seminary and Institute classes.  Every time we spin this we cover one or part of one of the doctrines listed.
–Church Magazine-We read a story in the Friend Magazine.
–Scripture Mastery-I have all the scripture mastery cards on a ring and we will open up to one and study it.
–FTSOY-We study a topic in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet.
–Family Proclamation-We study one paragraph each time.
–Articles of Faith-We study a new one each time.

I keep everything we need to study each of these in my basket by the table.  It’s so easy to grab what we need and study.  I am amazed at what we have covered over the last few years doing this!  If I feel the need to switch out topics I can easily create a new face for my spinner.

If you want to create your own spinner there are a few other options I found (click on the pictures to go to the source for directions:

-Cover up a spinner from an old board game.

-Make your own spinner.

-Use the Decide Now app-available from itunes and google play.

-Buy a spinner from Amazon
blank spinners
board game spinner
transparent spinners