FHE Idea: Kites and Obedience

We have been wanting to go fly kites for a while now but the days we seem to think of it either it is too cold/rainy or there is absolutely no breeze. Well, yesterday I checked outside and there was a definite breeze so I thought it would be fun to fly kites for our FHE activity.

It was our little boys turn for lesson and so I wanted to find something that he would be really interested and involved in and I also thought it would be fun to have something related to kites. Then I remembered a story my Grandma once told in a talk several years ago. I didn't remember what lesson was taught by the story but I remembered that she had told a story about kite flying.

I got online and quickly found it. It is a simple and short story. It was perfect for our 2 year old.

The original story goes like this (However, I simplified a few parts to be more at my little boys level):
(Shared by Patricia P. Pinegar in a talk titled, "Peace, Hope, and Direction")

"I enjoyed telling them the story of the little boy who went to the park with his father to fly a kite.

The boy was very young. It was his first experience with kite flying. His father helped him, and after several attempts the kite was in the air. The boy ran and let out more string, and soon the kite was flying high. The little boy was so excited; the kite was beautiful. Eventually there was no more string left to allow the kite to go higher. The boy said to his father, “Daddy, let’s cut the string and let the kite go; I want to see it go higher and higher.”

His father said, “Son, the kite won’t go higher if we cut the string.”

“Yes, it will,” responded the little boy. “The string is holding the kite down; I can feel it.” The father handed a pocketknife to his son. The boy cut the string. In a matter of seconds the kite was out of control. It darted here and there and finally landed in a broken heap. That was difficult for the boy to understand. He felt certain the string was holding the kite down.

The commandments and laws of God are like the kite string. They lead us and guide us upward. Obedience to these laws gives us peace, hope, and direction."

To go along with the story I found simple clip art (shown above) for my little boy to stick on the wall at certain points in the story. I put numbers on the back of each picture along with some tape and when I hit the certain point in the story that it went along with I'd tell him which number to stick on the wall. He loved this.

He also helped with the preparations. He helped write the numbers on the back of the clip art and we practiced what the last piece of paper said on it, "obedience".

It worked out great. We have been talking about being obedient for the last little while. Earlier Monday morning he actually had pulled my hair and got in trouble. Without any prompt from me he said, "be obedient like Nephi". He loves Nephi and he knows that Nephi made good choices and was obedient. It was perfect! I can tell it is starting to set in a bit. The lesson was a great reinforcement to the morning's events.

After he taped the word obedience on the wall and proudly told Daddy and I what it said we talked about obedience a little. Then the transition to flying kites was perfect. After we had been talking about kites so much our little boy jumped up and said, "I want to fly kites." Little did he know, we were actually going to. I whipped out the Lightning McQueen kite that was perfectly hidden away and he was thrilled.

We then headed to the park for some fun kite flying. Similar to the little boy in the story and how he wanted to cut the string, our little boy kept letting go of the string and watching the kite fly out of control in the sky while we scrambled to catch the string that was running away from us. What a great lesson this truly teaches. If we cut ourselves from the commandments and laws of God or if we simply let go of them we lose the peace, hope, and direction they bring and our lives begin to spiral out of control.

We had a great FHE with a great lesson from a two year old. Let us strive to be obedient like Nephi and let us keep our strings attached as we are obedient to the commandments of God.