FHE Lesson for introducting the pumpkins

To introduce the happy/sad pumpkins for the month of October we did the following Family Home Evening Lesson on emotions. I drew up 6 pumpkins with expressions for happy, sad, mad, frustrated, embarrassed, and scared. (I did have some help with this from a lesson I had) Then I wrote the words for each emotion on a orange piece of paper. I started about how everyone has emotions and feelings (Dad, Mom, friends etc.) And talked about how having emotions isn't bad (i.e. it is ok to be mad) but that how we react when we feel emotions can be good and bad. Then I had someone pick a pumpkin face. And we would try to figure out what the pumpkin was feeling (with some we had to help i.e. Dad would make the face or we would talk about something that would make us feel that way) Next, if we hadn't already, we would talk about what would make us feel that way and some of the good or bad ways that we could deal with the emotion.

MAD

Good- Talking about what is making us mad, asking nicely for the person to stop, finding something else to do that makes us happy instead
Bad- Hitting, pushing, calling someone names
The boys did pretty well with this lesson. Some of the emotions were a little hard for them to understand put they liked picking the pumpkins. For the emotions he understood well he had a lot to say and as a parent it was nice to know his understanding of them and what we should do.
Then I talked about our charts and what the happy and sad pumpkins mean. Raif has been working very hard not to get a sad pumpkin. I was at the doctors office the other day for a visit and Raif wasn't listening so I told him that he would get a sad pumpkin when we got home. He then made sure that he was extra good to make up for the sad pumpkin which I sure appreciated.