Incorporating the 2012 Primary Theme in Family Memory Work

Our Family Memory Work binder is getting updated for the new year!  Until this afternoon it held Christmas related songs but with January a few days away I needed to put in new papers.  We always use the yearly Primary theme to give our family songs and scriptures to learn together. The Primary theme for 2012 is:

Choose the Right

The scripture for the year is:

“Choose you this day whom ye will serve; . . . but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” – Joshua 24:15

Each month has a theme with subtopics, a scripture verse, and the first eight months have a song as well.

Here is January’s so you can see what I mean:

Theme: Agency is the Gift to Choose for Ourselves

Scripture: “Wherefore, men are free. . . to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men” – 2 Nephi 2:27

Song: As a Child of God

Subtopics:
      - Agency is the gift to choose for ourselves.
      - In the premortal life, I chose t0 f0llow God’s plan.
      - Jesus Christ created the earth as a place where I can learn to choose the right.

How Do We Incorporate This in Our Day?

First, I created a playlist of this year’s songs on my IPod Touch, in the order we will learn them.  Each day we turn on the playlist and sing any songs we have learned up to that point.  I also try to play the entire list throughout the year so we become familiar with the songs we will learn in later months.

Second, I printed song flipcharts from JollyJenn and slipped them into our memory work binder.  I asked my Primary Chorister what song she chose for months where there was that possibility and in the end Jolly Jenn had flipcharts for all but one of this year’s songs.  Each day we sing the current song.  In two months we’ll be singing two songs daily for practice, and so on.  There are only 8 songs for the year.

Third, I printed a page for each month with the theme and scripture verse.  We’ll recite the current month’s page daily.  When a new month comes along we’ll recite the new material daily and the old material will move to every other day.  I did not include the subtopics.  We will use the subtopics as starting points for our Family Home Evening lessons this year.  You can see the page I made on the left, plus the next thing I’ll talk about on the right: The last thing we’re working on memorizing are the 13 Articles of Faith.  My children know some or all of these already, depending on age.  We decided to start with 13 and work backwards, one per month until December, where we’ll learn the last two.  The church also has all 13 Articles of Faith as songs, so I’ve made a playlist of them in reverse order to sing.  We’ll use this as a reinforcement and sing together.  Some of my children learn great through reciting while others learn best when music is involved.  I printed each Article of Faith for our binder.

Does your family learn hymns and memorize scripture together?  Is there a way that works best for you?