Hello world!
Welcome to Home Seminary, a product of On The Same Page Together.
We love to study the Gospel through the scriptures! The Come Follow Me manuals have great prompts for teaching the basics of the gospel principles found in the assigned chapters, but at this point in our understanding and testimony of the Gospel, my family needs a deeper dive into things beyond the “Sunday School answers” to prompt natural discussion and questions.
I’ll share what and how we will study each day during week as we work our way through the Come Follow Me reading schedule, and hopefully you’ll find it helpful as you strive to dive deeper into your scriptures.
It’s a new year and a new book! We are going to follow the same outline we’ve been doing (found in the video below), now with The Book of Mormon Study Guide. We will not be doing the DMT ‘timeline’ poster printable (they talk about it in their videos and newsletter if you are interested in checking it out). You can find the links to all of the things on the Resources page.
I’m also going to simplify the outline. I was very detail when introducing the Study Guide during the Old Testament year because the assigned reading was very heavy every week, so some of the reading was split mid-chapter to spread it out over 6 days. Now that we’ve settled into aiming to get all of the reading done during the week (saving the weekend for conference study and a Sunday recap) I try to keep the chapters together so noting all the side bar explanations seems a bit unnecessary.
Our Journey To Get To This Point In Our Study
What Home Seminary started as:
We are excited to share weekly Come Follow Me Lesson Plan Outlines using mostly* church provided resources. Choose your own adventure in any stage of life: no kids, one/many little kids, only teens, or a wide range of ages!
Our goal is to organize the prompts from the Come Follow Me manuals as well as articles from the Liahona, For the Strength of Youth, and Friend magazines into daily lesson outlines that you can use to study with, or help you prepare a lesson to teach your family.
Use as much, or as little, as the Spirit directs for YOUR study.
* there are a few optional resources – not provided by the church – that we love using, which tie together everything we’re learning really well, so we want to share them with you:
- DRAWN IN – Check out the resources page for a discount code!
- Don’t Miss This
1/3/22:
We’ve added an “Invite Sharing” heading at the beginning of each lesson for you to use as you see fit! Some ideas for how to use it:
- the Invite Sharing prompts in the Primary or Sunday School Manuals (these are sometimes worked into the lesson)
- a time for family members to share what they are learning in their personal scripture study
- a time for family members to share what they learned at church or Seminary
- if you have any other ideas please leave a comment here and/or on the Instagram post @homeseminary
3/14/22:
This week we’re excited to add 2 new resources:
- Book of Mormon Central’s Come Follow Me “Daily Short Videos” on YouTube.
We’ve been testing these out for a few weeks and really enjoy the insights & cultural/historical background they add to our study!
“BOMC” will be the checkbox/heading so that it’s not too long up there.
The video will be hyperlinked but the YouTube Channel Homepage will be linked in the resources page as well. - Coloring Pages
These will only be included when I find one that fits with the day’s/week’s topic I will include it right after “Invite Sharing”
8/8/22:
We have been in a season of life where I’ve needed to simplify things but have been holding out with our CFM studies. My kiddos are making it clear that I need to thin it down some, so I am going to simplify the amount of work I put into Home Seminary for a bit. I am going to take a break from the Sunday School Manual, Liahona Magazine, and coloring pages.
10/10/22:
The Come Follow Me curriculum is no longer working for our family… long story short, we are going to try something else. We LOVE the scriptures and still want to study them, so we are going to approach the weekly readings from a different angle. I am so sorry if you relied on these lesson plans for your study, I just can’t sustain planning them at the level I was, let alone while I’m figuring out what works best for us. If you did prefer that format hopefully they have helped you develop enough structure in your study that you can formulate your own weekly plan. If you’d like to see exactly how I planned those here is a video that walks you through my process step by step:
10/10/22:
This approach is working so much better for us!
I was personally struggling spiritually. I could see Heavenly Father’s hand in my life but He seemed so far away. This method of study has helped me to turn to Him and my Savior Jesus Christ and begin the process of rebuilding the close relationship we once had.
To be able to cover the prompts from the Come Follow Me Manuals we didn’t really read the chapters, we just looked at the pointed out verses. Now we are truly IN the scriptures. My kiddos are excited to pull theirs out and happy to take a turn reading! They ask questions, they make comments, they initiate discussions and/or participate in them.
I hope that this experience helps you see that if something isn’t working for you, find a different way, don’t walk away. Sometimes you cry out in desperation and He helps you see what you are unknowingly looking for, sometimes it takes multiple tries.