How to connect front-page.php to page in admin panel?

create a new template in your theme directory and call it home-page.php

Within that template place the following in at the start of the php file (remove the php tags if necessary):

<?php
/**
*
* Template Name: Home Page Template
*
*/

Copy and paste your code from front-page.php after these lines and save. Once that is done and there are no errors go into your admin area and you should be able to see a template available on the right hand side of the admin area when editing the home page.