Sharing Time- March 2012- Week 4: I am blessed when I choose to follow the prophet.

Purpose: To help the children understand that we sometimes have to listen closely because the we have to exercise our brains sometimes and not just follow the crowd.  That we have to use our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds.

Activity: Play a thinking game.  They are simple to adjust and make up.  You just have the children do the opposite of what is normal.  Like when I say touch their knees, but really you have to touch your nose.  This requires the children to look and process information that is counterintuitive, and requires focus.  Another one would be when I say sit down you stand up, and stand up – you sit down.

Identify Doctrine: Before class attach small snakes to the bottom of the chairs of some students.  Then tell the story of Moses and the poisonous serpents (but don’t tell the solution).  Have the children look under their chairs.  Have the children who had a snake get up since they have been bitten by the snakes.  Ask them if anyone knows how the people were able to live even though they had been poisoned by the sakes.

Discuss the possibilities and then tell the children if they have not already told you how the problem was resolved.  Use the “choose the right stick and a bigger snake to wrap it around the choose the right stick.

Explain how this may have seemed silly to the Israelites or that they might have not listened.  But that it is important to listen so that we can know what the Prophet and those who love us, want us to make good decisions and to practice making choices when we are young – so that we can grow up and be happy and know how to make great choices.

Sharing Time- February 2012- Week 4: Church Members are Blessed for Choosing the Right

Jessica

Link to Sharing Time Outline 

Thoughts: I love to have children be the voice and share their stories about faith in their own lives.  With all my heart I believe that we need to teach our children how to reflect on their own lives and to share the principles that they have learned.

A few days a ahead of time I call the children in primary.  I like to split into groups and have the kids telling the stories rotate and the kids on the groups stay where they are.  I like to have no more than 5-7 kids per group.

I have each child to plan for a 1-2 min sharing (repeated for x number of groups).  I give the families a lot of flexibility.  I just told them that their child will need to share a story about how they chose the right, or a story where they had to make a choice and how they decided and what happened as a result.  They may bring a visual aide, write it down and read it off the paper or what ever  they feel comfortable doing.

I find that children sharing with children make the stories more real and developmentally appropriate since all the children are much more likely to experience something similar.

Sharing Time- February 2012- Week 2: Jesus’s disciples were blessed by choosing the right.

Jessica

Link to Sharing Time Outline

Thoughts while preparing this lesson.  The last few weeks I have been studying President David O. McKay’s teachings on agency.  I have thought and reflected on this years theme “Choose the Right”  and how important it is to teach our children to use their agency well.  And I have decided that for my lessons this month and for the rest of the year I will try to focus on how to teach children to see how they can become good agents for themselves and how they can learn how to act and not to be simply acted upon.

Identify Doctrine

The following scriptures are provided in the outline

Luke 10:38– 42 (Mary) and I will add Martha.  ( I think that the scriptural interpretation of Martha is too harsh)  That both picked a different way to serve, but that we have choice.

Matthew 4:18–20 (Peter and Andrew)

Acts 9:1–9, 17–20 (Paul)

Plan ahead of time to have some of the older children read or summarize the scripture or ask a few teachers to read.  I am planning on doing one story at a time to make it less confusing for the children.  It may be that one story takes up more time than the others.

Encourage Understanding:

I am planning on using my own version of the game of life for this month, but it would work just as well to use the “choice and consequences” stick from January.  The idea is that I want to emphasize that the people in this story had more than one choice and that they chose to act.

Example: Mary and Martha (props: cooking items; object lesson have some kids try to build something or cook something while trying to pay attention to the lesson)

Read Luke 10:38-42

Question: Who are the people in this story

Answer: Mary and Martha, and Jesus

Q: What was going on in the story?

Q: What was Mary doing when the story began?

Q: What was Martha doing?

Q: Why was Martha upset with Mary?  Do you think that you would be upset if you had to clean up and cook food and no one was helping you?  Back then cooking took a lot of work. It would take most of the day to make food for dinner.  What would have happened if there was no food for dinner?  Is cooking food a form of service?

Q: What did Jesus tell Mary and Martha?

Q: What could have been other ways that Mary and Martha could have both listened to Jesus and still made dinner?

Q: Is there anything that we can do to be better listeners to Jesus?  (helping share the work maybe).

Sharing Time 2012-January Week 1 & 2 “Agency is the gift to choose for ourselves”

guest post by Cheryl

Link to Sharing Time Outline

 

These were some of my thoughts and inspirations leading up to my sharing time presentations. This might actually be more important than the actual sharing time outlines which follow. My study of the scripture stories made me realize that those who grew closer to God were those who acted. Those who grew away from God were those who were acted upon.

Elder Bednar (from General Conference, April 2010)
In the grand division of all of God’s creations, there are “things to act and things to be acted upon” (2Nephi 2:14). As children of our Heavenly Father, we have been blessed with the gift of moral agency, the capacity and power of independent action. Endowed with agency, we are agents and we primarily are to act and not merely to be acted upon….
Giving a man a fish feeds him for one meal. Teaching a man to fish feeds him for a lifetime. As parents and gospel instructors, you and I are not in the business of distributing fish; rather, our work is to help our children learn “to fish” and to become spiritually steadfast. This vital objective is best accomplished as we encourage our children to act in accordance with correct principles—as we help them to learn by doing…. (John 7:17)
Are you and I helping our children become agents who act and seek learning by study and by faith, or have we trained our children to wait to be taught and acted upon? Are we as parents primarily giving our children the equivalent of spiritual fish to eat, or are we consistently helping them to act, to learn for themselves, and to stand steadfast and immovable? Are we helping our children become anxiously engaged in asking, seeking, and knocking?

Sharing Time 2012- January Week 3- In the Premortal Life, I Chose to Follow God’s Plan.

Jessica

Link to Sharing Time Outline

Comments:  I like to have the children teach whenever possible.  I think it works best where there is a lot of short concepts to teach in one lesson.  I call the parents ahead of time to discuss the lesson, and then I always call Saturday afternoon/evening as a reminder.  I encourage the children to use pictures or other materials to help them feel comfortable giving a lesson

Identify Doctrine:   Briefly have 6 children discuss the following principles of the gospel listed below.  Have each child emphases  how a person can use his/her agency in each stage of the plan of happiness.

Encourage Understanding: After every child teaches sing the corresponding songs with the children:

Before I came to earth I lived in heaven (“I Lived in Heaven” [CS, 4]).

I chose to come to earth and receive a body (“I Am a Child of God” [CS, 2–3];

I will be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (“When I Am Baptized” [CS, 103];

I can prepare to go to the temple (“I Love to See the Temple” [CS, 95];

“Families Can Be Together Forever” [CS, 188]).

I will be resurrected (“He Sent His Son” [CS, 34–35]).

Sharing Time 2012- January Week 4- Jesus Christ Created the Earth as a Place Where I Can Learn to Choose the Right

by Jessica

Link to Sharing Time Outline 

Ideas:

As I studied this lesson I was impressed by the importance in the act of creation.  Here is the Mormon Message  from Elder Uchtdorf, about the human desire and need to create.  I wanted to allow the children to have the opportunity to create something with their hands and have it be apart of a larger project to see that they can work together as a primary class to create something of importance.

Identify the Doctrine

Review the how important the gift of Agency is in our lives.  That it is an essential part of the plan of happiness.

As part of the plan of happiness we chose to use our agency by choosing to come to Earth and receive a body.  And that the earth is very special place because Jesus Christ made the Earth for us to live and to learn about the gospel.

Jesus Christ made wonderful and amazing things on the earth.  Ask the children for ideas of what parts of the earth Jesus made.  (Waterfalls, rivers, mountains, the ocean, etc.)

Ask them how they feel about the wonderful things that has been created? Or about spending time in nature.

Activity: Making a Clay Model of the Earth

Make dough or some already made.  I like salt dough (instructions at the end) because it is easy.  If possible make a few earth colors like blue, green, yellows, browns.  And a flat box or piece of cardboard, for the display.

If you worry about the possibility of things getting out of control with the younger children have them do it as a class.