Nursery Lesson #5 “Jesus Christ Showed Us How to Love Others”

by Heather F.

Link to lesson

I saved this lesson for the Sunday before Valentine’s Day because I wanted the activity to be making Valentines.

I think this lesson does a great job of offering stories directly from the scriptures to choose from. Almost every nursery lesson I give has the same format: show a picture of a story from the scriptures, talk about it, ask some questions, go color!  And that is really easy to do here: Show a picture of the Christ giving the sermon on the mount, talk about what is happening in the story, ask how we can show love, go make Valentines!

The one thing I noted about all the lessons on love is to remember that everyone feels love in different ways. Using the 5 Love Languages as a guide some ways are:

1. Words of Affirmation
2. Quality Time
3. Receiving Gifts
4. Acts of Service
5. Physical Touch

So when guiding the conversation, I plan on making sure I give an example of each for the children to do as a way to show love to their families.

1. Saying “I love you.”
2. Playing with your family and friends.
3. Sharing toys, giving gifts
4. Helping clean up or with other chores
5. Giving hugs and kisses

I try to do this a lot because I think we have a tendency to downplay the love languages that we don’t speak ourselves: “Actions speak louder than words” except that for some people words are essential for them to feel love. “We’re going to give service for Christmas instead of gifts because it’s more meaningful” except that for some people, gifts are hugely important. It’s good practice to remember that love is felt differently for every person and each child in your class is going to respond to some of these more than others.

I might make a 5-piece puzzle of a heart, with each of the pieces containing a picture of each way to show love, for the kids to put together. Two year olds love puzzles!

And like I said above: end with coloring! I don’t do fancy handouts: I think I’m just going to draw some hearts on red construction paper and let them color them. Easy peasy!

CTR 4-7 Lesson #5 “I Can Make Right Choices”

by Sara K.S. Hanks

Link to Lesson

Purpose: To held each child understand that we can choose the right because Heavenly Father gave us agency.

Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ Want Us To Choose For Ourselves

The manual suggests starting out the lesson by having the children choose something, like a candy or a colored rock, from a bowl. This is something I’ll definitely be implementing in my CTR4 classroom. We have a tradition of snacking on Skittles in our primary class, and they end up being great tools for object lessons and positive reinforcement. My opinion is that unobtrusive, low-key treats like Skittles are appropriate for younger kids, though they may be distracting or ill-advised for older kids. My class always loves choosing the colors of Skittles that they like most, so I think this agency activity will be a good way for us to get going.

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.