Learning and Living the Gospel: Getting to know the Apostles and First Presidency

In preparation for the Conference Faith in God activity, I've decided to spice it up a bit.

For my opening part of the activity, I like to do a fun activity to warm everyone up. Today's fun game is 'Hot Seat". This is where the person in the middle of the circle makes a statement like "stand up if your favourite dessert is caramel dumplings" or "stand up of you are wearing pink". Those that match the description stand up and have to swap seats (not the person next to them), if they miss a chair they then go in the middle. 

After we've warmed up and everyone feels comfortable I will then introduce the Faith in God focus: the prophet - we will then do the activity I explained in the conference tab.

After the kiddies have made their keepsake, we will play charade/act it out/pictionary that pertain to the 12 apostles and First Presidency. I've found 1 interesting fact about each member and a specific task for them to do. To make it interesting they kids will be place into groups.

Once, we've finished that we will play a game of silent ball. Everyone has to sit in a spot and throw it to anyone in the room, the goal is to get to 100 - if they drop it, it goes back down to 0. (I plan to watch ;)) hehe.

I hope this helps.

Back of the card

Front of the Card

I've attached the interesting fact cards and challenge. For the pictures I went here.

Learning and Living the Gospel: Conference

What a quick and easy idea to get the kiddos to think about what they learned from President Thomas S Monson?

Materials:
Paper Strips
Pens
Glitter
Sand
Mini Message in the Bottles

Watch the recent conference address as a class. Remind the kiddos that you will be asking them what stood out to them at the end.

Talk about what stood out.

Hand out strips of paper and them to write down what stood out (maybe mention to write small).
Roll up into a scroll and put into the bottle - give them a bit of glitter/sand to put in the their bottle.

Ask them to place it on their desk, window ledge, etc so they can refer to their message in a bottle when they feel a bit unsure about life.

Play a game about how we can follow the prophet - Charades or snowball fight (write the things we can do to follow the prophet on pieces of paper and scrunch them up to make 'snow balls' get them to have a fight and when you shout "stop"they have top pick up as many as they can. They then share them with the class. EXTENSION: you then brainstorm more to have an even bigger snowfight!).

Learning and Living the Gospel: Baptismal Covenants

Do you have an active group of kiddos? If you do hopefully this activity will keep them entertained.

I wanted to talk about 4 points:
- Our Baptismal Covenants
- Temptations
- Being Faithful
- The Sacrament

What I did.

We built a cup tower (6 cups), each cup had a covenant that we have made to Heavenly Father. As I took them out, we discussed them.

They are:
1. Come into the fold of God (become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ).
2. Be called his son or daughter (take upon me the name of Christ).
3. Bear others’ burdens, that they may be light; mourn with those that mourn; and comfort those in need of comfort (help others).
4. Stand as a witness of God at all times and in all things and in all places (testify of Christ and set a good example at all times).
5. Serve God and keep his commandments.
6. Promise: I will always have the Holy Ghost present in my life.

I then introduced a ping pong ball and said that the ping pong ball is like the small temptations that we have - I then allowed them all to have a few goes at trying to knock the tower down (obviously hard). I then introduced a bigger ball and said that this represents bigger temptations and we talked about how sometimes we are surrounded by people who swear and how it gets stuck in our head. They then all had a few goes at knocking down the tower (obviously easier).

I then grabbed a big piece of cardboard (cut from a box) and introduced a shield. We talked about how if we remain faithful it's kind of like this shield - it will help protect our covenants. I then asked, what are things that we can do to show our faith: scripture reading, prayer, family home evening, etc.

We then put the shield up and had a few goes throwing the ping pong ball and big ball. It was interesting to see that the ping pong ball just bounced off!

Afterwards we sat down and talked about how sometimes temptations still get through to us and we make mistakes - our tower falls down however, we can build our tower again by repenting as we partake of the sacrament.
I also mentioned how no one is perfect therefore our tower will be knocked down and we need the sacrament to help fix it however our purpose is to improve each time making it harder and harder to knock is down.

I then gave them small cups, labels (I printed them on sticky labels) and a little cardboard shield for them to make it and share with their family in family home evening.

They loved it.

I reminded parents Sunday night to remind their child about teaching the lesson (thank you Facebook) - so far so good.