Child Scripture Set DIY

Okay, I know these are not authentic scripture sets, but as I mentioned here, I wanted to create a little scripture "set" I could give my son to carry around, knowing fully that they will get destroyed. The purpose of this is to teach him that they are special. This way, he has his own he can learn from until he gets a nice set for his eighth birthday. After giving them to him I had him hug them and tell them he loved them. I told him they were special and we took care of them.

For this you will need:
Index Cards (or card stock)
A ring to put it on (I used one you would put keys on)
Stickers to decorate (optional)
 Hole puncher

Cost wise, it really couldn't be any better. I bought the cards at Wal Mart for .48, the hole puncher for .97, the ring I already had (Wal Mart had 6 of them for 2.00), and 2 packs of stickers at 1.00 each. I probably had stickers I could use but I didn't feel like digging around for them. I would HIGHLY recommend laminating these. Especially if you are giving this to a young child. My son is 20 months old and will probably destroy these in 5 minutes. He's a little crazy though. I don't have a laminater, but after seeing how easy it is for him, I will be using my mom's next time I am over her house. Until then, close supervision! I don't care if he messes them up in general, but 5 minutes is too short for it to last in my opinion. If you don't have someone who has one you can borrow or use, you could go to Kinko's or Staple's. I believe they do it there cheaply.

The first thing I did was pick what I wanted to be on there. I chose the story of Noah's Ark (Because I could animal stickers), Daniel and the Lion's Den (Again, all about the stickers), my favorite scripture, and my husband's favorite scripture. I wrote a sentence or two on each one until the story was told. I punched a whole in it and let him put stickers on. I did have to rearrange some of the stickers so they weren't covering up words. Then I put them on the ring, voila! 

If you laminate them (again, highly recommended), do it before putting them on the ring. Maybe even before stickers depending on the kind of stickers you use too. I used puffy one's that probably won't go through a laminater. So I will have to peel them off or chose different ones. 

These were pretty easy, but in case you have issues shortening the stories, I will write out what I did, to at least get you on the right track. I love the idea of putting their favorite stories, or one's you've talked about recently in there. My son is too little to have this work for us, but maybe it'll work for someone else. The joy of this too, is you can always add on to it. 


Noah's Ark:

The Lord told Noah to build a big boat because a flood was coming. Noah built the boat and everyone told him he was crazy. After he built the boat he put two animals of every species in it. So two turtles, two cats, two puppies, two elephants. The flood came just like the Lord promised.

 Daniel and the Lion's Den:

Daniel was a prophet who refused to stop praying. The King threw him in the lion's den. Angels calmed the lions and Daniel was saved.

 Let me know what you do with yours! This would be great for Sunbeams, Nursery, or FHE.

Nursery Behold Your Little Ones Lesson 23: I Love the Scriptures

My son is in nursery and he has a really great Nursery Leader. He gets to take home his coloring pages every week discussing showing what he learned. Normally I would just stick it up on the fridge or file it away in his "baby book," but I got the idea today, while I was struggling with what to do tonight for FHE, what if we revisit his Sunday lesson tonight? The more I think about it, the more I like it. It reinforces the lessons and gives him a second exposure to it. Plus, there aren't a ton of things to do for FHE that keep a 20 month old's attention. Anyway, the more I started researching different ideas to reinforce these lessons, the more I realized there isn't a ton of helps out there for our Nursery Leaders. It's sad because it really can be a fun calling. You have the opportunity to make so many fun crafts and cute snacks, but sometimes it's hard to get brainstorming. I figured if I was going to be doing it anyways, I would put up any thoughts or ideas I had to help.

The lesson they taught yesterday was Lesson 23, I Love the Scriptures. I'm not sure if there is an official church wide schedule to be on, or what other areas are doing, but this is what they taught.

The lesson can be found here. There should be a link there for a puppet project that they can do. I like that idea, but I would probably print it out on card stock and laminate it before hand. Little ones can be hard on regular paper. ;)

The idea I had that was a little bit different is to make a little scripture thing for them. This would be theirs. They could protect it and keep it safe. It would be a good practice for having their own set of scriptures one day. My original thought was maybe 4 or 5 pages with a few scriptures and pictures to coordinate on it. I still like that idea but I think I found a better finished product here. I think I am going to get some index cards, write a few scriptures on a few different ones, poke a whole in them and put a ring in it. If you have a laminater that is probably a brilliant idea, I don't so I'm not going to worry about. To me, this is going to be the set he can practice on. He can get used to bringing them to church, learn not to put them on the kitchen table, etc. I'm going to teach him that they're special and he needs to take care of them, and that's true. But between you and me, I won't shed any tears if they get too messed up, because they're cheap and easy to replace, unlike the set he'll receive when he's 8.

When I go home and make them, I'll take pictures so you can see how I did them. I'll link it up when it's finished.


UPDATE: I just finished the tutorial on the practice scriptures. You can find it here. I hope you guys like it!

Sharing Time September 2012 Week 5 Ideas

This month we have five Sundays, which gives us a fun opportunity to be creative. I love how the church organizes things for us every week, and makes it so simple to do sharing time, but sometimes it is really fun to be able to be creative and think outside the box. When I was thinking about what would be fun to do this week there were a lot of possibilities.

1. Practice for your Primary Program if you have that coming up. I know many wards and branches have already had theres, but if you haven't, this may be a good time to do it. This is kind of neat because you won't have to skip another lesson to do this. It's kind of a free week.

2. Do a scripture chase. You could do the classic one with the senior primary and a younger version with the junior. One idea I had to make this a little easier for younger kids was to tell them part of a story and they can kind of finish up or say who the story was about. You could get pictures from the library and use those. I liked this because it helps the children get more familiar with their scripture stories before they can read. It's a nice foundation to build upon when they're older. To make this even more fun you could involve snack size candy or a homemade treat.

3. Keep on subject with the 10 Commandments. You could play a game to get the children to understand them better/memorize them. I have a punch out board I made for a sharing time a while ago, you could have scenerios in each one and have the children match it to the commandments. You could have something along the lines of "Your mom told you to clean up your bedroom. You chose to go outside and play soccer." This would be breaking the commandment of Honor thy father and mother. You could have some in there that follow the commandments. My kids really love the punch out box, you could put anything in there and they would think it's the coolest thing ever. I don't have a tutorial of mine, but this is very close to mine. I don't have that nifty circle cutting tool, so I used an exacto blade and cut squares, it was easier then trying circles.

4. Play a General Conference game. A few months ago I did a Sharing Time on the First Presidency and Apostles. We played a little bit of a matching game with them. One thing I liked about this is I found out some fun interesting facts about a few different ones and read them to the kids. I then would read out some of the fun facts and have them match who it was. We had a neat experience because Dieter F. Uchtdorf was a pilot, and we have a child who is interested in doing that for a career. So it was neat to see that child draw a connection to him. I think it helps to view them as real people with families and hobbies, it makes them more relatable to us. To me, this is so important for our children. The more they can connect and relate to a speaker, the more they will listen and trust what they have to say.

5. The next idea I had was to do October 2012 week 1, since we will have general conference that week. You can find some thoughts from me here. And you can find the outline from the church for this week here.

6. Movie and snacks. This is a really simple, really fun thing for the kids to get to do. You could bring in a couple big blankets, push the chairs to the wall, pop some popcorn and enjoy a movie together. My family has The Living Scriptures, The Prodigal Son. We watched this a few weeks ago for FHE, and it was so cute. My son was a little to young to appreciate it, but I think it's perfect for the primary aged kids. The great thing is they have so many different movies that you can find one to fit whatever lesson you want to teach. You do have to pay for these, but chances are if you don't have some, someone else in your branch/ward will. Ask teachers, councelors, or other moms. If you can't find any, the church library always has some fun movies to watch.

I hope you guys were able to find something fun to do this week and think outside the box. Let me know what you guys end up doing!

Prophet Thomas S. Monson Coloring Page

I have been thinking a lot about General Conference and what we as parents can do to prepare for the inevitable struggle with our children during this time. I know my son is too little to understand what is going on, or to get anything out of General Conference, but he won't be for long. I have been researching a lot of different ideas for what to do with the kids during conference, things to keep them occupied or things to help them stay focused. I've found so many great ideas out there that I really liked I wanted to hopefully compile a few different ideas into one place.  That is something I'm going to work on over the next couple of days so please check back by Monday night hopefully I will have everything up, and a few of my own added.

What I wanted to share tonight was a project my husband and I worked on together. As I was looking through all of these ideas, I noticed that there weren't very many options for a coloring page of the prophet, Thomas S. Monson. I thought it was strange because it was something basic I wanted to include in a packet for my primary kids. Anyways, I decided that I can draw a little bit (a VERY little bit) and my husband can draw really well, so between the two of us, we can do this! Anyways, below is a link to print the page out. I thought it turned out well, so I hope you do too. :)

Coloring page here.

Sharing Time September 2012 Week 4: I Should Respect Others

This week I am in charge of doing Sharing Time at my church. It is about a 20-25 minute lesson for the children aged 3-11. Most of the churches around us break it up into two age groups within that, but we're so small that we don't. It's difficult sometimes to target everyone within that age group, but I usually find some way to not lose the younger ones while getting the older ones involved.  Anyways, I wanted to post my thoughts to maybe get some people brainstorming.

The first thing I'll do is share a short story about a friend of mine and how we are really great friends but have different talents. I am doing this to illustrate that everyone is good a something, even if it is just being kind to others, it doesn't have to be the piano, singing, or drawing. I am then going to have the children go around and say one thing that makes them unique. It could be something like the piano, or it could be something along the lines of "I really like bugs." (We don't have very many children so I think we'll be able to go through this quickly, you may have to nix this idea if you have lots of kids.) Again, the point of this is to illustrate that we are all unique and special in our own ways. I have some stickers my mom gave me a while ago that say "I am special" and "I am a child of God," I am going to hand these out while they're doing this.

Then I am going to draw a parellel between the idea that we are all unique and special, and Heavenly Father loves us, to the idea that we need to be kind and respectful to others. This should be pretty simple. I just want them to understand that we need to remember that everyone is special in their own way so we should be kind and loving towards them. I will probably use the word respectful instead, and that way they can brainstorm what it is to be respectful.

I got this idea from someone posting on Sugardoodle. The link for Sugardoodle is at the bottom of this page and her comments are in that section. I'm not sure how to work it in quite yet but I really like it. I'm thinking maybe at this point would be a good place. If not, I will just veto the whole idea and move onto the next part. What you do is start by inviting a child up to talk about something. It can be to read a scripture, talk about their week, share an experience, it doesn't really matter what it is they're sharing. I am going to go and talk to another adult in the room a little noisely. I am probably going to choose for them to read a scripture. Maybe the ten commandments? The whole point of this is for the children to be a little distracted and to illustrate how disrespectful it is to talk while someone else is supposed to have the floor. I am going to ask the child who stood up how it felt when I was being rude.
I try to use scriptures as often as possible in these, so I am going to have an older child read Mosiah 18:21, and then hopefully explain the idea behind it.

Then I want to tie in the idea of the Good Samaritan. I may be short on time, but I really like the idea of using scriptures, to get the children used to pulling them out and being familiar with them. So I am hoping to make it to this part so we can read it outloud and discuss why this demonstrates respect. I also found a good coloring or activity page about the Good Samaritan for them to take home (or if this, by some miracle, is really short, can fill in the remaining time). You can see where I got it here.

I will close by sharing my testimony on loving thy neighbor, the ten commandments, and how respecting others can make us happier and our lives better.


Here is a link to the official guideline from the church for this week. (On Sugardoodle)