The Sprinkle on Top

After 2 months of only attending the Sacrament meeting portion of church, I finally climbed back in the saddle and went back to Primary. And boy did it feel good to be back. The lesson was simple this week with only a brief history to teach, which left us more time to do an activity. The lesson: Joseph Smith writes the Articles of Faith. We followed the manual pretty much to a "T" to get the lesson started off. You can get the manual and their ideas here . After telling the kids of the events that surrounded the writing of the Articles of Faith, we dove into an activity that got the kids out of their seats, make them work for a little treat and it turned into a huge success. This activity was adapted from idea #1 & #2 given in the manual. The activity was to teach the kids that knowing the Articles of Faith can help lead them and others to a testimony of the gospel. To start off I pulled out a dish full of little baggies with some skittles in them. I explain...

Last Sunday Justin and I got to teach our Sunday School class of 9 year olds about Zion's Camp -- a group of 200 Latter-day Saint men and women who walked 1,000 miles from Ohio to Missouri to bring food, clothing, and other supplies to the saints who were being persecuted in Jackson County. Lately we've had a bit of a tough time keeping the attention in our class with a simple object lesson and telling the stories and church history accounts. Let's face it - by the third hour of church, kids are almost entirely out of the energy to focus. Sometimes us adults are too. As we planned this week's lesson, we decided to try something a little different. We were going to take our class on an "Oregon Trail" of sorts, but instead of being a part of that pioneer company, the kids were going to be members of Zion's Camp and we were going to march from Ohio (our classroom) to Missouri (the pavilion outside of the church). Along the way the kids would learn about t...