"Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." Matthew 13:9 To help our children under stand this scripture we talked about why Jesus taught in parables. Ammon, my 15 year old explained it this way, "He teaches them in ways that they understand, like fishing and gardening." In our discussion he explained that Jesus didn't want to give them more than they could handle. Teaching through parables and stories, Jesus was able to teach basic gospel truths AND deeper gospel doctrine all in the same story, based on what you (the listener or the reader) are ready to accept. With our younger kids we read the story of Samuel in the Old Testament. 1 Samuel 3:1-10 When the Lord was calling Samuel he didn't recognize his voice. How can we recognize the "voice" of the Lord in our lives? What can we change in our lives to make us more sensitive to the whisperings of the spirit? We did an activity with our children and some of their friends, to practice "hearing"! A sound scavenger hunt! We searched for and recorded these sounds on our phones. We had 2 teams and 2 lists. Then we took turns listening to and guessing each others sounds. You can do it a lot of different ways, you can do both lists together as a family, split up in two groups for family night, or invite friends over, like us! Feel free to print these images! Let us know how it goes for you!
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March 17-24 Matthew 3 This was a fun chapter to study! We read the first part of the chapter and then I asked the kids what they thought each part of the parable represented. Kambria said the seeds are us, and the soil represents the type of circumstances we live in, which affects our testimony and whether the "seed" grows or dies. Amulek said that the withered seed was his Tutu (great-grandma) who passed away last year. He said she is a withered seed right now but will grow again someday. (That was my favorite interpretation) 15 year old Ammon studied this lesson on his own and said simply "Mom, this parable is about attitudes." How right is he!? We each determine our attitude as we hear the word of the Lord. As we discussed this chapter with our families we had some beautiful revelations and we each learned something new! Today we did a great activity! We had the kids gather different types of soils and we discussed how each would affect the growth of the seeds. Collecting rocky soil :) Digging up some soil among the thorns (weeds) (Meet Jasper! Karen"s new puppy!) Our soils: Rocky- Hard hearts; the teachings of Jesus won't enter into our hearts if they are hard with unbelief. 'Thorny- making bad choices, if we don't repent, can lead us away from Jesus and eventually our testimonies will become weak and be "choked out" And good soil Obedience and a desire to believe and follow Jesus will help our testimonies to grow strong! Amulek figured out that rocks don't work so well for planting seeds! hahaha!! :) If our hearts become hard by disbelief and disobedience our testimonies of Jesus will not grow and may eventually wither and die. :( As the kids filled their cups with the "good" soil and planted their seeds we talked about our attitudes and how our hearts can be like the "good" soil as we try to obey the commandments, serve others and follow Jesus' example. This was a really fun project and a great lesson. It was a little (okay, a lot) chaotic and crazy (as always) but there were beautiful moments and hopefully the kids will remember the principles within this parable! We hope you all love it as much as we did! Matthew 11:15-17 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. We read these scriptures together and talked about what a "yoke" is. We looked at pictures of oxen yoked together, and talked about how much lighter the load is when we share it. We talked about Jesus Christ and how He is strong and will help us carry our burdens if we ask Him. I made sure to point out that most of the time the Lord doesn't take away the hard thing, but He does help us pull it! We talked about different burdens and how sometimes life is hard. We shared stories and examples of some members of our family and friends who have had to bear heavy burdens and how they have received strength from the Lord. The day after that discussion I was listening to Elder Bednar's talk "Bearing Our Burdens with Hope" which is part of this week's study... I had forgotten about this Mormon Message, so we watched it together After watching this Message we talked about keeping covenants and how our covenants can be like a "yoke". Inspired by this message we created a simple watercolor project of a loaded pick-up truck. You can get creative and come up with your own design or you can use our template :) I loved creating this art piece, I prefer to pencil the design onto my watercolor paper so that I can erase the pencil lines afterwards, but our kids had fun painting the printed template. This will be a great reminder for us to bear our burdens with hope and to turn for the Lord for strength! The Template Getting ready to paint! This is my penciled sketch, my super fancy Styrofoam plate palette and some clean water :) Here's Kambria's "work in progress" she's painting the template and its turning out beautiful! "My truck is Good, its blue and red" -Amulek And, here's how my finished piece turned out. Kids love art but it is very inspiring for your children to see you creating and exploring your own art! We are each sons and daughters of the ultimate creator! The ultimate artist! Within each of us is the power and desire to create something which did not exist before! "The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul." - Dieter F. Uchtdorf So we challenge you to dive in and create something along with your children! Water color tips and tricks: Using the right paper makes all the difference! Our favorite watercolor paper is Canson Watercolor paper... its nice and thick, it allows the watercolor paints to blend nicely and doesn't wrinkle up when it gets wet. We purchase ours at WalMart, its usually about $5-6 a pad... Joann's and Micheal's also carry it. Use this only if you are going to pencil your own design, don't run this paper through your printer. If you want to print off the template, we suggest you get this mixed media paper from Canson. Its slightly more expensive than the watercolor paper, but its not as thick and will go through a printer easily. It comes in 9x12 sheets, we cut ours down to 8.5x11 and printed the design on it. It worked beautifully. Its not as great for watercolor but WAY better than regular card stock! (you might also try other types of watercolor paper, but these are our favorites.) There so many different types of watercolor paints!! There's no wrong and right. I'm a super cheap artist so I use Artist Loft from Walmart, Karen prefers to use Arteza Gouache paint, they are brighter and more opaque than regular watercolors. Don't forget that with any watercolor paint USE LOTS OF WATER! Keep your paint brush pretty wet. My kids will go through my paint super fast if I'm not watchful because they tend to use it like its acrylic. If you want a little more help on watercolor check out this tutorial! Mark 2:23-28 The Lesson: We told the story in this scripture and had the children help us make a list of ways that we can do the Lord's work on the sabbath and bring joy to our families. Some of their ideas were having family over, writing missionaries, and singing and playing music together. Jen shared a personal story of someone she grew up with who hated Sundays because of all the things she wasn't allowed to do. Sundays are a gift to us from our Heavenly Father. What are some ways your family honors God and finds JOY on Sunday? Leave us a comment! We would LOVE to hear from you! The Project: We made doodle pages of all the things that we can do on Sundays that bring us true and lasting joy! The little ones drew pictures of temples and church buildings. We laminated them so they could hang them in their rooms. We also listened to beautiful inspiring music. Get creative and make your own doodle pages or feel free to print and color the one we made!
For this lesson we blindfolded the kids and had them eat and move around the house with their blindfolds on. We then described a piece of art we found online for them. We tried to be vivid in our descriptions and give them a mental image of what we were looking at. We gave them clay and asked them to sculpt what they imagined the artwork to look like. We chose a watercolor of a cat for this activity. We gave them different colors of clay, they had to remember where each color was, as they created. Once they had finished their art pieces, we read the scripture together and talked about their experience of being "blind" for just a few minutes. We asked them to tell us how it felt and what parts were the hardest. We asked them what they would miss the most if they didn't have their sight. Some of the things they said they would miss were, "seeing the television, seeing babies"-Kambria, "I wouldn't be able to do hula" -Aurelia "Seeing my ukulele"-Amulek We asked how they think those men in the scriptures may have felt after Christ healed them.
We also talked about the difference between being physically blind, and being spiritually blind. Spiritual blindness is not seeing/understanding Jesus and his commandments. Jesus Christ can heal us from spiritual blindness, just like he healed the blind men in the scriptures. We ended by watching this clip from The Testaments |
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