Friday, February 27, 2015

Prophets are Called by God - March Week 1 Lesson

Wow, the sharing time lesson for the first week of March is perfect for a Singing Time Lesson/Activity I prepared almost two years ago - in May 2013, called Prophet Bingo.

You probably shouldn't do this one if you don't coordinate with your Primary leader that is teaching sharing time, otherwise, you'll teach most of her lesson - but if you two coordinate, you can teach sharing time and singing time together, which is actually the ideal way to teach in Primary, anyway. It's just really hard to do when you have songs you have to teach by the end of the year and they have a lesson to teach - this week's lesson is a lot more accommodating toward that ideal!

The lesson talks about giving children clues to match up descriptions for Moses, Lehi, and Joseph Smith, and then ending with a discussion about President Thomas S. Monson.




So, here are the rules:

1. Put up a picture of each of the following four prophets. Make sure they are the same size and backed with the same color cardstock so children can't see which prophet is behind which paper when the paper is flipped over and magneted to the chalkboard.

2. Put four descriptions about the prophet on the board as well, also on the same size papers, flipped over.

3. Each child that earns the privilege to come up has to say one thing they can do to follow the prophet. Be prepared to give examples if they struggle. Since you are doing this with someone in your Primary Presidency that is over sharing time that day, they can be responsible for this part of the activity.

4. Once children make a match between a quote an a prophet, sing that "Follow the Prophet" song. There is a song for all of these prophets, even if they are not in the book.

The Prophets


1. Moses
(vs.5 of the song)
Exodus 3:4-5
"I was called by God as He spoke to me from a burning bush," or "I came down the mountain with the ten commandments written on stone tablets," or "God called me to write the first five books of the Bible," or "God called me to lead His people out of Egypt."

For the image: Moses in the Gospel Art Kit: He's under "Old Testament," on the sixth row, or just do a search for his name.




2. Lehi
(you can find one of the made-up versions for Lehi here)
1 Nephi 1:5-6

Hint: "I dreamed about the tree of life, and that those who held to the rod were able to reach the tree and partake of the fruit."


For the image: Search for "Lehi" in the Gospel Art Kit. There are several images like this one:



3. Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith - History 1:16-17
I found a version of this song and put in a flip chart a few years ago. It's from the Friend magazine. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the year of the Friend magazine because I had a link directly to the site ... and now it looks like the link is broken, but you can find the words in my flipchart until I can update with which Friend issue has the lines of the song.

Hint: "I went to the forest to pray to my Father in Heaven about which church was true."

Once again, search in the Gospel Art Kit for images like this one:



4. President Thomas S. Monson
(you can find up one of the made-up version for President Monson here)

Hint: "I am the prophet today."

Search in the Gospel Art Kit for images like this one:



Conclude - Per instructions from the manual, "Point out that Moses was called by God, Lehi was called by God, and Joseph Smith was called by God. Tell the children that all prophets are called by God."

End: Talk about how they can follow the prophet