Sunday, January 19, 2014

Scripture Mastery Ball

Here is our class 
Book of Mormon Scripture Mastery Ball
The is a soccer ball, but you can use any type of ball. Ask your students if any of them have a spare soccer ball that they can donate to the class. We had one for New Testament and this is something most of the students have asked to have again.
Toss, pass, kick, or volley the ball around in "hot potato" fashion. Have a person turn their back to the action and when they stay "STOP", whoever has the ball checks to see where their right thumb is. The student who has the ball must state which scripture mastery verse matches the key word their right thumb is covering. For an extra point or treat, they have the opportunity to recite the verse.
I dont always use this as a game. Sometimes at the end of class when we have a few extra minutes, I will toss it to the class and whoever catches names the scripture matching the key word their right thumb is covering.
It is easier to do this in our classroom where we have the keywords on the wall, but they love going in to the cultural hall for more movement and space.

Two Cent Prayers?

When we studied Enos, I asked the students:
Are you offering Two Cent Prayers
and expecting
Ten Thousand Dollar Prayers?

What type of prayer do you think Enos offered?
How can you increase the quality of your own prayers?
As a reminder to give more than Two Cent prayers, 
I gave each student 2 pennies to keep in their pockets as a reminder to have meaningful prayers and/or to improve the quality of their prayers.

This can be applied to any lesson on prayer, faith, commitment, goal-setting, and more.

"Pass It On" Game

This activity illustrates the importance of written records:
I used it to reinforce how important it was that the words King Benjamin taught were written down and sent to those in the far areas who could not hear him as he spoke. What would have been the result had the people verbally passed the word?
Use this activity any time you are teaching the blessing and importance of written records:
This game is known by name such as "telephone" or "gossip"

Whisper a phrase in a students ear (I started with "serving God is serving others") have them whisper to the next student and continue passing the message around to each student until everyone has heard the message. Have the last student repeat what they heard. Rarely is it the exact same message. In this case, the final message came out as: "something God says love one another"

I had the message written down and showed it to the students, then asked how many heard this message. It was interesting to see how early the communication was confused and diluted.

In addition to being fun, this created some great discussion and I am sure it had an impact on the students.