Gifts

I am excited to begin teaching March's song: My Eternal Family. I've been pondering how to teach this one for a long time.

Every 1st Sunday of the Month is "Discovery Sunday". We always get to discover what the new theme and song for the month is going to be. I try to come up with an activity that will stick in their minds so it will help them recall the words and meaning of the song as we progress through the month. So, here it is...

Prep:

• 5 card board boxes that have been wrapped or gift bags. I plan to make them bright and exciting to look at. It will be much easier if you have a removable top to the boxes so they don't have to unwrap it (they can be of varying sizes depending on the object that will go within them)


• All the following items will be wrapped in an individual box: VERSE #1 A Hard Hat and tool box (these were all out of my kids toy box), a picture of a family, a serving tray with a paper heart taped to it, a paper growth chart (you can make your own by taping several pages together and marking height marks on the side), a picture of smiling lips with kind words surrounding it, a small hammer, and a child's toy, a picture of the council in Heaven, a small hand dumbbell, a picture of a family standing by the temple. You can make boxes for the second verse; however, I don't believe time will allow for it...at least in my situation. I plan to cover the second verse if I have time by just using the props we've already discovered and through the picture prompts I will bring that I will be using the rest of the month.


• Picture Prompts from the Jolly Jenn web site....or you can make your own.

Presentation:

I will line up the boxes and tell them that I have brought the Primary some special gifts to open. Each Gift has a clue to a part of the song we will be learning this month in Primary, but before we open them we need to close our eyes and listen to the music of the song. After the song has been played once through slowly, I will then allow one child at a time to come and open a box. As we open and discover what is inside each box we'll discuss what the object could possibly represent. (you should really guide this discussion with the Jr. Primary so time isn't taken up on certain objects). As we decide what the objects represent, I will show my picture prompt for that line of the song and we'll say it and sing it two times.

After we have learned the entire first verse, I will tell the children that our families are a precious gift that Heavenly Father has given too us, and that we need to be good builders in our families to keep them strong and keep them full of love so we can be together forever.

*Originator: The Crazy Chorister

PS. I apologize to those I promised that I would post "pictures" that I made for this. Honestly, I really just drew a silly picture of lips with some nice words surrounding it. And, I used pictures of my family and other pictures I had around my home for the other pictures involved with this activity. It wasn't something that I thought was actually worth putting on this page. I'm sure you all could do much better. I did however find a terrific flip chart for this song on the Sugardoodle site. The link is in the comments section of this post.