April 2009 Sharing Time
Week 1: In the premortal life, I chose to follow Jesus Christ.
References: Abraham 3:24-27; GP, chapters 2-3
Song: I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus (Any song can be used, but I felt this one best fit the first and fourth weeks.)
Invite a child to come up and hold a picture of Jesus. Invite three more children to come up also. Ask the child with the picture to circle the room and ask the other children to follow her. When they return say, “The song we’re learning says ‘I’m trying to be like Jesus. I’m following in His way.’ These children were following a picture of Jesus. Do you think that’s what the song wants you to do—to follow a picture of Jesus around? What if Jesus were really here? Would the song mean to follow Him everywhere He went? While that might be a good way to learn things, that isn’t what the song really means. Listen while I sing the song and see if you can figure it out.”
After you sing the first verse, ask the children if they know what it means to follow in His way.
Invite children to hold pictures for the following lines: (I am not reprinting actual text due to copyright.)
First line: Christ and Children (Gospel art kit 608)
Second line: Girl reading scriptures (GAK 617)
Third line: ( “I’m trying” through “do and say”): Family Togetherness, (GAK 616)
Fourth line (tempted) Picture 3-28 from the classroom packets. This picture is in other packets also. It shows a boy with a baseball bat standing in front of a broken window.
Fifth line: Have child point to heart and ear.
Go through each line, carefully explaining what it means and how the picture relates to it, so as they look at the picture, they’ll associate it with the meaning of the song. This will help them think about what the song means, rather than just singing it mindlessly.
Remind the children that a Primary song is a testimony and when they sing, their voices go right to Heaven, so they want to sing in beautiful voices and try to feel the spirit in their hearts as they’re singing.
Have them sing the first verse of the song several times, complimenting them if their singing is spiritual.
Sharing Time: Ask the children if they remember where they lived before they were born. (This was covered in January’s sharing times, so you might want to review what was taught there.)
Tell the following story, explaining this is a true story and it happened to them, even though they don’t remember it.
One day Heavenly Father announced there would be a meeting for everyone in Heaven. We were all very excited. What was going to happen? ( Show picture 3-3 of premortal life.) When we got to the meeting, Heavenly Father told us he was giving us a present. Who likes presents? This present was a planet, just for us to live on. (Show the picture of the earth from the gospel art kit, picture 600.) We could all choose to live there. If we chose to go, we’d get bodies and families, and have all sorts of interesting adventures. However, Heavenly Father wasn’t coming with us, so we’d have to find the true church and learn how to obey Him even though He wasn’t there and we couldn’t remember living with Him. He promised to give us some gifts to help us. One gift was prayer. Another gift was the Holy Ghost. And there would be one more very special gift.
Heavenly Father knew we would make mistakes, so He would send someone who would take our sins on Himself and then die for us.
Have the music leader help the children sing “I Came From Heaven.” As they sing, they should be instructed to listen to find out which two people wanted to be the helper.
After the song, ask them who wanted to help us. (Jesus and Satan.) Do they know how Jesus wanted to help us? Discuss it with them. (Show Gospel art kit pictures 227, Jesus praying in Gethsemane and 230, the Crucifixion.)
Then ask them if they knew how Satan wanted to help. He wanted to take away our right to choose for ourselves. He would make us do everything just right, like a puppet. (You may want to use a puppet to demonstrate that the puppet can’t do anything unless you make it move.) We couldn’t choose anything for ourselves. And he wanted all the honor and the glory. That means he wanted us to love and obey him, not God. You can show picture 3-2 from the classroom packets, which show Jesus and Satan, with Satan presenting his idea for overthrowing God’s plan. Remember there weren’t two plans. There was only God’s plan. Satan simply wanted to overthrow the plan. Jesus did not want that. He wanted us to give all the glory and honor to God.
Ask the children who they think they chose to follow. Everyone born on earth chose to follow Jesus, but some people in Heaven didn’t choose Jesus. They chose Satan, so they didn’t get to be born. They have to spend eternity with Satan. Do the children think that would be fun? Tell them those people are now very sad, and Satan is mad. He is miserable, and wants us to be as miserable as he is, so he is always trying to get us to make bad choices.
At the beginning of sharing time, they learned the first verse of I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus. The last line said sometimes we’re tempted to make bad choices. What does the song teach us to do when that happens?
Singing Time: Review the first verse and then teach the remainder of the song.
The children have been sitting for a while now, and it would be good to get them moving just a little. Have them stand. Tell them you’re going to name some ways for them to help other people and you want them to see if they can think of a way to act out the idea without moving away from their seats or getting silly. For older children, you might call up a child and give him a card with the idea, letting him act it out while the others guess what he’s doing. Have the children not acting stand up and then sit down as soon as they think they know what the acting child is doing.
Now sing the second verse and the chorus to them. Ask them to listen to see if they can figure out why they were playing that game. (The first two lines talk about serving others.) Ask them what it means to love our neighbors and serve our friends.
Use the following two pictures for these two verses:
Line one: Gospel Art Kit 216, Jesus with children
Line two: 3-27 from classroom packets, child pushing friend on a tricycle
Line three: gospel art kit 239 The Resurrected Jesus
Line four and five: Gospel art kit 212 Sermon on the Mount
Chorus:
Line one: picture 213, Gospel art kit, Jesus healing blind man
Line two: Gospel Art Kit 420 Joseph Smith Loved Children
Line three: classroom packet picture 7-5, little boy touching nose of new sibling
Line four: Gospel Art Kit 219, Mary and Martha
Sharing Time:
Give each child a copy of this for the following game: The happy/sad face in the nursery manual (pg. 83)
Tell them they are going to decide if the child in the story is following or not following Jesus. Show them a homemade book with one sentence per page. It doesn’t need pictures. Each page has something a child did during his day. Give the book to a child in the oldest class and have him stand and read the first sentence. The other children turn their faces the proper way to show the answer (a sad face for a bad choice, or a happy face for a good choice.) Then the child hands the book to the person sitting next to him to read the second page. Continue until the book is read.
Example sentences:
- Matthew’s mother woke him up for school and he grumbled that he was tired and didn’t want to get up.
- Matthew felt sorry he’d been cranky to his mother and told her he was sorry.
- Matthew got up and got ready for school very quickly.
- Matthew got ready so fast, he had ten extra minutes before breakfast. He decided to go in and tease his sister about the dress she was wearing.
- Before he got to her bedroom, he remembered that Jesus would not want him to tease his sister. He went back to his bedroom.
- Matthew spent the next ten minutes cleaning up his room instead.
- When Matthew went to the table, he was too hungry to wait for prayer and started to eat.
- Matthew decided that even though he was hungry, he should wait, so he did.
- During prayer, Matthew whispered a funny joke to his sister.
- Matthew’s little brother accidentally spilled his milk on Matthew’s clothes. Matthew started yelling at his brother.
Continue with as many things as you think your Primary will be interested in.
Invite several children up to hold pictures of Jesus. Ask the children what Jesus is doing in the pictures and then ask what that tells them about how to follow Jesus. Example: Jesus is feeding the hungry people. They can take food to a food bank.
Singing time:
Sing songs about Jesus. Hold up pictures and see if the children can guess what songs you’re going to sing with them based on the pictures. It doesn’t matter if the pictures are a perfect match. They’ll enjoy guessing.
Sharing time:
If you have more time, give the children the coloring picture of Jesus feeding the five thousand in nursery lesson five, Invite them to color it and then to write on the back one thing they will do to be like Jesus.
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