FHE: Resurrection

Story
Using cutouts from the nursery manual, tell the story of the Resurrection. This is an example shared in the manual:

Begin with the figure of Jesus standing upright and the stone rolled away from the opening in the tomb.) When Jesus died, his body was laid in a tomb (lay the figure of Jesus in [behind] the tomb). A large stone was rolled in front of the door (roll the stone in front of the opening in the tomb). On the third day two angels came and rolled the stone away (roll the stone away from the opening). Jesus was resurrected (stand the figure of Jesus upright). His spirit and His body were together again! [See Susan Payson, “Easter Story,” Friend, Apr. 1995, 32–33.]

Song
This idea is also from the nursery manual. Sing the first few lines of Jesus Has Risen with actions:

Jesus has risen, (walk in a circle)
Jesus, our friend.
Joy fills our hearts; (stop and place hands over heart)
He lives again.

(We changed the actions to 1. stand up, 2. sign "friend," 3. place hands over heart, 4. nod "yes.")

Picture
Show a picture of a deceased family member. We showed a picture of my husband's grandparents. We asked where Great Grandma and Grandpa H. live now (in Heaven) and talked about how they couldn't run or jump or play when they died because there bodies were old and didn't work very well anymore. Then we explained that because Jesus Christ was resurrected we will all be resurrected. When we are resurrected our bodies will be perfect and we will be able to do lots of things with them.

Activity
To show gratitude for how wonderful our bodies are and how we will be able to use them when we (including Great Grandma and Grandpa H.) are resurrected we had "potato sack races" using pillow cases. It was a definite hit!

FHE: Atonement and Repentance

Explanation

Start by showing a picture of the First Vision and ask who the Heavenly Beings are. Remind your children that we lived with Heavenly Father before we came to earth and that we want to go back to live with Him again. Ask your children to think of something naughty that we sometimes do such as not sharing, lying, etc. Demonstrate the need for our Savior by placing a drawing of a door in front of the picture. Explain that when we do naughty things we can't be with Heavenly Father unless we have help to be better. Show a picture of the Savior in Gethsemane and explain that when we say we're sorry and try to be better Jesus Christ can forgive us and help us become better. He can help us "open the door" and go back to be with our Heavenly Father! 

Role Play

Tell the story of Alma the Younger (From the 2014 Outline for Sharing Time March Week 2) as follows: 

"Alma the Younger was making bad choices (make a mean face). He and his friends tried to destroy the Church. One day an angel came to stop them; Alma was afraid (act afraid). He was so afraid that he fell over as if he were dead (act dead). He felt so sorry for his sins that for three days he could not move (hold still). Finally, he remembered that Jesus Christ had paid the price, or atoned, for his sins. When he thought about what Jesus had done, he felt great joy (jump for joy). Alma repented and became a great prophet who taught the people about Jesus Christ."

Video
After role playing the story, watch the LDS Scripture Stories version.

Craft/Visual
Color, cut out, and glue this picture. Talk about the pictures and repeat the phrase "Repentance is Turning from Wrong to Right." You may also want to role play the situation and physically turn when you repent and make a good choice.

Emotions: Sadness

For our home preschool co-op we focused on the theme of emotions for February and talked about happy, sad, love, and silly. Here are some ways we talked about feeling sad:

I have a package of emotion cards from my speech-language pathology days. I chose eight cards (two for each child) and had the kids sort them into happy and sad and asked why they thought the child in the picture was feeling that way.

Using the happy/sad cutouts from above (before they were colored) we sang Smiles, starting with the sad face and turning it upside down to smile at the end. Another cute song is A Smile is Like the Sunshine.

The librarian at our little local library has offered to help me find books for my lessons! She is awesome and my favorite book she picked out is Little Beauty by Anthony Browne. It is adorable and as you can see from the illustration it shows "sad" so well! We also read Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney and Grumpy Bird by Jeremy Tankard. Of course every book has a happy ending :)

The librarian also found a book called When I Feel Sad by Cornelia Maude Spelman that is part of a series on emotions. I decided to copy some of the pages showing reasons why we feel sad and on the opposite side of the page show one way we can be happy. After identifying how we can feel happy we put a smiley post-it on the character's face.

One of the first things the kids ask when they come in the door is "Can we eat lunch?" They are very excited about bringing their own lunch and always seem to have the munchies. For that reason I like to incorporate a little snack when it makes sense. I gave each child a paper with these faces drawn and they added cheerio eyes to make them complete. We labeled each emotion and they snacked.

The kids' favorite part was watching and talking about these videos from the Mormon channel and I was amazed at how concerned they were for the little boy in The Coat. It was very tender!

We also ended up watching these videos because there were on the playlist I was playing from. They both include the emotion of sadness so it actually worked out great!

LDS Nursery Lesson #7: Jesus Christ Created the World for Me

Jesus Christ Created the World for Me

Doctrine (What?): Jesus is our Creator. He created the world as a place for us to be tested, because He loves us. His creations include the sun, moon, stars, land, water, animals, plants, and people.

Principle (Why?): We can feel God's love when we view the creations of the earth.

Applications (How?):

• Display a picture of Jesus and pull out a wrapped present. Ask them who gave them this gift? (Jesus!) Have them open the present. Inside have a picture of the earth and creations. First pull out the earth then have each child place one of the creations on the earth.

• Bring several stuffed animals in a bag. Make the animal sound and have the children guess the animal then give each child an animal. Talk about how Jesus Christ created animals and that He is happy when we take care of them. Pretend to take care of the animals by giving them a hug, feeding them, giving them a drink, washing them, and putting them to sleep. I was surprised at how much the kids in my class LOVED this and they even calmed down and got quiet when we put the animals to bed (one even ran over and turned off the light). You could also sing *The World is So Big and talk about "animals big and animals small."

• Jesus Christ also created animals in the ocean. We took turns fishing for each of these creatures. Over and over again during the lesson I emphasized this sentence "Jesus Christ created _____ because he loves me!"

• Go on a walk outside and find items like grass, sun, trees, dirt, rocks, and flowers. We did not end up going outside but I had planned to show them the sign language for each of these creations in the classroom and then repeat them outside.
• Bring a step stool and a picture of a mountain. Then have each child "climb" a mountain.
• Color the book at the end of the lesson.

*The nursery leader in my ward conducts music time for each nursery class and does an AMAZING job. She incorporates songs that go with the week's lesson so I don't usually do music during my lesson since she is so comprehensive.