This Sunday is the “faith is like a seed” Sharing Time:
Introduce the doctrine and encourage understanding: Write “Faith in Jesus Christ leads us to love Him, trust Him, and keep His commandments” on the board. Show the children some seeds. Ask: “What can these seeds become?” “How do you know these seeds will grow?” “What must we do to make them grow?” Explain that our faith in Jesus Christ, like a seed, can grow if we nurture it. Discuss things we can do to help our faith grow, and explain how these things will lead us to love and trust Jesus Christ and keep His commandments.
Repetition: Children learn through repetition. Consider expanding the object lesson in week 1 to reinforce the principle of faith. Plant the seeds in a pot, and occasionally bring the growing plant to Primary. Tell the children what you have done to help the plant grow. Compare nurturing a seedling to nurturing faith in Jesus Christ.
I think this lesson is one of the first object lessons out there! It’s a great way to connect a concrete process (growing a plant) to a more abstract, spiritual idea (faith). I’m going to be emphasizing how some things help seeds grow and some things prevent seeds from growing: just like our faith. Things that help our faith grow might include prayer, scripture study, attending church, taking the sacrament, FHE, serving a mission, preparing to attend the temple, serving others, choosing good friends, or keeping the commandments. Things that might prevent our faith from growing: forgetting to pray, thinking you’re too busy to read scriptures, being mean to others at school, starting fights with your brothers or sisters, skipping church meetings, or using bad language.
With our Junior Primary I started looking for a simple science worksheet about how seeds grow. I found a lot of dead leads and old images online, so I decided to put one together myself. It’s designed to be printed two per page and cut in half and it’s available for you below.
I also enlarged all ten images on the worksheet so they are about the size of a quarter page. I’ll use them to talk about the worksheet on the chalkboard while the littles are working on the worksheet in their laps. There are three pages in the following PDF to fit all ten images.
With our Senior Primary I am going to introduce the same metaphor (plants, seeds, faith) but we’ll round it out by reading Alma 32:27-43 together. If we have time we’ll get the kids to memorize Alma 32:21.
This would make a great Family Home Evening too…
