Keep your LDS class learning with one of these 10 games
Last year, I was released from my calling as an early-morning seminary teacher in Caldwell, Idaho. I taught for four years and so I know…
If you're a teacher, here is a list of ideas and activities for classrooms or other youth groups so students can get to know each other better.
Our Would You Rather Scripture Game is not only a lot of fun, but it will also help you teach your family about the importance of Agency. This free Family Night printable is guaranteed to get your family talking and laughing. Get all the info on the blog!
When I taught seminary, a few times a year I used to love to give a "silent" lesson, and over the years I realized how much the students loved them.
An object lesson is a surefire way to grab the attention of everyone involved. Here's 21 LDS object lesson ideas that will help you out.
Start your next LDS lesson using one of these ideas
While researching Skyped seminary, I found this old post on Early Morning Seminary at Segullah. I got really tickled. It's always a pleasure to hear other
The Unfair Game is a totally unfair twist on Jeopardy that your students will LOVE to hate! Learn how to play and find sample game boards in this post.
I was not going to blog about my seminary class, but after searching for ideas from other blogs I have decided to share my ideas. The blog that has inspired me to do this is the blog Seminary at Six AM. I was so impressed with her ideas that it helped ro jumped start my motivation to do some fun things in my classroom. On this page I will give a list of ideas that will link into the actual activity or printout. Just click on the picture underneath and it will take you to the activity. To see my ideas for Old Testament click on the link below Most of the things that I have done this year will be on the LDS Seminary D&C Lesson Handouts page. To go to the page with the activities and printouts just click on the picture. Seminary Graduation Requirements and D&C Scripture Mastery for Seminary Journals I wanted the students to have a small copy of the graduation requirements and Scripture Mastery that they could glue in their journals. Just click on the picture below to print a miniature sized one for the student's journals. Seminary Organization Ideas Doctrinal Mastery Ideas Plan of Salvation Worksheet Since we are supposed to teach the plan of Salvation several times a year I redesigned the printout for the plan for the students to fill out. Just click on the picture below to print it out for your class. Incentives For Coming on Time Joseph Smith History 1:15-20 Doctrinal Mastery #1 Puzzle Strips & Target Here is a fun way that helped my students to pass off their Joseph Smith History 1:15-20. It's puzzle strips with sentences of the scripture that they need to put into order. To print it out click on the picture below: Lesson Plan on the Full Dispensation Lesson 22 D&C 27 President Russell M. Nelson's Lord's Youth Battalion God's Army Minute to Win It Game Youth Battalion Gift A Gift for students who learned their Doctrinal Mastery Scripture Mastery Nerf Gun Challenge Target Printouts TRAIL TO ZION A Doctrine and Covenants game for the Seminary Assessment Test Seminary at Sunrise We had our class outside on the steps of the church so that we could see the sunrise. For more information click on the picture below: Seminary in a Sack Scripture Mastery The students add small items to remind them of scripture mastery throughout the year. Call Your Students on a Mission This is a "Missionary Handbook" workbook to aide in the study of D&C 30-34 and/or D&C 42 or Doctrinal Mastery Scripture Dig (D&C 42) Scripture Man or Scripture Snowman Game How to Have Your Students Teach Themselves Doctrine and Covenants 76 The Three Degrees of Glory Worksheet and Handout Draw the Scriptures for Seminary D&C 89 The Word of Wisdom Class Scripture Study Thank You for Being One Smart Cookie A reward for students who use their scriptures. The Early Bird Gets The Worm A special treat for the students who come on time. Worm Wednesday Scripture Reading Competition To get the printout and read about the challenge click on the picture below: Golden Plates Treats September 22 is the day that Joseph Smith received the Golden Plates from the Angel Moroni. Celebrate this day by handing out Book of Mormon chocolate candy treats The Book of Mormon Project The CES challenged the students to take a Book of Mormon and mark their favorite scriptures then give it to someone. This is a handout to aide in that assignment. "Meet the Mormons" Book Here is a book where the students each have an "I'm a Mormon" page Reach One More! Bring a Friend to Seminary Day How the General Authorities eat their Reeses Peanut Butter Cup One of my favorite ideas that I did last year while I was a substitute was to show a video on how the General Authorities eat their Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. It is great to use around Conference, and the students love it. To check it out click on the picture below: You-KNOW-a To Listen to the Prophet GRANOL You-KNOW-a to listen to the Prophet Granola Just before General Conference I brought each student a bag of granola with a sticker that said : To find out how to make it and for the recipe click on the picture above. LDS Seminary Class Reading Challenge Issued to Another Seminary Class and a Reading Chart My class issued another class to a reading challenge. I have a certificate and a reading chart that you can print out. Just click on the picture below: Scripture Mastery General Conference BINGO The Building of the Kirtland Temple, drawn by my Seminary Class Joseph Smith in Lego's Pirates of the Caribbean Game Daylight Savings Time Reward For Coming An Hour Earlier Conference Note Taking Ideas We did a 25 days of Christmas for the Missionaries Who will lead the church after of the death of Joseph Smith? Handouts for Lesson 146: Succession in the Presidency Nauvoo Temple Facts The Mormon Trail - A Handout to go with Lesson 148: The Trek across Iowa; Doctrine and Covenants 136:1–18 Make a "Quilt" from D&C 136 CSI Was Joseph Smith a Prophet of God? A Nauvoo Christmas Party An End of the Year Gifts for the Students End of the year reward for Doctrinal Mastery (updated) I have started a page for my Old Testament Seminary ideas
Keep those New Testament teaching moments going as you play some fun games with these free New Testament cards
So, I should start this post with an apology. I noticed that it has been over a year since I last posted on this blog. Opps! As you can imagine this past year has been crazy busy. Here are a few highlights in a nut shell: Chris graduated from law school. Chris went through the temple for the first time at the LDS Temple in Oakland California. Christ took the CA State Bar exam...AND PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!! We got sealed for time and all eternity in the LDS Temple in Mesa Arizona. We had 2 wedding receptions, one in Mesa, AZ and one in Carmel Valley, CA (both were beautiful). I quit my job and moved to Monterey. We got our first apartment in Monterey, five blocks from Cannery Row. We started attending a new ward (as a newly married couple). I got 2 new jobs. And last but definitely not least...we were called to be the early morning seminary teachers! We are really hoping that 2013 is less "exciting". Through it all we have been extremely blessed! The reason I have revisited our crazy blog is that I needed to 1) do a better job with family/personal record keeping and a blog is a great way to do that, while allowing my family to keep tabs on us as we are all on our own out here in CA, and 2) with our calling as seminary teachers we have come up with a bunch of cool things for teaching seminary and are anxious to share them. We have found that the world of early morning seminary is small and we have garnered so much help from others in navigating our way through this new experience that we want to give back, if we can. Or better yet, pay it forward. Therefore, for our first seminary offering: Scripture Master Battleship Battle Stations: Check out the "Wall of Privacy" running down the center of the battlefield. We are constantly scouring the internet for Scripture Mastery Games. Every Friday we have Scripture Mastery Games and the students seem to really enjoy them. I found mention of the game Battleship for Scripture Mastery, but was unable to find a game board anywhere. Several sites walk through the game (with some variations), but NO ONE seemed to have a game board we could use. Then it dawned on me...I am a graphic design artist, I can make my own! Thus, the Scripture Mastery Battleship Game Board was born. I am including a picture of it for your reference. I would love to share the Scripture Mastery Battleship game board with you so feel free to download a pdf of the the file by clicking here. The seminary students LOVED it! In short, here's how it worked. Students each picked an opponent. I encouraged them to select someone who new the Scripture Mastery scriptures about as well as they did. Each team of two sat across from each other and ensured that their "wall of privacy" was structurally sound. Each person was given a Battleship game board with two "game board" components (see .pdf). In the top game board component they were to place their ships. The legend on the game board explains how to do this. The game board component on the bottom was where they were to record their "hits" and "misses" as they attempted to attack their opponent. Once they were all set up, the game began!! Bro. Marohn is declaring a winner between combatants. I, or Bro. Marohn, would call out a scripture reference. (i.e. - "No man can serve two masters..."). The team would scripture chase to find the scripture reference in their scriptures. Once they had it they would hold up their hand. The first partner to correctly find the scripture reference earned the right to "fire" upon their opponent. That winner would call out their guess, in the traditional Battleship lingo..."B5!" The receipient of the firing would then identify if it was a hit or a miss. The person firing was responsible for updating the appropriate game board. We continued playing for the whole period and when we stopped the students added up their points and decided who won. Here I am calling out more SM. NOTE: Different from the traditional game of Battleship, points have been allotted for sinking specific ship types, and for each hit/miss. This allows us to stop the game at any point and tally up the points to identify a winner. One of the reasons that I think this game was so successful was that it allowed students to satisfy their competitive nature, but doing so against someone who is similarly prepared in scripture mastery. Lest you think all we do is play games, we've had some great lessons too. I'll try to post information on them at another time. Hope you give Scripture Mastery Battleship a try!
I want to thank whoever created this game. It is a lot of fun to play in class. The reason that I am doing this post is because I always have such a hard time trying to find the game when I need it and the version I was using was very old. I was trying to update it and decided, "Oh, what the heck, just redo the whole thing instead of trying to cut a paste!" So here it is. Maybe it will help you also. Here are the versions that I have: Scripture Man, Nice and Mean Versions Scripture Scarecrow, Nice and Mean Versions Scripture Snowman, Nice and Mean Versions Scripture Cupid, Nice Version Only Scripture Leprechaun, Nice Version Only Scripture Rabbit, Nice Version Only Scripture Garden, Nice Version Only If you are familiar with the old version you will notice that I changed mine up a bit. I decided to to it with more of a 3 degrees of glory theme. After playing this with my students a couple of times they informed me that they hate the bomb that makes them lose all of their points. Because of this I have made a nicer version where the bomb only causes them to lose 50 points. I have included both versions. If you want to use it just copy and paste it into your printing program, or right click and save it into your pictures. Meaner Version: Nicer Version: Scarecrow Nicer Version: Scarecrow Meaner Version: To make the game go quicker you can tell the students to draw an 8 for the snowman, and a squiggly line for the melted snowman. Meaner Version: Nicer Version: Nice Version only of Scripture Cupid: Scripture Leprechaun Scripture Rabbit, Nice Version Only Scripture Garden, Nice Version Only Enjoy playing the game! Here are links to games that I have played with my class: Lesson 83 D&C 78-80 Lesson 92 D&C 88:41-69 I hope this helps. To see some of my other ideas just click on the pictures below. If any of you are looking for a version of the game that is not based on religion I have another version called Education Scarecrow, Education Man and Education Snowman. Check them out here. I also made a Harry Potter version! Check it out here!
Recently, President Henry B. Eyring shared the process he uses to study the scriptures so that he might find the counsel Heavenly Father has for him specifically:
Make a Bingo Grid on the Floor (5x5=25 Scripture Mastery verses) Make a "Sock-O" with any sock filled with beans, popcorn, etc. It is fun to use a sock with a seasonal pattern/print Divide in to 2 teams Place a card turned writing side down with a clue for each Scripture Mastery verse inside each square. Have a team member throw the "sock-o" to a square, turn over the card and read the clue. The team as 15 seconds to find the verse in their scriptures. They can use their Scripture Mastery cards or bookmarks to help them (I used the same clues as the cards and bookmarks) When a team member finds it, have them yell, "Contact" They must state the reference and they have the option of: 1) reading the scripture from the book 2) Reciting from memory the scripture (or having a team mate recite it from memory-but a team member can only recite 1 scripture by memory during the entire game, otherwise the same team member may recite it every time) If they read the scripture, the team gets 5 points If a team member recites it by memory, the team gets 10 points If they cannot find the scripture in 15 seconds, the other team has the option to "steal" and get 5 points for reading it or 10 for reciting it by memory. The first team with 5 in a row, wins. You can adapt this with other rules or for teaching review questions, etc. The "sock-o" can be used for many other purposes such as "hot potato" where it is passed around a circle while one student's back is turned to them. When that student says stop, the person with the "sock-o" recites or names the scripture using the key words or clues given by the person who is "it".
Today we played a memory game. I had previously selected 8 scripture mastery scriptures that I felt needed review. Drawing a big sixteen-squ...
Sometimes I like to give the students a journal sized handout that goes with the lesson. As I do these handouts I will post them her...
