Teaching "I Can Show Love to Each Member of My Family" (April Week 4 Sharing Time Lesson)

I plan to follow the lesson plan, "I can show love to each member of my family," in the 2014 Sharing Time Outline fairly closely. However, to better catch the children's attention, I made cheap people puppets, and then put together colorful houses and attached them to giant paint sticks.

(These paint sticks have been recycled numerous times over the years. I'm not sure who originally used them but, but it's a great tool to re-use!).

I will describe family members, then let children guess, before showing them the puppet. I will let a child come to the front of the room and hold up the puppet.

Part 1 - People Paper Bag Puppets

The inside of the mouth is below each flap so when you put your hand in the paper bag, and move the flap up and down, it looks like they are talking. You can download the template here.

Part 2 - Colorful Houses

If you have all of your materials on hand, you can create all three houses in about five minutes.

- 10 sheets of colorful card stock
- Paper cutter (optional)
- Scissors
- Glue
- Stapler
- Three large paint sticks

1. WINDOWS - Take one sheet of paper, fold it in half lengthwise, then fold it in half lengthwise again. Cut out window panes the way you would cut out designs in a snowflake cutout. Each of the windows above are identical per house because they were cut at the same time, by folding the paper twice.

2. BUSHES - Take another sheet of paper, fold it in half, then cut out puffy bushes. You should be able to fit three bushes onto the folder sheet, which means that since the paper is folded over, you will have six bushes.

3. DOOR - Take another sheet of paper, fold a small portion of it, and cut that portion into thirds to make doors. ROOF - Use the remaining piece from the paper that was used to make doors to cut out a roof.

4. ROOF - Take another sheet of paper, fold it in half lengthwise, then cut a diagonal line from one side to the middle of the piece of paper on the opposite side of the fold. Do this from the other corner as well. Ta-da, two more roof tops.

5. Now glue everything onto your three sheets of paper to make three houses.

6. Staple or glue your house to another sheet of paper. Just staple in the four corners, then staple on either side of the door, near the bottom, leaving a center opening to slide the stick through. Do the same on the opposite end of the paper, making sure your staples are far away enough from each that you can slide a stick through.

7. Fold the roof over at the very top. This acts as a pocket to hold the stick to the house. You can also just tape the stick to the house and ignore step 6, but this ensures your house is not likely to slide down the stick.

Families are Forever 2014 Primary Theme - An Addition to Opening Exercises - Family History Moment

Our primary presidency pondered how we could best incorporate the 2014 Primary Theme, "Families are Forever," into primary. One of the special things that we will do for 2014 is to add an extra assignment to Opening Exercises, which we are calling the "Family History Moment."

This is what the assignment slip that our secretary wrote says: "As part of the ward goal the Primary will be participating in family history by sharing a brief family history moment in opening exercises. Please help your child to prepare a short family history story to share. This story can be a pioneer story, a conversion story, an experience in perseverance or accomplishment, or a fun story that illustrates what life was like when that ancestor was alive."

We will share one Family History Moment a week. Each week, the child who shares the moment gets to put their name and the name of the ancestor on a leaf, which they will then get to add to this tree. We hope to encourage conversations, awareness, and appreciation in the child and their families, about this wonderful topic of family.

I hope that by the end of the year, the tree will look like this:

How I did it:

I drew the tree freehand onto a foam board the size of a standard poster board, then colored the tree in with two brown markers. I had intended to use acrylic paint but it seemed like a lot of clean-up effort for such a small amount of paint. I used a paper punch to punch out all of the leaves on color card stock, then attached one scrapbook square onto each leaf.  I also have found large leaf stickers in the past but I liked turning these leaves into stickers myself - the cheaper method. I had intended to cut out simple leaf shapes but I couldn't resist the leaf punch.

Before I drew on the board, I creased it, (and then taped it for strength).  The crease in the board ensures that it is small enough that it will fold in half and fit into the primary cupboards.