Helping Kids Learn the Come Follow Me lessons
Welcome to another great week of Come Follow Me!
I've been thinking a lot lately about how the Come Follow Me lessons are going for the kids. It can be hard to be consistent when it comes to helping kids learn the Come Follow Me lessons, and I have written a few posts about it recently.
This is going to be a short post because I have been working on something that I want to share, and I want to get it out there right away so anyone that wants it can use it.
Helping kids learn the Come Follow Me lessons
I talked in a previous post called Tips to Keep Your Family Engaged in Come Follow Me about some of the things you can do to keep your family engaged. One of the things I mentioned was having hands-on activities for them to do.
A lesson from my time in Activity Days
As an Activity Days leader, my partner and I learned right away that one of the challenges was what to do with the girls while we were waiting for the activity to start. Several of the girls liked to show up early, and several of them were notoriously late. In the interest of not starting without everyone, yet also not catering to the late girls, we came up with a plan
That was where the idea of the Activity Days Journal was born. You can read all about the journals here. (And if you decide you'd like to make some to use to help your kids learn Come Follow Me, the very easy instructions for making them can be found on this post: The Easiest DIY Journal You'll Ever Make.)
Related Post: Tips to Get Your Kids to Pay Attention to Conference
Related: Need some fun workbooks for you kids to use during General Conference? Check out the two fun designs here!
I had no idea these journals would be such a hit!
Not only did the girls LOVE the journals, but the girls that were late actually started coming a little earlier. Plus, when it was time to start the activity, we actually had a hard time pulling the girls away from their journals.
The girls that came into our group at a later date loved them so much they wanted all the journal pages that they had missed, too.
I was thinking about these journals the other day, and it gave me a great idea...
Come Follow Me Journal for Kids
I have been doing these journaling pages for adults, but hadn't even thought about how kids might love them too. I haven't completely honed in on my vision just yet, but I have a start. And one of the things I have been trying to do is let go of my need to make things perfect and just get them finished. So that's where I am right now.
The most important thing is helping kids learn the Come Follow Me lessons, and I'm pretty sure kids will love these.
They are a little different than the pages I have been making for adults, because I wanted them to be kid friendly. That means a little less writing and a little more space to do other things. So the pages are black and white, with headings and pictures to color, as well as places for them to interact with the message of the lesson, get them thinking, and write down their thoughts.
Plus to prep work for parents, other than printing the pages!
You can check out the new Book of Mormon Come Follow Me Companions for kids that I have in the shop here. There is also a coloring book with the people of the Book of Mormon to use to learn about how the people of the Book of Mormon can lead us to Jesus Christ to go with it (or for younger kids to just color as well) and you can check that out here.
Other lesson helps that go with this week's lesson
- How Does Heavenly Father want me to use my spiritual gifts? A video about a blind teenager and how he uses his spiritual gifts.
- Exercising our Spiritual Muscles a talk by Elder Juan Pablo Villar
- Two Examples of Charity A very short video about two teachers and how their charity affected their students.
- Discover Your Gifts A story from the New Era by Justina Lichner about how to discover your own spiritual gifts.
- Become More Christlike Through the Sacrament A talk by D. Todd Christofferson
I hope these ideas will help you with your Come Follow Me studies this week, and especially when it comes to helping your kids learn the Come Follow Me lessons!