Skip to main content

Introduction

Welcome to "Scriptures through Science". This is a site where I'll post my thoughts and plans for teaching LDS lessons from the Come Follow Me primary manual to my children. The CFM manual focuses on teaching LDS scriptures and gospel principles, and my lessons look to do this through a scientific perspective. The aims of this site are to:

  • Describe my attempts to teach kids about gospel principles and scriptures, using science as a way to engage them.
  • Provide teachers (which can be other primary teachers or parents) with free resources to teach these lessons.

Disclaimer

This site is not officially affilliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, nor does this site represent any official views of the CJCLDS. All views expressed here are entirely my own (unless explicitly stated otherwise).

About Me

I'm Bobby, and I'm a dad of three primary-aged kids (nicknamed A1, A2 and A3, who are aged 8, 6 and 3 respectively), and a biomedical research scientist. I've also been a primary teacher in my local LDS branch for the last 3 years. For the last year, I've been teaching primary lessons remotely through Zoom, due to the closure of places of worship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I have to admit that my knowledge about the key principles of the LDS faith is somewhat sketchy, having been picking it up in bits and pieces over the last few years. When I started teaching primary age children about scriptural and gospel principles, I found that I was able to do so more comfortably if I could first relate them to scientific principles, most often through analogy. Now that I've been doing this for a few years, I thought I would set up this site as a way to help others people who are preparing similar lessons and are looking for inspiration. The Come Follow Me manual provides great tips on how to teach lessons, but I'd like to use this site to advocate for a slightly different perspective, one which encourages teachers to leverage their personal and professional experiences to enrich the teaching. It doesn't have to be through science, but I've personally found that gospel/scripture-related subjects are often easier to teach when they fire up curiosity in children, and for me, it's been easier to ignite that curiosity instinct through science. 

Proxy for los tres amigos (A1, A2, A3). Note - fancy photography will not be a feature of this site... 

Some Notes About the Site

I won't ever identify any children on the site, either through name or photos. Their safety is paramount. I will also as a general rule not identify any adults by their full name, however I may make an exception if anyone gives me explicit permission to do so (e.g. to accredit any collaborations with other people over future blog posts or teaching materials).

The content on this blog is under a Creative Commons 4.0 license, which means that anyone is welcome to share and adapt the content of this blog for their own purposes. All content posted is my own, except where clearly indicated through attributions (and I will keep the use of third party content to an absolute minimum).

I won't put ads on this site, and I'll keep tracking down to a bare minimum (basically the lowest level of built-in logging in the Blogger platform). I want to keep this site as user-friendly as I can (whilst bearing in mind that I have little free time to spend on it, in between work / parenting / teaching), but if you have any suggestions on how to improve it, please let me know. 


I hope you find this useful. Do let me know if you have any questions! I can be reached through the comments below (which will be moderated) or on Twitter.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lesson Plan - D&C 41-44

This is a short post with details on the lesson plan for this Sunday's LDS primary lesson. The explanations behind this plan are in my previous post . What you'll need to provide for the children: EITHER some small plastic bottles and some scissors OR some glass bottles part-filled with water A slinky A wine glass part-filled with water Here are the parts of the lesson: Begin with an opening prayer. Set the context around Joseph Smith and the Doctrine and Covenants. This week's lesson is set when Joseph and the early saints moved in 1831 to Kirkland, Ohio. Ask the children to read aloud D&C 42: 4-6. Each child could read out one colour from the highlighted excerpt below. Discuss what this means, in particular the purple section about lifting voices like a trump. Say we'll now talk about how a trumpet works. (See  previous post  for additional details.) A trumpet is an instrument which takes your voice (or more technically, vibrations in the air caused by blowing out...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lesson Plan - D&C 67-70

 After a lengthy hiatus, we're back! This week's lesson is based on the section of the Come Follow Me manual about D&C 67-70 ( link ). We're going to work with D&C 70 , which talks about the early days of the Law of Consecration.  Back in 1831, the church assigned 6 people to starting a set of church businesses. I found a nice article that explained the history in detail ( link ), but in brief, Prophet Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Martin Harris,  Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer and William W. Phelps were all involved in the "Literary Firm", which was responsible for publishing the Book of Mormon, the church hymn book, and a church newspaper. D&C 70:7 reads 7 Nevertheless, inasmuch as they receive more than is needful for their necessities and their wants, it shall be given into my storehouse I thought that we could structure a lesson that talks about (a) the reasons why a storehouse was set up, to help provide for the needy, and (b) a bit of maths relatin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Idea Workup - OT - 1 Samuel

In my last post, I discussed some ideas for teaching 1 Samuel . In this post, I'll work up some of these ideas into a potential lesson plan.  Sometimes I get weeks where I toil for ages to find the right angle to teach a lesson from. Last week's lesson was a good example of this, where I really struggled to figure out a theme and a link that I could use. Other times, the right idea just hits you, and this feels like one of those weeks. There's a lot of material in 1 Samuel that could be used for a lesson, and it would be nice to devote more weeks to it. However the David and Goliath story is the dominant story here, and when you're working with young children, then you simply have to teach it. It's the archetype underdog story, which illustrates how the seemingly impossible can be made possible with faith. We want to pass on stories that will inspire the children and give them believe that they can similarly have confidence in themselves and aim high. We haven'...
Post a Comment
Read more