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 relating to calculating incomes, balances and remainders, as the children pretend to run the businesses involved. My kids love playing simple maths games, and this is a collaborative game that hopefully will get the class working together.

The way the game works is as follows. I made a Google Spreadsheet for the game which shows three church product lines (the BoM, newspaper and hymnal), along with the storehouse. Below is a screenshot:

The kids will be split into three teams, one per product. Each product has a monthly operating cost (see red row for "Costs"), and a current balance which starts at 0. Every month, the green Income box will generate a random number between -5 and 10. If the number is a minus, then the children have to update the balance by subtracting the number (i.e. there were extra costs incurred that month). If the number is a plus, then a profit was made, and the children add the number to the balance. If the balance exceeds the operating cost, then the remainder gets added to the balance for the storehouse (which starts at 0 as well).

The aim of the game is to get the balance for the storehouse up to some target value (say, 15 or 20). 

After this, we'll read through the scripture section relating to this (D&C 70:1-8) and talk it through. 

Finally, we'll do a joint online colouring game. I'll load the picture at the bottom of the CFM manual for this lesson into an online painting tool (e.g. miniPaint), pick an area and a child, and ask them to pick a colour for that area. I'll then use the Fill tool to paint that area with their chosen colour. We'll repeat this with the next area and child, until we complete the picture. The results should be fun!

P.S. I found a nice YouTube online animation for D&C 67-70 by PonderFun which looks like it could be nice to watch. The part from 7mins 47s onwards deals with the D&C 70 story that we use in our lesson. They have a nice picture that you can buy for £1 to colour in on Etsy, which might also be worth a look.