Scriptures Through Science

Last weekend I taught a class on David and Goliath from 1 Samuel. We talked about how potential energy gets converted into usable energy, and we tried to couple potential energy from a raised marble to do something interesting with the help of a paper rollercoaster.  We started off trying to make a loop-the-loop, which I was able to get working with my kids the evening before. However the supplies I had in the class included stiff card, which turned out not to be well suited for this, since the rollercoaster only works if it's smooth, whereas the card was prone to having sharp bends and kinks in it. We quickly readjusted the plan to make a simpler rollercoaster with a dip and a raise, with the raised part passing through the head of this picture of Hulk Goliath .  The initial version didn't work because the starting point of the marble wasn't high enough. However, the kids had been inspired by singing "Scripture Power" during singing time earlier, and we put th...

   This post follows on from the previous few posts where: I reviewed the scriptures for this week's Come Follow Me Primary lesson. ( link ) I then brainstormed various science themes that could link to the scriptures. ( link ) Yesterday I worked up one of those themes into a potential lesson plan. ( link ) In this post, I'll provide a concise lesson plan for teachers to use if they find this useful. The first part of this post (in green) is an overview of the lesson aims, and the second part (in yellow) is the actual lesson plan that you can use.  Overview What's the lesson about? In the Book of Samuel. the Israelites are threatened by the Philistines, who challenge them to a winner-takes-all duel with their champion Goliath. The young shepherd boy David steps up, and against the odds, wins. What's the spiritual theme? If you have a strong faith, you can acheive difficult things.  What's the science topic? Potential energy can be used to do useful work. We'll l...

Last Sunday's Book of Judges lesson went well. We opened with a quick quiz about the events of the past few lessons, then talked about the meaning of faith, and how Gideon lacked faith by asking for proof of Heavenly Father's existence several times, and not being satisfied each time.  We read the scriptures about the dew, talked about what dew was, and confirmed that the acts that Gideon asked Heavenly Father to do (cover a fleece in dew but not the surrounding land) was something that couldn't happen naturally. We then did the dew experiment, where the kids filled various water bottles with ice and water. We noticed after a few minutes that these bottles started to develop water droplets on the outside, whilst our control bottle of room temperature water didn't. This got them interested, and we discussed several ideas on why this could be the case. One of the kids suggested condensation, and we then explained how we're surrounded by water vapour, and this experim...

 This post follows on from the previous few posts where: I reviewed the scriptures for this week's Come Follow Me Primary lesson. ( link ) I then brainstormed various science themes that could link to the scriptures. ( link ) Yesterday I worked up one of those themes into a potential lesson plan. ( link ) In this post, I'll provide a concise lesson plan for teachers to use if they find this useful. The first part of this post (in green) is an overview of the lesson aims, and the second part (in yellow) is the actual lesson plan that you can use.  Writing down the lesson plan for this weekend's Primary lesson. Photo by  Nils Stahl  on  Unsplash Overview What's the lesson about? It's about Gideon, one of the many Judges of Israel following the Prophet Joshua, struggling to have faith in Heavenly Father, and frequently doubting his veracity and asking for proof of his existence. It's also about the unorthodox way in which Gideon selected warriors for his battle aga...

My last two posts have discussed the scriptural content of Judges , and science ideas that link to the text that could be the basis for my next Primary lesson. In this post, I'll work up these science ideas into a lesson plan. There are several stories in Judges, but two of the verses that inspired ideas were in the story about Gideon , the farmer who led 300 soldiers to victory against the Midianites. Gideon was a young man who helped his father to harvest wheat (Judges 6:11), who one day lamented the repression of his people by the Midianites, and asked "Oh my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his amiracles which our fathers told us of". An angel conveyed that Heavenly Father was impressed with him, appearing in front of him and saying "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valour" (Judges 6:12). Gideon didn't immediately trust in Heavenly Father, and he asked for proof that He existed. In this case, Heav...

In my previous post , I reviewed the scriptural content in the Book of Judges. In this post, I'll summarise the scientific themes that I've been able to come up with, that link somehow to the text, which I could build a lesson plan on top of. In Judges 6:15 , Gideon exclaims to Heavenly Father, "Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house ". I thought about linking this to the idea of small creatures that can do great things. Ants and beetles are great examples of small animals that are very powerful for their size . Beetles are strong creatures for their size. Photo by Weronika Romanowska on Unsplash In Judges 6:39-40 , Gideon requests of Heavenly Father to keep his fleece dry during the night and to let the dew settle on the rest of the ground. "And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground." Perhaps we could talk about what ...

This post follows on from the previous few posts where: I reviewed the scriptures for this week's Come Follow Me Primary lesson. ( link ) I then brainstormed various science themes that could link to the scriptures. ( link ) Yesterday I worked up one of those themes into a potential lesson plan. ( link ) In this post, I'll provide a concise lesson plan for teachers to use if they find this useful. The first part of this post (in green) is an overview of the lesson aims, and the second part (in yellow) is the actual lesson plan that you can use.  Photo by Nils Stahl on Unsplash Overview What's the lesson about? It's about the Prophet Joshua taking over from Moses as he leads the Israelites from their 40 years in the wilderness (following their exile from Egypt) into the Promised Land (Israel). Heavenly Father tells Joshua that he'll magnify him across the land, and he initially supports Joshua as his people take the city of Jericho. One of the Israelites oversteps H...

In this post, I want to develop the ideas that I had in my previous post on how to teach a primary lesson on the Book of Joshua, and turn them into a lesson plan. There's a lot of interesting narrative in Joshua, making it hard to know where to start and what to focus on. I saw drawn to this set of verses though in Joshua 3 : Here, Joshua is commanding the Israelites to prepare to cross the Jordan River. In verse 7 (highlighted in orange), Heavenly Father rewards his efforts by saying "This day will I begin to magnify thee in sight of all Israel", indicating that he will make Joshua appear mighty across the Promised Lands that the Israelites are attempting to cross into and conquer.  The idea of magnification here implies making Joshua appear larger than he is, or perhaps making his actions reverberate more loudly across the region (or both). We can attempt to illustrate this through a simple experiment. I got the idea from this from the Team Cartwright site's page ...

Today's lesson, based on the ideas in my planning post , went well. The final lesson plan was: Introduce the theme of how doing things slightly differently to how we're told can have big consequences. Write up on the board the following quotes: From Exodus 17:5, "thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it". From Numbers 20:8: "speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water", then from  Numbers 20:11, "And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly". Discuss how Moses carried out the instructions in Exodus 17 perfectly, and was rewarded, but in Numbers 20, he deviated from HF's instructions (by hitting the rock instead of talking to it), and was punished as a result. Do the science experiment. Take two cups of cold water, and two cups of warm water, and a sheet of thin plastic that covers the top of one cup. All the cups should be the sam...

My next LDS primary lesson, on Sunday 15th May, will be on a section of the Book of Numbers from the Old Testament. The LDS Primary Come Follow Me lesson plan recommends focusing on Numbers 12 (where Moses' siblings expressed discontent at what Moses was doing), Numbers 21 (the story of the brass serpent) and Numbers 22 (the story of Ballam, the priest who was asked to curse Moses, but who refused to do so). I've been thinking about a different take on this lesson, which focuses on a story from Numbers 20 . It's going to involve some messy water play... Photo by Lubomirkin on Unsplash It tells the story of Moses carrying out a command from Heavenly Father: Crucially, whilst Moses was instructed to talk to the rock, he instead hit it, thus disobeying HF. The way this event unfolds is in contrast to an earlier, similar episode in Exodus 17 , where Moses is instructed to hit a rock, does so, and water emerges. The question is why did a seemingly small difference in Moses...

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...

In my earlier post , I talked about how I'd started brainstorming for possible science connections which I could use to teach the next Come Follow Me Primary lesson , on D&C 41-44 . I've now decided to opt for the idea around trumpets. I noticed that the word "trump" came up twice during this section: D&C 42: 6 And ye shall go forth in the power of my Spirit, preaching my gospel, two by two, in my name, lifting up your voices as with the sound of a trump , declaring my word like unto angels of God. D&C 43: 18 For the day cometh that the Lord shall utter his voice out of heaven; the heavens shall shake and the earth shall tremble, and the trump of God shall sound both long and loud, and shall say to the sleeping nations: Ye saints arise and live; ye sinners stay and sleep until I shall call again. The way that brass instruments like trumpets create sound is really interesting. (Disclaimer - this is my best attempt at providing a simple explanation, but thi...

This week's Primary lesson from the Come Follow Me (CFM) manual was from the section on Doctrine & Covenants 30-36 , entitled "You are called to preach my gospel". As with the CFM lesson plan, I opted to focus on D&C 33 , in which Joseph Smith revealed one of a series of revelations in New York in 1830.  I begin each lesson with a quick reminder of who Joseph Smith is and what the D&C represents, and today I provided some background on how small the church was back in 1830 (as Joseph had only recently started the church the year before), and showed these two images: Joseph preaching to his small congregation ( link to LDS site ). A log cabin similar to the one he taught in ( link to Wikipedia ). In our previous lesson, another teacher, Brother A, had a nice idea of demonstrating the principle of spreading the gospel. He showed a series of Lego Star Wars figures each taking it in turn to talk to each other, and eventually they spread word to a large group of pe...