Scriptures Through Science

In my last post , I discussed some initial ideas for themes that I could use for teaching this Sunday's Primary lesson on Ruth and 1 Samuel from the Old Testament. In this post, I'll be working up these ideas to develop a draft lesson plan. The Book of Ruth is short and bitter-sweet, telling a tale of tragedy (with Naomi, Ruth and Orpah losing their husbands whilst out in Moab). Ruth takes to gleaning / foraging for scraps to sustain herself and Naomi, but ends up under the protection of Boaz, who treats her well, tries to find a suitable partner for her amongst her kinsfolk, and ends up marrying her himself. This BibleProject YouTube video summarises it well, and makes a very interesting point at the end about how Heavenly Father is hardly mentioned in this book, showing that people in the OT can be kind and generous to each other without any spiritual prompting. We could start by introducing Ruth's story, and talking through the initial events leading to Ruth gleaning on...

My last post summarised the scriptures for this week's Primary lesson, which are from Ruth and 1 Samuel. In this post, we'll discuss ideas for how to teach the scriptures, including any links to scientific topics. I taught this lesson back in 2018, and I looked back at my notes on how I did so. Back then, I did a little treasure hunt where I hid clues relating to the scriptures around the church, and the kids had to go to each location, find the clue, answer the question, and then go to the next location. The clues also linked to a crossword puzzle that they had to solve. Getting the kids to move around is always a nice idea, so we might try and bring back this element. In Ruth 2, Ruth gleans corn, barley and wheat from the fields of Boaz. Gleaning ( Wikipedia page ) is an old concept where the poor were invited to collect the scraps following the harvest, since it wasn't always practical to collect every last part of the crop. It could be interesting to look more closely ...

 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...

This week's lesson is based on the Book of Judges . The Come Follow Me Primary manual entry for this week says that the lesson should be derived from Judges 2–4, 6–8 and 13–16. In this post, we quickly review what these scriptures are about. We left off in the previous book , Joshua, with the Prophet Joshua having guided the Israelites into and across the Promised Land. At the end of the book, Joshua passes away. Judges picks up the story at this point and talks about how the Israelites are led by a series of leaders. Judges is a fairly bleak book, with a repeating theme of the people going astray, a (not always ideal) leader coming in to help them with guidance from Heavenly Father, bringing some short term peace and stability, before things go off the rails again. The Bible Project (YouTube) has a terrific short animated video about it. Below is a summary of the key chapters for this week: Judges 2: This chapter provides the template for the stories coming up. The people ignore...

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 ...

Going forwards, I'm going to break up my posts on lesson development into several pieces, to make them more manageable to read (and write): I'll start off with a summarisation of the key chapters that are the subject of that week's Come Follow Me Primary manual. I'll then do a brainstorming post where I jot down various inspirations that come to mind as I read through those chapters. Most of these ideas will end up in the rubbish bin, but they might be useful inspiration to others.  There'll be a post on working up the ideas into a lesson plan. At the end of this, I'll answer the following questions to ensure that the plan ticks the right boxes: What is the spiritual theme of the lesson? What is the science (or other) topic that I want to use to help convey the theme? How does the science illustrate the theme? What will make the lesson fun? The lesson plan itself will now be a separate post, which will make it easier for other teachers to refer to.  It'll co...

This week's lesson is on the Book of Joshua, and according to the  Come Follow Me Primary manual , will be based on Joshua 1-8 and 23-24. The first task is to understand what's in these scriptures, and this scripture review post aims to do that. These videos do a nice job of explaining the narrative: These Saddleback Kids videos are aimed at young children. They treat the story of Joshua in several pieces: Joshua Leads (Joshua 1) - YouTube Rahab and the Spies (Joshua 2) - YouTube The Israelites Cross the Jordan (Joshua 3-4) - YouTube The Walls of Jericho (Joshua 5) - YouTube The Bible Project does a great job of summarising whole books in the Bible through clever comic strip style animations. YouTube The Book of Joshua seems to break down into the following parts: The first part picks up from Exodus and Deuteronomy, where Moses has brought the Israelites to the cusp of the promised land before passing away. The mantle thus falls upon Joshua, who sends spies into the Promised La...

One of the most useful tools I've found for helping to prep primary lessons is the scripture annotation tool on churchofjesuschrist.org . This underrated feature is fantastic! Here's what it looks like: When you select a piece of text, you see this annotation menu appear, from which you can highlight the scriptures in different colours (I have my own fledgling colour coding system), tag it, write notes, and share it or link directly to it. More impressively is that if you have the Gospel Library mobile app , then these annotations will sync directly to it, so you can carry your fully annotated version with you. This has been handy for when I want to use my laptop for doing lesson prep, but then just take my phone or iPad with me to the lesson, and I can still call up my notes when needed. Do others use this too, and does anyone have any "power tips"? What other tools do you find useful in your lesson prep? Feel free to let me know in the comments below or on my Twitte...

Last week I posted about some initial ideas I had for how to teach my upcoming lesson on the Book of Deuteronomy. I've settled on the theme of animal altriusm  (when animals help out others), and now I need to turn this into a lesson plan.  If you'd like to jump straight to the final lesson plan, click here . If you'd like to see how I got to it, read on... Photo by Cosmic Timetraveler on Unsplash The link here is Deuteronomy 15:10 , when Moses is preaching to the Israelites, and he relates Heavenly Father's instructions that the people are to help others with an open heart.  In my previous post , I thought that I could draw a parallel between this message from HF and animal altruism. I was curious about what was known about animal altriusm. It seems that there are several types: Animals may be programmed to help others, even when it means they are at a biological disadvantage when it comes to their own reproductive potential. This is described as biological altruism ...

This is the second in a series on how I prepare LDS primary lessons using scientific principles. The first part, which talked about finding the initial science inspirations, can be found here . This part will continue by discussing how to take that initial set of ideas and mould them into a lesson plan. From theory to application Whilst I've found that primary age kids are receptive to new science ideas, it really helps if there's a practical element I can use to demonstrate them, and even better if it's something interactive that they can do themselves. The next task is to figure out which of my initial ideas lends themselves to easy demonstration. This involves another round of brainstorming and research, and searching online for kid-friendly resources (such as videos or experiments) related to the topic I have in mind. Earlier this year, I taught a lesson based on D&C 20:72-74 about baptism and receiving the holy ghost. To draw an analogy, we talked about baby sea t...

Before I begin any discussion about how I prep for and teach lessons, I'd like to proffer a significant caveat - I am not an expert at teaching LDS primary classes, nor am I particularly good at it.  Fortunately it seems that I'm not alone in this. President Henry B. Eyring acknowledges in this talk in 2002 that many people who receive callings may feel overwhelmed, when he says  "You will feel at some time, perhaps at many times, that you cannot do all you feel you must". This rings true certainly with my first year or so, when I felt that I was completely unsuited for this calling and that there must have been some mistake. He offers some solace in adding that "All He asks is that you give your best effort and your whole heart." All I can offer is my experience of teaching LDS Primary classes (mainly 8-11 year olds) for the past 3 years, in which I've put in my best efforts and my whole heart to grappling with how to teach a subject matter that I'...