Matthew 5 and Luke 6 (February 18-24)

alright, this post may be a bit longer but I'll try to keep it brief. One suggestion was using Matthew 5:14-16 using light as the object lesson. talk about light and hiding light and how we are the light of the world. we're deciding not to do this one. my son has understood that Jesus is the light and I dont want to confuse him and i dont think he's quite ready to be the "example".

what we are actually going to do, to me is kinda combining the other two and going with a bigger theme that isn't directly mentioned in the suggestions. One of the activities involves praying for those that are unkind to you (Matthew 5:43-44) but this is in the scriptures saying to essentially be kind to everyone whether they're nice to you or not. The other activity says to essentially pick a beattitude from Matthew 5:1-9- we liked the idea of being a peacemaker but we dont know how to teach that yet to our son. so our goal is to teach our toddler to be aware of others. when playing with other kids - to be nice (hopefully no matter what- i know he won't be perfect yet but it's worth starting). we are also going to play sad and hurt and help teach him to be aware of others and be compassionate. being aware of others needs and comforting them or trying to help i think it's a good step towards bringing more peace, and hopefully it'll lead into being nice to everyone.

scripture video: gospel library under children and New testament stories chapter 19

John 2-4 (February 11-17)

so this week, my husband and I discussed things but we didn't really pick one thing to do with our toddler. The first family activity says to think about how the Savior uses every day objects to teach spiritual truths, then asks what we can use to teach gospel truths. Well, some of that we've been trying to do, like Jesus Christ being like a light. But this week talks about the woman at the well and the gospel being living water. So my simplified toddler version of that concept is to drink water with my son and say something like, "Our bodies need water like our spirits need Jesus".

Another thing covered this week is how Jesus cleansed the temple and one activity asked how we can make our homes more like a temple. just for you and your spouse (or older kids) think of something you can do or change to make your home more of a refuge, a place of spiritual learning and/ or a temple. maybe you're like me and your house is a mess but you like gathering as a family at the table - so you're going to make sure it's cleared. or maybe you want to light a candle so your home smells more comforting. anything small - just think about it.

scripture videos for the week are in the gospel library under children and New testament stories, chapters 12-15

Matthew 4; Luke 4-5 (February 4-10)

Just a brief note first. Last week i had the best of intentions and plenty of things i could clean to help demonstrate the principle we wanted to teach but the cleaning one only happened once and we didn't do the keys at all. So if you don't get something in, just pick up from now and keep doing your best.

This week - there's Satan tempting the Lord. The manual tells us, "the adversary sought to plant doubt in the saviors mind. 'If though be the Son of God,' Satan said (Luke 4:3). But the savior had communed with His Father in Heaven. He knew the scriptures, and He knew who He was." And then later the manual asks, "why does Satan try to make us doubt or divine identities?" That question is a little deep for our son but it leads us to one thing we're going to do this week:

We're going to reinforce my son's divine identity by reminding him he's a child of God and singing "I Am a Child of God" at bedtime.

Then, the last section would be easy to play out. "Do we know anyone who is brokenhearted or who needs to be "set at liberty"? (Luke 4:18). How can we help others receive the Savior's healing and deliverance?" We can easily put our toy animals in a jail and we have a Jesus figurine that can set them free. Or just say that Jesus sets them free. If a toy animal gets hurt, you can have Jesus heal them. My son loves playing with his animals so this will allow us some play time together with a spiritual message included (hopefully).

Video: Gospel library, children, new testament stories, chapter 11 goes over Jesus being tempted.