Learning about and getting to know the Savior Jesus Christ

I have been trying to brainstorm some really great ways to learn more about the Savior Jesus Christ and get to know him better! Here is a collection of Ideas (Some from me, some not) Read on to learn more : )

I have really been wanting to gain a stronger testimony of the Savior. Isn't that one of the main goals here in life? I recently realized how important it was that I get to know him better, his life, his role in my life, and to study the scriptures that speak of his words and life. So this is the first thing I am doing on my quest....

 1- Read this 45 day scripture study of his life

I have to share this! It's so awesome! I'm so glad this cute girl took the time to put all of this together. I am really benefiting from all her hard work. I got excited when I went on Pinterest and this title popped up  "The life of Christ, a 45 Day scripture study" From THE HANDMADE IN 
HEARTLAND blog.

It was exactly what I was looking for! It goes in chronological order and I was amazed and a little ashamed all the stories and details I never remembered hearing or learning about!

You have to go over to her BLOG and see all the details they've added. Quotes for each day and you can print it out there. So awesome! Seriously I  am so so grateful to this girl for doing this.

I just finished Day 9 and I'm really loving it. If you are searching for a way to get to know your savior, I hope you find this helpful too! : )




2-Read Talks from our modern day prophets, apostles, and leaders on Jesus Christ, the atonement, his birth, his death, and his Resurrection.

A couple that pop up when you search Jesus Christ on Lds.org talks are linked below. I'll edit and add my thoughts and favorites when I get to this step : )

• The Unique Message of Jesus Christ by Robert D. Hales
• Eternal Life through Jesus Christ by John M. Madsen 
• Witnesses of Christ by Dallin H. Oaks
• Is Faith in the Atonement written in our hearts? by Linda K. Burton 

3- Pray about him

Pray for your understanding and knowledge of him to grow as you read and study his life. Pray to have the spirit with you to hear promptings of enlightenment. Pray for guidance on what scriptures, talks, and book to read. Thank Heavenly Father for him, his example, that he died for us. 

4- Teach your Children about him 

I have found that through teaching my little ones about the scriptures, that they ask all kinds of questions. And their simple but deep questions help me to ponder and figure out the answers to their questions. Also teaching is a great way to learn. Through preparing lessons you learn just as much if not more. 

Don't have kids? Discuss talks, scriptures, and stories of him with your spouse, parents, or friends. Gaining a testimony of the Savior is beneficial and will bless your life at every stage of life you are in. 

5-Bear your testimony of the things you do know

Bear your testimony of the things you do know about the savior. The spirit often testifies things to us as we bear our testimony. It doesn't have to be over the pulpit at Sacrament. It can be in Relief Society, Young Women, at Family Home Evening with your family, with an individual child discussing the savior or something else, with your spouse, neighbor, friend or stranger. You can also bear your testimony on a blog, Facebook or other Social Media outlet. 

A sweet recent experience I had 

My oldest son (5 years old) Leaned over to me in Sacrament last week. He caught me closing my eyes to say a little prayer as the Sacrament was being passed. He tapped me and whispered the question (the same one he asks each time he catches me). "why are you praying?' I told him to look around the room and see that there are many people taking this time to say a prayer. This is the time we think about Jesus, and tell Heavenly Father how much we love the Savior. He waited a few minutes then whispered in my ear. "Is Jesus really really real?"  I felt the spirit remind me that this would be a great time to bear my testimony to him. I whispered back into his ear. " I really do know he is real. I believe it and I know it!" It wasn't profound but I saw a smile appear on his face. I saw him pondering and thinking about it. He then said  " Satan doesn't want us to believe in Jesus" and I told him I thought he was right about that. He went on to tell me about how Satan made Lemon ( I LOVE that he says Lemon) and Lemuel not believe in Jesus and made them do bad things. My heart beamed with JOY!!! He is listening when I teach him I thought!! It seriously was such a special moment I hope I never forget. 

FHE: Obedience

First I had the boys help me build a circular fence out of blocks. Then I made up a story about 2 kids who got a dog. He kept escaping and he even almost got hit by a car. So they built a fence to keep him safe. They knew that he needed to obey and stay inside the fence to stay safe.

Rules and commandments are given to us to keep us safe. We then talked about other rules that keep us safe.

-wearing seatbelts
-looking both ways before we cross the street

Then we talked about stop lights and how if we didn't obey the rules and stop on red we could crash and get hurt. Stop lights help keep us safe.

Then we made Stoplights out of construction paper and taped on Thick popsicle sticks so we could hold them like signs.

For our game we played Red Light Green Light with our new stoplights. The kids absolutely loved it!

Here's a little video : )

Chapter 6: Lehi's Dream

I have been studying Lehi's Dream in my own personal study. And I have realized how much I love this story and how much it applies to our lives. So I really wanted my kids to understand this and remember his dream. For this I turned to an awesome Etsy shop TimeSavors. You can find here HERE. You can download the entire Book Of Mormon character sets for $4.99 or purchase them from her with magnets, felt, or laminated for around 10-15$. Such reasonable prices!! I am so happy I found her! So I printed out the ones that applied to Lehi's dream and stuck them on the sticky felt. I showed you how to do this in THIS POST.

These are the ones I printed off that all had pieces I needed. She gives you a character guide that tells you what figures you need for what story. 

 These are all the ones I used. This is after I printed, stuck them on sticky felt, and cut them out. 

I keep them in order in my book by chapter in a clear protective sleeve. I think ziploc bags would work better. 

Then I saw she had a downloadable Book of Mormon Bingo Set so I couldn't resist! The boys loved it! 

Chapter 5: Traveling in the wilderness

This lesson could be made into something really fun and memorable. This is where we learn about the Liahona and Nephi's bow breaking. A fun activity could be making a bow and arrow or a Liahona! I saw this cute idea where she used a gerbel ball and painted it gold. You can find her blog HERE.

(photos from: ahouseof.blogspot.com or click HERE ) 

Speaking of this blog A HOUSE OF LEARNING,PRAYER, and LITTLE ONES. She does an incredible "Mormon Camp" with her kids. They basically go through all the stories and do awesome activities with it. Great for good fun ideas with kids!

It was late and we were short on time. And my Kids love doing these scripture stories! They beg all day long!! So I only had time to tell them the story and we drew pictures of what happened in the story. The possibilities are endless with this and I can't wait do something really awesome next time!

Chapter 4: The Brass Plates

For this lesson I decided to try something different. It is like 6 or 7 printed pages long. And I thought having a visual aid might help them enjoy and remember it better. So I remembered those Flannel boards that I've seen around with felt characters. And I knew it would be easy, cheap, and fun for them. (If I had access to all my crafting supplies. I may have done things differently.) I think a magnet board would be even better because you could use all these people at church on the chalkboards for primary lessons. I think I will eventually laminate (my laminator is in storage) and put magnets on the back and turn the flannel board into a magnet board. But for the time being, this is fast and working really great! 

To make a flannel board you need a few supplies: 

1) a board or painting canvas (use a 40% off coupon at Joanns or Michaels)

2) 1 yard or less of your choice of color flannel. (I have heard blue or black is best) I did white. I wish I would have listened : ) 

3) Felt sticky sheets (found in the craft kid section) 

4) A colored printer 

5) a staple gun or if you don't have access to one or yours is in storage ; ) You could use packing tape for a temporary fix. 

Please borrow a staple gun. Using tape totally cracked me up! You just want to pull it as tight as you can so the flannel is snug on your board. 

Then I printed out the pictures from the digital copy HERE on to cardstock. Then I cut up all the pictures and numbered them. There were a lot so it would be easy to mix them up. Then I cut up rectangles of the sticky felt and stuck them on. It would be better to have just stuck all the cut out pictures on to the sticky side of felt so that they were completely covered in felt. But I was in a hurry and didn't want to use pages and pages of felt on one story. 

Here you see I numbered them and stuck on the sticky felt. 

Here I am telling the story and setting the felt pictures onto the flannel board. I would let the kids help put them on as we went along. They really enjoyed it! 

NOTE: If you want actual Book of Mormon Characters you can get FREE ones... Yes I said FREE here on this amazing blog! She doesn't have the lessons for each book of mormon story. They are from Friend Magazine stories. But a lot of them go with the stories. And Guess what she has Old Testament and New Testament ones too!! 
I found one for the Brass plates and did it along side all the printed cards you see above on the board. 

I think an adorable craft or treat would be those cute BRASS PLATES candy I found on my Pinterest. I am so bummed the link was broken and doesn't lead to anyone. So if anyone know who deserves credit or has a tutorial let me know. Here's a picture for inspiration though: 

Chapter 2: Lehi warns the people AND Chapter 3: Lehi leaves Jerusalem

For these 2 chapters I did the exact same thing as Lesson 1. I printed out the stories from online HERE . (can't wait to have my actual book back from storage) 

I told my kids the story and then we drew pictures after and played some kind of game that tied in. 

I'm keep all my printed lessons and drawings in a binder like this. 

Nothing Fancy but it keeps it all organized. 

Lesson 1: How we got the Book of Mormon

We just moved to Pennsylvania and most of our stuff is in storage while our home is being built for the next 3 months. So my copy of Book of Mormon stories is in a box somewhere. I just went to Lds.org and found the digital copy HERE. I printed it off and now I can keep all of our pictures and drawings with this lesson. I'm going to make a scripture study binder and keep it all in there. I think it will be so funny for the kids to see as they get older. We can laugh about all their pictures. They are pretty cute! : )

(Notice the top right picture. It's Joseph Smith holding a Book of Mormon couldn't you tell?!)

I followed my steps like I explained in the previous post HERE.

1) Explain : I told the story to them and I make them repeat me if it's a name like JOSEPH SMITH or ANGEL MORONI. And I ask questions along the way to see if they know. Like I said who visited Josep and my five year shouted "JESUS and GOD!"

2) Draw:  I told them to draw a picture about what we just learned. I gave suggestions " you can draw Joseph Smith, or Jesus and Heavenly Father visiting him, or Angel Moroni. Or maybe the Book of Mormon in the Hill"

3) Smash book picture: I drew numbers and pictures to make it easy for them to tell the story and remember important details.

4) Game: There was a game online on LDS.org it was a puzzle. My kids love puzzles! They had so much fun doing it! You can find the link to the Joseph Smith one HERE.

Here are a few pictures of our fun Lesson that took maybe 20 minutes from start to finish!

Playing the puzzle game

Drawing is not my best talent! haha But it gets the job done! : ) 

Teaching the Book of Mormon to little ones

I have been searching high and low for ideas or print outs for teaching little ones the stories in the book of mormon. We are pretty religious about reading our scriptures every night. They both can't read yet (2 boys 3 and 5 not yet in school) So we read the words, they repeat us and we take turns. I'm pretty sure they don't learn or hear much. They will ask what a word means every now and then. But I knew I needed to do something more. I really want my kids to KNOW the stories and gain a testimony of them at a young age. I feel like reading with them every night is a good habit for our family to get into even though they may not understand the words. I love that we get to feel the spirit and teach them that is so important to our family to do this each night. But I still have been feeling like I could do more. So I bought the BOOK OF MORMON STORIES with the pictures and brief descriptions. They seemed to really like that. But I still wanted more.

So here is my plan: We are going to go through the BOOK OF MORMON STORIES reader.
-I explain each story and the pictures.
-Then we draw a picture of what we just learned
-I draw a smash book type picture to help them be able to tell the story.
-We play a game that has to do with that lesson.

So simplified:
1) Explain
2) Draw picture
3)Smash Book style picture
4)Game

Lesson 1 will be in the next post!

I can't wait to do the Old and New Testament after this!