Monday, September 10, 2018

Coloring Outside the Lines




Preparation: Read Elder Lynn G. Robbins talk from April 2018 entitled Until Seventy Times Seven. 

Materials:
  • Coloring Book Pages (Here is a great one of Nephi and here is one of Moses)
  • Crayons or other coloring material


Opening Song: Choosethe Right

Opening Prayer:

Gain Attention:
Tell the children that today we are going to be working on staying in the lines as we color. If you have older children you can adjust this to be some other skill they could work on. Give each child a coloring page and tell them that you are going to show them how to do it. Start coloring the page explaining as you do so that this is the best way to do it. At some point you can allow them to hold the coloring instrument while you control their hand. Continue to do this until they have just plane had enough of you doing it for them. (You can also instruct the older children to be bossy teachers as well for the younger children.)

Instruction:
Discuss with your children how they liked coloring this way. Ask them how skilled they would become at coloring if you always did it for them or guided their hand.

Talk about Nephi’s experience trying to obtain the brass plates found in 1st Nephi Chapters 3 and 4. Also discuss how Moses was faced with the task of getting all of the Israelites out of Egypt. After you discuss these two stories read this quote from Elder Robbins’ talk:

“Nephi’s unwavering faith helped him go from failure to failure until he finally obtained the brass plates. It took Moses 10 attempts before he finally found success in fleeing Egypt with the Israelites.”

“We may wonder—If both Nephi and Moses were on the Lord’s errand, why didn’t the Lord intervene and help them achieve success on their first try? Why did He allow them—and why does he allow us—to flounder and fail in our attempts to succeed?”

Discuss possible answers to this question. You may even want to direct children back to the feeling they felt as you did not allow them to color on their own so that they wouldn’t mess up. Following your discussion have each child read one of the reasons Elder Robbins listed in his talk. (We have each family member participate and simply whisper what to say into our children’s ears.):

  •     First, the Lord know that “these things shall give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good.

  •     Second, to allow us to “taste the bitter, that [we] may know to prize the good.

  •     Third, to prove that “the battle is the Lord’s” and it is only by His grace that we can accomplish His work and become like Him.

  •     Fourth, to help us develop and hone scores of Christlike attributes that cannot be refined except through opposition and “in the furnace of affliction.”  


Coming to this earth and expecting to never make a mistake is like expecting to play basketball without ever missing a basket or play the piano without ever playing the wrong note. Elder Robbins stated, 
“ Repentance is God’s ever-accessible gift that allows and enables us to go from failure to failure without any loss of enthusiasm. Repentance isn’t His backup plan in the even we might fail. Repentances is His plan, knowing that we will. This is the gospel of repentance, and as President Russell M. Nelson has observed, it will be ‘a lifetime curriculum.’”

Close by bearing your testimony of the lessons that are learned as we make mistakes and of the blessings of Christ’s Atonement.

Activities Idea:
Learn and new skill together.
Go to a local art museum.

Treat Idea:
No Bake Cookies from Live Well Bake Often







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