Keeping the Sabbath Holy

Sunday is right around the corner, and with that comes Sharing Time.  I haven't been slacking this week, I have honestly been praying and thinking, trying to come up with a way to teach the children this week's lesson.  The truth is, I have been having a hard time hitting on the right thing. However, last night we had a Presidency Meeting, and in that meeting we talked about the behavior of some of the children during Sacrament meeting.

Before I go on, I have to say, I know that they are little kids, and sitting still for a little kid can be incredibly difficult.  I get that.  I have a four year old who never runs out of energy and I always go into Sacrament meeting with a secret dread, because I never know how she will act or what she will do.  So I understand the difficulty of getting the kids to behave during that meeting.  I am not using this as a platform to judge or to preach.

We are counseled to follow the Spirit, and to prepare a Sharing Time that is beneficial to the needs of the children in our own particular wards.  While there are many fun ideas out there for keeping the Sabbath day holy, I think I am going to focus our Sharing Time on being reverent during Sacrament meeting.  At least for the older kids.

I am going to try to have either our Bishopric counselor or the Bishop come in and talk to the children.  We will begin by singing To Think About Jesus (CS 71). The Bishop or whoever is there will then talk. I want him to talk about why we have the sacrament, how it relates to the Atonement, and how it relates to us. I want it to be a discussion, not a lecture, and I really want the children to learn the importance of this sacred ordinance of which they participate each week.  Once they understand the importance of it, I think it will be easy to talk about how to behave during the sacrament.  And then, of course, I want to tie it all in with something along the lines of "partaking of the sacrament is one of the ways we can keep the Sabbath day holy."

I am praying that the Spirit will be there, and that the children will be able to feel the importance of how their behavior effects not only how they view the sacrament, but how it disrupts or encourages others.

For the Junior Primary, we will do something much more fun.  I am borrowing an idea that I found from a lady named Stephanie Perrin.  I am going to have my husband draw a picture of a child. I am going to cut out little dots from colored paper, and have activities written on the dots.  If the activity is not keeping the Sabbath day holy, I will have them place the dot on the child.  There may be a few songs thrown in there for variety.  We will then talk about keeping ourselves "unspotted" from the world, followed by testimony. I think they will have a lot of fun with that one, and it should go fairly smoothly as there are a lot of kids in Junior Primary.

Finally, I will pass out a coloring page I found on Melonheadz LDS Illustrations blog for the kids to work on during Sacrament meeting because we have Primary first and Sacrament last.