"The Living Christ" presentation

We did it! It's been a lot of work over the past 12 weeks, but we managed to memorize "The Living Christ" by Christmas Eve. It was such a great experience to go to grandma and grandpa's house on Christmas Eve and recite "The Living Christ" for them! The kids did great!@

This project has turned out to be a great blessing to our family. We feel like our children have really internalized the messages in "The Living Christ" and can use what they have learned to bear testimony of Christ and describe who he is and what he means to them. The memorization part was easier than we thought it would be, too!

For Family Home Evening in 2011, we are going to let the kids take turns choosing a section from "The Living Christ" and giving a short lesson about it. We are also going to choose background scriptures to memorize together, too. For example, For "Under the direction of his Father, he was the creator of the Earth..." we will memorize a scripture about the creation.

We can't wait to get started!

I'm so excited!

I'm so excited about something! A dear friend of mine, who (sadly) lives in another state now, called today to tell me that she and her children used some of the "Living Christ" visuals to....decorate the Christmas tree!

They printed the "Review Sheets" onto white cardstock and cut them out. Then they punched holes and used silver and red ribbon to hang them on the tree. With a few white lights and some more red ribbon, the tree looks great! I'll post pics when I get them!

Eight more days!!

OK, only eight more days until Christmas and we've got quite a lot more memorizing to go! We got a little behind after Thanksgiving. Sigh... But, we aren't giving up. This week we are redoubling our efforts to memorize the last few passages and we're determined to succeed!

I was so proud of my four year old and eight year old last week, who each gave a talk in Primary and recited what they had learned so far from "The Living Christ."

Can I tell you how rewarding it is to hear the kids occassionally talking to themselves around the house saying things like, "He walked the roads of Palestine..." or "Under the direction of His Father, he was the creator of the earth..."

Practice, practice, practice!

With just a few weeks to go until Christmas, and "The Living Christ" passages getting longer, we are finding the need to practice what we have already memorized (A LOT). Our strategies that seems to be working are:

• Using the large pictures with words in a "flip chart" (I put them in a 3-ring binder) and reading/reciting from the beginning to the newest part we are learning -- this helps guide those of us who haven't memorized quite so far and ensures that we are saying the right words rather than paraphrasing.
• Letting one of the kids get a chance each day to recite what they know in family scripture study. This encourages us all to keep working (especially mom and dad!).
• Making videos! It is so fun for the kids to film each other - and guess what? They keep saying a section over and over to get it "perfect" for the video. GREAT!
• Using spare moments to recite -- below is a video of Leah reciting while waiting for the bus in the morning.

December is here!

Setting up the Christmas tree. "Santa" came
for an early visit this year! LOL.

Well, December is here, and somehow we are still on schedule with our memorizing. We are finding that Sunday is the best time for the kids to really focus on looking ahead at the week's memorization assignment.

They love the review sheets that have 12 pictures with the text for four weeks. It let's them memorize the current week in context with what they have learned before.

In case you are downloading the memorization helps week by week, I've just posted the rest of them + the review sheets with words, with only keywords, and with pictures only. You can download them for practicing what you've learned so far!