Another Baptism Prep Idea

I found a copy of Baptism is the Key: My Baptismal Covenant by Jeni Brinton Gochnour at Deseret Book, but they also sell it on amazon (where it qualifies for free shipping).

The book is only 14 pages long but it was worth the money. Very worth it as it is not a book in the traditional sense, but a collection of activities suitable for sharing time. So the first page has a picture of John the Baptist with a cut-out where you can slide a list up and down. The list has five things John the Baptist taught about baptism.

Now that Miriam and I have read a lot about baptism, I told her it was time for her to teach her brothers and sisters what she has learned. Every week for the past few weeks she has prepared one of the activities from the Gochnour book and then presented it in a brief "Baptism Moment" during Family Home Evening.

Miriam loves this because it involves lecturing her younger siblings and putting together a crafty-thing. I like it because my only job is to photocopy the activities (I will be reusing the book with younger sibs) and put them in her Baptism Binder. Miriam does everything else on her own. She picks the activity, colors it, puts it together, and practices what she wants to say in FHE. I try to not help with that last one, but I also want to make sure she understands the concepts, so I've usually gone over the info with her for each activity at least once before she presents it. Just in case she missed a critical idea.

Miriam even used one of these activities for a talk in primary. Very useful stuff. There are 13 activities total and I imagine they can be used in a variety of ways. If you think of something awesome, make sure to share with us!!

Baptism Prep: The Checklist

I am not sure that the checklist I put together with Miriam is the most complete or perfect baptism preparedness list in the world, but I'll share it anyway. Most of the ideas I took straight out of Elaine Cannon's book Baptized and Confirmed: Your Lifeline to Heaven pages 17-20. Then I added a few things that I thought were important. Miriam and I talked about each item and where and how she would learn them/do them.

Here's the list:

1) Turn 8 years old.
2) Be able to explain the Plan of Salvation.
3) Explain what it means to have faith in Jesus Christ.
4) Bear your testimony.
5) Explain what humility means.
6) Explain how you can be and want to be an example of Christ and His teachings.
7) Do you want to do what is right?
8) Have you repented and asked Heavenly Father to forgive you?
9) Do you want to join the Church of Jesus Christ?
10) Memorize the first article of faith.
11) Memorize the second article of faith.
SAME FOR ALL THIRTEEN ARTICLES OF FAITH
12) Do you attend church regularly?
13) Memorize four promises Heavenly Father makes to you when you get baptized and confirmed.
14) Memorize four promises you are making to Heavenly Father when you get baptized and confirmed.
15) Give service every day for two weeks.

A small note on #4--we have a family testimony meeting every fast Sunday. Miriam is not comfortable bearing her testimony in church, but her dad asked her to bear her testimony every month until her baptism in our family testimony meeting to check that one off.

A small note on #2. Number two--explain the Plan of Salvation--was on Miriam's checklist well before Christmas when my sister gave me this book by David Bowman:

However, although it was on Miriam's list prior to this book, her understanding of the Plan of Salvation has radically improved since the advent of this book into our home. Same for all my children. While I love Bowman's hero books--this one is by far his most wonderful contribution to our family gospel study. Miriam wants to check this requirement off her list on this coming Sunday so she has been reading this book almost every day to cement the info in her head. Then she practices telling me so she'll be ready to tell her dad.

I highly recommend this book.

Miriam's list isn't numbered. It just has boxes in front of each one that her dad checks when she's completed them. I'm sure you could put it together any number of ways. Miriam keeps it in the front of her baptism prep binder and we go through it every day at the beginning of baptism prep to remind her of what she has left to do/learn. Sometimes she doesn't want to work on anything but her articles of faith, and other times she picks an additional requirement to work on. I leave it pretty much up to her and continue on with our normal baptism prep activities when she doesn't want to work on a specific requirement. So far she has 9 things checked off, 17 things left to go, and 6 months until her baptism. I think we're pretty on track.

Hope this helped!

What Else We've Been Doing: Gospel Education

We finished talking about faith and repentance and moved on to baptism.

For baptism, we are reading Baptized and Confirmed: Your Lifeline to Heaven by Elaine Cannon.

The new cover looks like the one below. The one Miriam is holding is the copy my parents gave to me when I was baptized.

My favorite things about it:
1) it has scriptures listed for just about every idea/topic it covers. Because of that it is easy to use our scriptures every day.

2) It has a list of what a child needs to know/do before baptism. That really helped Miriam see that she needed to prepare for baptism. Very helpful.

3) The author did a good job of making the material accessible to a 7 year old.

Baptism Prep

I've been wanting to post about Baptism Prep for weeks now, but haven't had the time I wanted to put the post together. I finally decided that I never have enough time for anything, so posting an imperfect post was better than continuing to not talk about this wonderful feature of this year's homeschool.

Since Miriam turned seven this June, I've been thinking about how to prepare her for baptism. It finally hit me that I homeschool. Does anyone else forget that? I made Baptism Prep an official subject that takes place every day during the younger kids' quiet time. I read my scriptures while Miriam reads silently for 20 minutes (this helps me prepare for Baptism Prep and let go of any of the annoyances of the morning and also helps impress on Miriam the importance of reading your scriptures), and then Miriam joins me at the table.

I decided to start with the fourth article of faith: We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ; second, repentance; third, baptism; and fourth, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

We start each Baptism Prep session with a prayer. At first, Miriam was really hesitant to pray with me. I said the prayer the first few days, and that helped Miriam figure out the kinds of things it was appropriate to say for the situation. Now we alternate days saying the prayer. After a prayer, Miriam recites the fourth article of faith. We've been working on it for awhile now and she almost has it word perfect. I think that is pretty good for only saying it once a day.

After reciting the article of faith, we move on to the subject we are studying that day. Obviously, we started with faith. The following are the resources I printed from the church website to help me teach the principles. There were a TON of resources to choose from. I picked what I thought would most help Miriam. I also printed a copy for my own Baptism Prep book. Meaning, I put together (or have started to put together) a book for Miriam as her own personal reference. Everything that we read or do that will fit in a binder has gone in it and will continue to go in it. I thought it might be a nice reference for her, or something I can tell her to look through on Sundays. I don't know that it will be useful, but I thought it might and so I'm putting it together.

I also put together a copy for me so I can make copies for my other children without having to do as much time-consuming prep for them. Seriously, you can look through lessons about faith on lds.org for months. I might find that I feel impressed to revisit different resources with other children, to fine-tune baptism prep to the needs of my other children, but I didn't want to misplace the resources I knew I wanted.

Sorry this is so long. Below are listed the resources I've used so far that I've liked and Miriam has really responded to.

FAITH:

Gift of Faith by Thomas S. Monson. President Monson tells the best stories. This one is about children in Samoa who prayed that the apostle who was assigned to visit them would shake their hands, each individually. You can figure out what happens. I admit, this one made me cry and Miriam shook her head over me. She's fairly used to my getting emotional, though. It happens often enough when I read the Friend.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=54ad7c8fe52ab010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

I Can Have Faith by Shawny Ernst is a short poem about faith. I picked it for Miriam's binder because Miriam loves poetry and because it mentions some of my favorite scripture stories. Miriam read through it several times. Like I said, Miriam loves poetry.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=60f2ff52fc41c010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

Walk by Faith by Lena Harper is a collection of 20 scripture stories that illustrate the concept of faith. This was a great activity and took us two weeks to complete. Miriam can read so she looked up all the scriptures herself (while I reminded myself constantly that the point wasn't to go fast), and read the scriptures out loud to me. Then I let her pick the picture that the scriptures matched--otherwise she couldn't concentrate on anything else. Once she'd found the picture, I had her explain how the scriptures illustrated the idea of faith.

I loved all the scriptures. I loved that Miriam was able to practice looking up scriptures. I loved the discussion. HOWEVER, the pictures were very hard to match to the scriptures. In my arrogance, I thought I would be able to figure it out and didn't print out the answer sheet. Don't do that. Print the answer sheet. When we tried to put together the secret message at the end, none of the letters made sense and we eventually gave up. That was very frustrating for Miriam, who is a bit more of a perfectionist than I am. So, you've been warned.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=7ce26c667a6af110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD


PRINCIPLES AND ORDINANCES IN GENERAL:

Principles and Ordinances of the Gospel Lead Me to Jesus Christ by Sandra Tanner and Cristina Franco is a sharing time activity. Along with the instructions comes a paper quilt divided into four squares. The four squares are faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost respectively. I made a copy for Miriam and then cut it up into pieces. Miriam figured out how it went together and then she glued it to her own paper and filled in the boxes with information about each topic. After she was done, we talked about why a quilt was a good metaphor for the first principles/ordinances of the gospel. A great hands-on activity that was then taped on the wall (Miriam insisted). Eventually it will go in her Baptism Binder.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=911ade009da38210VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD


REPENTANCE:

Logan's Baptism by Jane McBride Choate could easily fit under the faith category, or repentance, or baptism. This was one of Miriam's favorite stories. It is about a talk that a man gave at a baptism. The man put seven squares of paper on the floor and talked about the steps you have to take to get back to Heavenly Father. Each square of paper represented a necessary step. Because I am lame and did not do enough pre-planning, I didn't have paper ready, but that didn't stop us. I read the story while Miriam stepped from one imaginary piece of paper to the next. Despite the imaginary nature of her walk across the room, she still got the point and enjoyed it. Highly recommend this story (and having squares ready!!).
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=fae67fae6f3eb010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=f318118dd536c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

Returning Safely to Heavenly Father by President Uchtdorf. This is a shortened piece from a longer talk that was published in the Ensign. Some of it was over Miriam's head, but it allowed for a good discussion on whether or not obeying the commandments keeps you safe. Plus, the "Things to Think About" section at the end spurred a good conversation.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=50f0105560440210VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

Friend to Friend by William R. Bradford. Elder Bradford talks about a time when his son got covered in mud and he helped clean him off. The son talked about how great it was to be clean again, and Elder Bradford took the opportunity to talk about dirt that you can't wash off--sin.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=cfe7ca99be2ab010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=f318118dd536c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

Sweet Repentance by Ann S. Bushman. Miriam and I just read this together today and it was a powerful teaching tool. Highly recommend. It is a story of a girl who steals her sister's candy the week she is supposed to be baptized. When her sister calls her a thief and a liar, she realizes that she is not worthy to get baptized. She postpones her baptism for another month while she works and earns money to get new candy for her sister and go through the repentance process.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=2e3781313e1ab010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

A short fill-in-the-blank about repentance. It comes from the September 1974 issue of the Friend.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=3f90e07368d9b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

All Clean by Darlene Young about a young boy who wishes he could be baptized over again. His father explains to him about repentance. The main point is stated thus: "When you take the sacrament you are showing Jesus that you have repented of the things you did wrong that week. And then, as you eat the bread and drink the water, you become clean, and you are ready to start over."
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=4a3a742e35474110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=21bc9fbee98db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

I'll keep posting about what we do in Baptism Prep and what I think is working and what is not working. What have you done to prepare your children for baptism?