Additional Sharing Time Ideas

The following are additional ideas Primary leaders may use with the Sharing Time printed in the June 2008 Liahona. For the lesson, instructions, and activity that correspond with these ideas, see “I’ll Prepare Myself While I Am Young” on pages F4 and F5 of the children’s section in this issue.

1. Display family history items such as journals, photographs, books of remembrance, and so on. Discuss the importance of keeping records of our families. Help the children find D&C 138:47–48, and read it together. Discuss the importance of doing temple work so that families can be sealed together forever.

   Briefly explain the process of finding and preparing names of family members for temple work. Share a positive personal story of submitting a name for temple work, and sing a song or hymn about families.

   Provide a pedigree chart and a family group record for each child, and allow time for them to fill out the portions they know. Show a Faith in God guidebook, and remind the children that completing these records is an activity in the guidebook. Encourage them to complete this activity with their families. Invite the children to bring the completed forms back to Primary and share what they learned about their families. Bear testimony of the importance of family history work and the blessings of the temple, where we can be sealed as families.

   For younger children: Bring simple props, and dress the children to represent parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents to help them visualize the members of their family on a pedigree chart.

2. Ask the children to listen for one word that describes the temple. Sing the phrase, “For the temple is a holy place,” from “I Love to See the Temple” (Children’s Songbook, 95). Show pictures of different temples, and ask the children to describe behaviors that would be appropriate in a holy place.

   Invite a member of the bishopric or the branch president to talk about the temple recommend interview. (Some items that could be addressed: appropriate dress for the interview, questions that will be asked, and whom the priesthood leader represents during the interview.) Following his remarks, discuss how being reverent, dressing modestly, and speaking kindly are part of being worthy to enter the temple. Sing “I Love to See the Temple,” and bear testimony of the blessings of attending the temple.

3. Song presentation: “I Love to See the Temple.” Introduce the song by asking, “What do you love to see?” Get responses, and then ask the children to listen for something you love to see. Sing the phrase “I love to see the temple.” Invite a child to hold a picture of a temple, and sing the first phrase of the song together. Ask the children to listen for when they will go to the temple. Sing the phrase “I’m going there someday.” After the children have guessed the answer, sing both phrases together.

   Ask the children to listen for three things they will do when they attend the temple. Sing the phrase “To feel the Holy Spirit, to listen and to pray.” Sing the phrase together. Ask them to listen for three things that describe the temple as you sing the phrase “For the temple is a house of God, a place of love and beauty.” Sing the phrase together. Invite a child to read D&C 88:119, and explain that this verse describes a temple. Have them listen and raise their hands when they hear the words “house of God.”

   Sing the last phrase of the song, and have the children echo it back to you. Sing the first verse together. Bear testimony of the importance of preparing to attend the temple by living gospel standards.

   Continue to ask questions, and have the children listen for the answers as you sing the second verse to the children. Emphasize the word covenant, define it in simple terms, and discuss the covenant made at baptism. Help the children understand that making and keeping sacred covenants is part of temple worship.

   Children learn to sing a song by hearing it many times. Try these suggestions as you review this song: (1) Add simple actions to key words. For example: “see”—touch eyes; “listen”—touch ears; “pray”—fold arms. (2) Have the children point to themselves each time they sing “I” or “I’m.” (3) Divide the room in half, and invite the children to sing to each other, alternating phrases of the song.