Select the discussion questions and enrichment activities that will involve the children and best help them achieve the purpose of the lesson.
Make a chart of the items listed in the attention activity, or write them on the chalkboard.
Materials needed: a Book of Mormon for each child.
Suggested Lesson Development
Invite a child to give the opening prayer.
Enrichment Activities
You may use one or more of the following activities any time during the lesson or as a review, summary, or challenge.
Review and discuss the second article of faith, and have the children memorize it. Point out that each person is responsible for what he or she does.
Discuss with the children choices they can make in the following or similar areas. Use ideas that are potential problems for the children in your class. Ask them what kinds of choices Jesus would want them to make. Help them consider the consequences of the various choices they could make.
The language they use
Keeping the Sabbath day holy
The clothes they wear
Obeying their parents
The music they listen to
Stealing
The movies, videos, and television shows they watch
Telling the truth
The books and magazines they read
Have the children role-play situations involving choices and consequences, such as the following:
A friend tells a lie about someone.
A friend wants you to watch an inappropriate movie or video.
A friend tells you an inappropriate story.
A friend wants you to cheat in school.
A friend wants you to break the Word of Wisdom.
Someone offers you illegal drugs.
Discuss with the children the consequences of the following decision made by President Spencer W. Kimball:
“I made up my mind while still a little boy that I would never break the Word of Wisdom. … I knew that when the Lord said it, it was pleasing unto him for men to abstain from all these destructive elements and that the thing I wanted to do was to please my Heavenly Father. And so I made up my mind firmly and solidly that I would never touch those harmful things. Having made up my mind fully and unequivocably, I found it not too difficult to keep the promise to myself and to my Heavenly Father” (in Conference Report, Apr. 1974, p. 127; or Ensign, May 1974, p. 88).
Make a small handout for each child in your class of the words I will make righteous choices. Place the handouts face down on a table, and have the children come one at a time to the front and choose one. Ask each child to answer the following questions:
What will you use to guide you in making righteous choices this week?
What can be a consequence (result) of making wrong choices?
What can be the result of making righteous choices?
At the conclusion of the activity, emphasize the importance of thinking of the consequences before we make choices.