Temples

Opening Song: I Love to See the Temple

Display pictures of temples from the Gospel Art Kit, framed pictures from around your home, and maybe a wedding picture.

Show each picture to the children. With each picture explain that this is a temple and have them say "temple". Also mention an characteristic of temples with each picture. For example, house of God, peaceful place, where we can feel the Spirit, a place where we help others, etc.

Explain that Mommy and Daddy were married in the temple and that means our family can be together forever. Share your hope that they will each be married in the temple too.

Close with your testimony of temples.

Temples

A House of God

Topic: This lesson is about making our homes like the temple.

Scripture: In D&C 88:119 we read "Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God."

Lesson: Start by holding up a picture of the temple and talking about how it is a special place where we go to learn about our Heavenly Father and try become more like him. We want our homes to be like the temple. Read D&C 88:119 and talk about the attributes of the temple. You could write them on a white board or a piece of paper, or just list them out loud (we just listed them out loud). We focused on three things: prayer, learning, and order. We had a short activity to practice each of those three things.

Activities: To practice having a house prayer, we let each child say a prayer. We had them repeat a very short prayer one word at a time. My boys (18 months) don't talk much, so most of the words didn't sound like what they were. You could pretty much only understand "Jesus" and "amen." But they both looked very pleased with themselves, and Mommy and Daddy were very proud. These were their very first prayers. :)

To practice having a house of learning, we read two books together and talked about what we saw on each page. We did a picture bible and a story book to show that we can get learning and knowledge from all good books. :)

To practice having a house of order, we dumped out some blocks and practiced putting them back away in the bucket. We played a couple times. :) While we practiced, we sang "Picking up blocks is fun to do." :)

Closing: We closed by going back to the picture of the temple and restating how it is a holy place and want our homes to be holy too.

A House of God