Lesson 1: Common Origins and Wholeness

Learning Tree
Lesson #1
Common Origins and Wholeness

Preparing the Space

We had beautiful displays set up on the shelves of a large bookshelf, as visual ties, reminders, and objects for our lesson. We had the Present Box, Learning Tree, Wise Old Owl, Beauty and the Beast Books, a Ball that looks like the Earth, as well as other balls, Beeswax, rounded toys, and so on. We also wrote our Morning Verse on the chalkboard easel next to the bookshelf.

Gathering and Welcome Song

We sang a song about gathering together to learn and grow, while joining hands in a circle. At the end, we hugged in close to the center and said, “Thank you!” to acknowledge the gift of being able to meet in that space and enjoy these things together.

Affirmation: I Am Loved

We talked about how loved each of the children are, and said, “I Am Loved”

Nature/Seasonal Verse: The Green Grass Grows All Around

We talked pretended to be a tree as we sang the song, “The Green Grass Grows All Around”, modified to emphasize different parts of the tree we wanted to include.

Lyrics?

The Present Box:

We discovered a bottle of bubbles in our present box, and pointed that each bubble captures a little ball of air. We need air to live, and what a marvelous gift it is for us! We asked who the first person was to breathe on earth (Adam). We asked where Adam got his breath from (God). God gave Adam breath, and it has been passed down from Adam and his wife, Eve, to every living person, including each of us.

We took a moment to close our eyes, and be present with the present of air, through the breath flowing in and out of us for 3 breaths. Then, we pretended to blow a big bubble that was big and round above our heads that reminded us of the sun.

Morning Verse: Introduction

We introduced our morning verse, which talks about the sun, the moon, our heads, and ourselves.

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Main Lesson: Fairy Tale – Beauty and the Beast & Divine Worth and Potential

We told the children, “only you get to be you, and nobody else, and you have so many special things about you to discover. So does this amazing world we get to live in. Then, we sang a song called, “How Beautiful the World Is”, as we moved near the couch to get ready for story time. As we settled in, we said a short little verse about a wise old owl, which emphasizes the power of listening and learning.

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Next, we read the story of Beauty and the Beast, and talked about how they discovered that love helped the beast turn back into his true form, a Prince! Likewise, every person is a Prince or Princess from Heaven. It may not always look or feel that way. Sometimes, we may think others, or even ourselves seem more like a Beast than a Prince or Princess, but love can always help to reveal the divine nature within us and others, no matter how beastly we’ve become! Then we pretended to put on imaginary crowns, by making circles with our hands and putting them on our heads.

Language and Math: Ancient Hebrew, Letter Aleph, A, Number 1

We moved near a whiteboard and told the children there were people who lived a long long time ago, called the ancient Hebrews, which used a picture of a head as the first letter in their alphabet. They had animals, called oxen, which are kind of like big, strong, powerful cows. We drew an ox-head with horns on the board as we told them that to ancient Hebrews, letters meant more to them than just a sound to make. The head of an ox also meant things like strength, power, and leadership.

Over time, as more and more people used this letter, it changed, bit by bit, until it became the letters we use today in English, and in other languages like Latin and Greek. In the English language the ox-head became the letter, “A”. We drew the ox-head sideways, and finally, upside down, showing how the shape evolved into our letter.

We explained that the ancient Hebrews also used the letters in their Alphabet as numbers. We asked what number we usually start counting with (1), and drew the number 1 on the board. We pointed out that we only have one head on our bodies, and asked how hard it would be to make decisions and do things if we had more than one head.

We asked how our heads help our bodies. Then we asked them to pinch their arm and see if they felt their skin telling their brain it is getting pinched. We also told them to look around the room for a particular color, and listen for a sound. We pointed out that our bodies send messages to our brain about what we experience. Then, our heads listen to our bodies, and learn what the world is like and what is going on around and to us. We mentioned that if we felt our stomach tell our mind that it is empty, our mind would know that we need to eat food to get more energy for our body to work well. Our head listens to our body, and then help us know and decide what to do.

Next, we had the children touch their toes, their nose, and other things, and asked how they got their body to move. We talked about how their mind helped them decide to obey our instructions, and sent messages to their muscles. Then, their muscles obeyed the instructions from their minds. We pointed out that our heads are very important, and they help take care of our whole body, not just parts and pieces of it. We asked if our heads ever want any part of our bodies to hurt, and explained, that they don’t, the head wants every part of our body to be as healthy and happy as possible! Even though our bodies are made of lots of different parts and pieces, our heads help all those parts work together as one, whole body.

Movement: Moving Our Body

We told them we were going to use our heads to move our bodies to some music. We turned on some music and danced around, making all kinds of different circles as we did. We noticed circles on our bodies, and ways we can move our bodies in circles, like summersaults, spinning and such.

Music: The Note

We talked about how breath gives our bodies power to move, and also to speak and to sing. We have a special way of drawing the sounds we can sing, called notes. When we want to draw these sounds, we draw a circle! (We drew a note on the board).  Next, we made a circle with our mouths, and sang a note. Then, we tried to make all the different notes we were singing sound like only one note, by trying to match each other’s note.

Christ-like Attribute: Unity, and Service

We talked about how we united many different notes into one sound. We discussed how we are also all different people, but we belong to one great family, that started with Adam and Eve. Even though we may like different things or work in different ways, or make different sounds, we are all important parts of this great big family, and just like we want every part of our body to be doing as well as possible, we want every part of our human family, every person we meet, to be doing as well as possible, living with as much joy and love as possible.

Next, we sang the song, “I Will Build You Up”, to the children.

Then we talked about how every time we help anyone, we are making things a little bit better for everyone, which blesses us too. What we do affects everyone, and to explore that further, we played a game by having the children lay in a circle on the floor. We had each child put their head on the stomach of the person next to them in the circle. One child started the game by saying, “ha”, and the next had to say, “ha”, and we had each try to take a turn saying “ha” without laughing, or else they had to start over. We talked about the gift of a smile, and how that can brighten one person’s day, and they may be just a little kinder to someone else, who may be a little kinder to someone else, and so on.

We also played Ring Around the Rosies, to emphasize that when one of us is hurting, it affects us all as well, and we want every person to be as happy and well as possible, because we each affect and are a part of each other’s lives.

Art: Beeswax Sculpture

We passed out pieces of beeswax for each child to hold and begin to warm, shape, and change, while we told a verse about the special little creatures, who worked together to create the wax we were playing with. The wax was stiff and hard to mold. We primarily wanted to introduce and expose them to the wax as a medium, and perhaps make spheres with it. At the end of the verse, we showed them a beautiful bee we had sculpted out of a golden yellow wax, that was the creature that had been described.

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Food: Apples – It Takes Every Part to Make a Whole

We had the children help prepare some apples by washing and slicing them. We cut some large circles off of the sides of the apple, and cut the rest off in pieces. While the children ate, we talked about what it would be like to put the apple back together again, into one great whole, and emphasized that each piece that had been cut off of the apple was a little bit different from the other pieces, but they were all needed and important, to make the apple whole again.

Observations in Nature: Circles

We took the children outside while saying a verse (?), and looked for circles in nature together. We noticed the sun in the sky, the flowers, tree trunks, seeds, and other round things. Next, we went back inside and sang our Gathering Closing Song, ending in a tight circle in the middle, and saying, “Thank you” as we closed our class. Those who were interested were invited to stay for an additional story. We read one of the 7 Habits of Happy Kids books by Steven R. Covey called (?)

We gave each family of children some bubbles to take home, along with a copy of our affirmation that day, “I Am Loved”, and handed the mothers a review sheet that highlighted a little of what our focus was that day, and included activities they could do at home to support and reinforce what we had done in class.

 Eph. 4:25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

D&C 59:15-? : All things which come from the earth, in the season thereof, are given unto man

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Josh 1:9 Be strong and of good courage

If ye love me, Keep my Commandments

(jist) On this hang all the law and the prophets. Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, might, mind, and strength, and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Article of Faith #1