New Year, New Goals, New Calling

I want to change so many things in my life in 2014, that it could end up being overwhelming.  I have to keep reminding myself that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.  I am trying to clean and declutter my house, one closet and drawer at a time, but I look around in despair because I swear it looks messier instead of cleaner each day.  But, we are getting rid of bags and bags of things, so it has to start coming together sometime...right?  I just wish I could motivate my kids to want to help clean.  Right now, my best helper is my 18 month old!   Kinda sad.

On the bright side, I am loving my new primary calling.  I was called in November to teach the CTR 5 and 6 combined class.  I was able to move up with them this year, so now I am teaching the CTR 6 and 7 class.  I have 11 active kids, and several others that I would love to see come out.  I have Benjamin in my class, along with Danny and Johanna (nephew and niece).  I have found some really cool things to go along with the lessons in the manual, so I think I will blog here each week what I am doing, along with links, in case anyone else wants to use the resources I have found.

I gave each of the kids in my class a Gospel ABC book for Christmas.  I found one that a lady had put together from pictures in the gospel art kit.  I was able to find a 1 cent photo sale, printed the pages as 4x6 pictures, put them in plastic photo album sleeves, and put the sleeves on a metal ring.  Easy, fairly inexpensive, and the kids love them!  You can find the link for the free download here:

http://www.theideadoorfiles.com/index.php/quite-book-s-4-x-6-photo-book-s/141-quite-book-s/quite-book-s-4-x-6-photo-book-s/292-gospel-abc-book-4-x-6-size

Here are some pictures of how mine turned out:

This year I found a lady who has done 3x5 handouts for every lesson in our CTR A Primary Manual 2.  So I am using them each week, plus adding a few 4x6 pages of my own to supplement what she has done.  I put them on rings for the kids each week, and over the course of the year we will build another gospel book for them to have.  Here is what we have so far:

 I added the words to this song from a baptism book download (found here: http://www.theideadoorfiles.com/index.php/quite-book-s-4-x-6-photo-book-s/141-quite-book-s/quite-book-s-4-x-6-photo-book-s/290-baptism-book-4-x-6-photo-cards ) because we sing it in several lessons.  Those who can read follow along as we sing.

The kids are enjoying this, and most of her pages are taken from The Friend magazine.  You can find her pages here: http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7918&Itemid=200018

The first Sunday, it had us make a CTR poster, and have the kids color CTR shields.  So, I found a poster that someone had put together with a picture of Jesus  (by Melissa Dillon - #14 on this page  http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=749&Itemid=200018  )

and strung the CTR shields together that the kids colored.  I use the poster and the CTR banner every week now to set up the classroom.  The kids LOVE to see their shields up on the wall each week!