Choose The Right

I haven't had a calling in quite a long time so I was so happy to be called to be a Primary teacher about a month ago. I am over the CTR 6 to 7 year old class and I have eight kids in my class. Now I wasn't quite prepared for these kids. They are much brighter than I thought they'd be and I certainly love them more than I thought I would. I bring them treats every week, because seriously, what fun is Primary without a treat at the end of class? When I asked them about whether I should bring them a treat on Fast Sunday, they said, "come on, we're only 7, we haven't been baptized, we don't fast!" Okaaay! Then, another week when I was asking them what some of their favorite treats were that I could bring or make, they said pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I told them they were in luck because I just happen to have THE BEST recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. One of the boys in the class then proceeded to tell me,"That's boasting Sister Post". Bam! Shut down by a 7 yr.old. He didn't say bragging, he said BOASTING as in scriptural terms. I was immediately put in my place-these kids are smart. Now don't get me wrong, we have a great time though. I like to kid and raz with them. The first week they had to guess things about me and my family and they figured out that I was 26 years old-who am I to tell them different, we have been best friends ever since. One week our lesson was on being a peacemaker. I was trying to get my point across and so I used a personal experience (we all know that this is the best way to teach). I told them how my husband Joe had a couple of people at work who had been giving him a hard time and it had really been bothering him. It bothered him so much that he was not sleeping and he was getting upset at home. So I recommended that we PRAY for these people and that we put their names in the temple. We did this and within a few weeks things began to change for the better. They began to be nicer but the most important thing that I told the children was that JOE felt better. No matter what the outcome would have been, he was at peace with himself, us and them and now it was their decision to choose how to play it out. The cute part of this was that when I told them about putting the names in the temple, they thought we had literally gone down to the temple and CARVED their names in the temple! They had told me about a boy at school named Paris who had been very mean to them throughout the year before, so I decided to take this opportunity to talk to them about him. "What if we prayed for Paris?" I said. I told them that perhaps Paris doesn't realize he's being mean or his parents haven't raised him in a way where this is a bad thing. One of the girls said,"What would we say,'Heavenly Father, please bless Paris'?" and I said "Exactly". So at the end of class I had them kneel down at their chairs and I knelt down and offered a prayer for us all to be better peacemakers and to help Paris. Here is my cute class (minus one) *If any of you need extra help with lessons or such go to sugardoodle.org which is a website that has resources for Primary, Young Women's, Relief Society including visiting teaching and even things like ward choir director. This is where I have found lots of cute ideas to add to my lessons and all I have to do is hit copy and cut them out.