ELCA World Hunger's new Vacation Bible School for 2019 is here! Download or order "Who Is My Neighbor?" for free, and follow the link to learn more!

Who is your neighbor? Is it the person you work next to or the person you live by? Is the scripture literal when it says love your neighbor?

Who is My Neighbor? We’ve all heard the parable of how the Good Samaritan was a good neighbor to the man who had been badly beaten. Several years ago, the question, “Who is my neighbor?” took…

This post contains affiliate links. In our home, one evening a week is dedicated to spending time together as a family. We gather for song, prayer, a spiritual lesson, activity, and special treat. Our children look forward to this every week. Some weeks are more organized than others. Other weeks are extremely chaotic and sometimes […]

God's Word offers many instruction on how to love your nieghbor. What better way to teach this to our little ones than with a fun craft!

The day is cold with a biting bitter wind. I pull my hat down over my ears and rush to keep up with my family. This is our first visit to New York city, and ...

Begin with reading the Love God and Love People devotional. Talk about what it means to love others like Christ loves us. Read the suggested Bible verses together out loud. Look at the pictures and read about the children in the Who is My Neighbor? story. Talk about neighbors near and far and what kinds…

Print This CraftSeptember 21st is International Peace Day and October 24th is UN Day. We created this World Neighbors Handprint ... Read More

This Parable of the Good Samaritan is a great Bible study for teens. It includes a study pages, worksheets, and games to help you understand the story and its meaning. This is a great resource for any youth group or church.

Get an in-depth review of Group's Easy VBS for 2019, ROAR! - Life is Wild, God is good. Each year, we review the themes from every VBS publisher to help you decide which one is just right for your church.

July 8th-12th from 9:00 a.m.—12:00 p.m. Vacation Bible School 2019 will be here before we know it! Our theme this year is Who Is My Neighbor? Learning to love like...

We have been thinking of new ways to engage families in spiritual formation during the summer time. So many families travel on weekends during the summer and that means missing worship and all the…

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Type: Ensemble Building, Focus. Procedure: 1. Arrange chairs in a circle; one chair per person playing, minus one. 2. One person stands in the middle of the circle and approaches a person sitting in the circle and asks: “Do you love your neighbor?” 3. If that person answers: “Yes, I love my neighbor,” the two...

Love your neighbor as yourself worksheet.

You WANT to love your neighbor as Jesus commanded but sometimes it's challenging! Here's how to love others when they don't act very lovable.

This is a Sunday school lesson about the second greatest commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. The lesson will have children reading aloud Bible Lesson Plans for Kids "Love Your Neighbor" Sunday School Lesson (Mark 12:28-34 and Matthew 22:39)

Yesterday a friend posted a photo to her facebook page. She had gone to pick up lunch for her husband from a fast food restaurant and was surprised to see the note attached to her bag when she picked it up. The note read, “in a country so divided, only good and love can overcome […]

First Week Watercolor Portraits 7 comments Back to School, Bulletin Boards, Self Portraits, Tutorials Every year, my second graders paint a watercolor self-portrait. It is truly my most favorite first week activity of all time. After sharing this picture of this year's portraits on Facebook, a sweet reader asked if I had a blog post about them. Well, it dawned on me that while I have shared my annual self-portraits many times, I've never really shared them exclusively in a post. So, here goes! Every year, I have my students paint a self-portrait during the first week of school (an idea I learned while student teaching many moons ago). I hang these portraits in the room, for the entire year. They really brighten up our space and they are such a joy to look at (this is a picture of my students' portraits from last year). I am not an art teacher and I believe that kids should be encouraged to take risks, so when I task my students with painting their portraits, I pretty much let them "have at it." Don't worry, it isn't a total free for all. I do model the process and I also share examples from years past, like the ones shown below. I just make it very clear that I don't expect their paintings to look like an actual photograph. ;) I always begin by pointing out how much of their body/self they will be painting. I tell them to think about the pictures they see in their yearbooks and how those pictures only show people's heads and shoulders. I explain that they will include only their head and shoulders in their paintings. I then show them examples from previous years (sometimes students move and they get left behind, so I have a few on hand). Once the students understand what it is that they will be including in their portrait, I model the drawing process on the board. I discuss how large the head should be in relation to the paper and show them what this looks like. From there, I show them how I draw a neck and shoulders, hair, and facial features. I apologize that I don't have a photo of this, but essentially, I model and narrate the process, one step at a time. And, then...it's the students' turn. I give each student a piece of white card stock (8x10 inches) to work with. Card stock is brighter and thicker than construction paper, and it just seems to hold the paint better, in my opinion. Then, they start their drawing. Sometimes, I have them draw the outline of their pictures with a black crayon (see below). When I do this, there is NO pencil involved. This helps them to really slow down and visualize before they draw because they know that they can't erase. However, this year, I let them draw with pencil first and then they traced over their pencil lines with a Sharpie. Why did I do that? I have no idea, it was just what I decided to do when I was prepping the materials, but the end result was still fab! Once the students draw the outline of their portrait, they get to paint! Using watercolor is a tricky thing for many second graders. They have a hard time always gauging how much water to use, so a discussion about this (and a little modeling) ahead of time is a good idea. Tip: No matter how much explaining and modeling you do, you'll still have a student or two that uses too much water. Let them use a tissue to blot their paper if you notice this happening. I lay the portraits to dry on the floor, in an out of the way spot. They dry within minutes here in the desert. Once they are dry, I flatten them by stacking heavy teacher manuals on them overnight. I could iron them, but my iron and I do not get along. At all. The next morning, I hang them up and admire the sight before me...all year long. :) At the end of the year, it's always fun to repeat this process. You will be amazed at how much growth your students show. Here are a few examples from last year. Amazing, right? We always get lots of compliments on our portrait display, and the kids are always very proud of them. They love seeing if their parents can guess which one is theirs, and it's fun to see how many parents get it right! At the end of the school year, I send the portraits home as a keepsake. Many parents have commented how much they love them, and they are the perfect size for framing! First week self-portraits are a great way to encourage students to take risks, have fun, and learn to use materials. Beyond that, the students take great pride in their creations and enjoy them just as much as I do, and we have something truly magnificent (that they created!) to look at all year long. :) Share It:

I think I have practically told EVERYONE I know about this object lesson! My neighbor used this in YW 2 years ago and it has honestly stuck with me! I was getting it ready for Devin's seminary class and decided to use it on my Relief Society lesson that Sunday and it added SO much to my lesson! So I love sharing things I LOVE! Hopefully, someone will get to use this and it will work as great as it did for me! If you do, let me know! So here goes: 1. Count 1,380 M&M's and put them in a jar. {To save you time: A big bag at Costco has a little over 600 in each bag. About 610. So that means you need 2 Costco bags and then 1 other bag at the store. I also prefer the peanut M&M's. They stand out more.) 2. Ask your class how many people they estimate are in the world today? Tell the class that this jar of M&M's represents THE WORLD. Each M on 1 M&M represents 5 MILLION PEOPLE. There are approximately 6.9 BILLION PEOPLE ON THE EARTH TODAY. 3. Next, ask how many people live in the United States? Tell them that there are approximately 310 million people that live in the United States. That is approximately 62 M&M's. 4. You can narrow it down even more by asking how many people live in Utah? There is approximately 2.7 million people living in Utah. That is approximately 1/2 of M&M. (compared to the whole world) Well, from here, it's your choice. You can use other statistics like these: About 1/8 of the world have NO religion (780 million people; 156 M&Ms) About 1/5 of the world are Muslim (1 billion 235 million; about 247 M&Ms) About 1/8 of the world are Hindus (845 million; 169 M&Ms) About 1/5 the world are made up of miscellaneous relgions (1 billion 365 million; 273 M&Ms) About 1/3 the world is Christian: Believe in a Jesus Christ (2 billion 125 million; 425 M&Ms) So after all of those statistics, HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE MORMONS, MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS? Well as of December 2009, there are 13,824,854 MILLION MEMBERS. Which equals a little less than 3 M&M'S. SHOCKING!! at least for me! You can use this lesson in so many ways: to show the missionary work that still needs to be done the blessings of being one of the 3 M&M's To be in the world, but not of the world... the list goes on! You can also, add or take away from what I put on here! I hope this helps you in some way!

The fourth and last Parables of Jesus VBS is the Good Samaritan found in Luke 10:25-37. This post is what I did for my classroom and grades 1-4 used the room. This is most of one wall, and I started with the Cars Scene Setter. It has a basic desert background and didn't take me any time to create! I added the cave, which I used the overhead projector to draw onto gray bulletin board paper and used a Sharpie to outline. The Jerusalem and Jericho cities are the same, I just flipped the graphic, left some of the designs off to make them look different. Again, they were both drawn onto brown bulletin board paper with the overhead projector. I painted them, used the Sharpie for outlines and cut them out. The animal (I used a donkey, even though Jesus didn't say what kind of animal) was drawn on gray bulletin board paper, painted and outlined with a Sharpie. All the people were drawn onto poster board and painted, then outlined with a Sharpie. For the Good Samaritan and the hurt man, I drew them onto poster board, but I drew them separate so I could add a fabric 'blanket' onto the hurt man. Then I added the Good Samaritan over the hurt man & 'blanket'. The title was drawn onto poster board, I painted the letters, cut it out, and outlined with a Sharpie. I used my scrapbooking stamp pads along the edges to create the worn look. I printed the sun with today's theme and the signs. You can download everything you need to draw by clicking here (includes the printable sun): All the printable signs (only) are here. Click here to download the updated visuals. We have 20 minutes to teach and review our lesson. The kids rotate to 4 different activities for 20 minutes each. They have the Bible lesson, Paul's Theater where they watch the lesson as a play, they have a craft time, and their food time. The Elders say there's no excuse not to come because you can even get a meal! When the kids are done eating, they see a puppet reenactment. The kids practice puppets for Lads To Leaders (L2L), so why not use those skills for our kids? Ramona started our time with greetings and about Jesus and His parables. She discussed what a parable is and why Jesus told them. For tonight's lesson, The theme is Love Thy Neighbor, so that led to 'Who is our neighbor?' According to Jesus, our neighbor is anybody, not just the people that live next door to us. It can be teacher, friend, the mailman, our family, and even people that we do not know! When I taught the lesson, I used a photo of this road with it's curves and rocks (I found and printed it from a Google search). I used my whole wall decoration to teach the lesson. Since my wall wasn't long enough to actually add curves, I used my arm to swing up and down and around each section to simulate the curvy road. If you notice, with the Priest and the Levite, I have a walker symbol and they could see and remember that they walked right on by. But, the Samaritan has a medical symbol to help them remember that he stopped to help. When I came to the part of the Samaritan stopping to help, I picked up a basket that I had set aside that had a hand towel, washcloths, a tin of ointment, lots of assorted bandages. And, a bag of money that I pulled out when the Samaritan paid the innkeeper. Paulette is great at deciding the reinforcement games to work with the daily lessons. For this one, she had this basket with different items in it. The basket had: flower, dog food box, get well card, bag of fruit snacks, watering can, water bottle, cans of soup, veggies, etc., toy, gift, Bible. We let each child reach into the basket and pick one item. Once everyone had their item picked out, We asked them "How can you show that you 'Love Your Neighbor'?" You can add other Bible verses like 'Be kind one to another' (Eph. 4:32). I purchased the Jesus Standup at Oriental Trading. I am moving Him each night to be by the Parable that we are discussing. I want the kids to remember that Jesus is the One telling the Parables. Click to see the PHOTO visuals that I used. (I am not permitted to add them here, so just use the search bar to find them. I didn't use all that they have available (I used 4).) Click on the above picture to see the main foyer and hall decorations, and the links for all four Parables of Jesus VBS classroom decorations, lessons, games & more.

What do M&Ms have to do with The Good Samaritan? Use this lesson to teach kids that Jesus wants us to show practical love and compassion to everyone and send them home with a concrete action plan to do this!

List of 41 ideas for cute ways to say thank you with candy. Using candy bars and candy to says thanks. Inspiration for DIY thank you craft. Candy puns.

VERSES: Luke 10:25-37 MEMORY VERSE: Luke 10:29 "...who is my neighbor?" BOOK TO REMEMBER: Deuteronomy. Write "Deuteronomy" o...

This free collection of coloring pages uses smaller illustrations to teach Bible stories to children. These sheets double as activities or teaching visuals.

With all the festivities coming up in the next few months a Table Setting Diagram will really come in handy. See examples of informal and formal!

During this Bible lesson, you'll use a fun activity to teach your Sunday school students about one of the most beloved parables: the Good Samaritan.

The day is cold with a biting bitter wind. I pull my hat down over my ears and rush to keep up with my family. This is our first visit to New York city, and ...

Earlier in the week, we read the book Each Kindness . The book discusses that a single act of being kind creates ripples of kindness tha...

8 catchy songs to begin a school day. These songs, chants, and rhymes are a great way to build community in the classroom and fun way to start the day.