Seeds of Faith

This is far from an original idea, but that is because it is a WONDERFUL idea for Activity Days!

Christ often taught with parables, and often used the idea of seeds in those parables. Alma spent a long, long chapter on how faith is like a seed. All the things he taught, about how faith and testimony must be nurtured and cared for (like a seed!) are still true.

The growth of testimony requires scripture reading, prayer, church attendance, a personal commitment to choose the right, and a desire to follow the Lord. A once strong testimony may wither and fade if it is not cared for and strengthened by daily care.

This is definitely like a seed! A seed is easy to plant and quick to sprout. But it takes careful care to get from sprout to full fledged flower (or carrot, or mustard tree!).

The goal of our activity was to help the girls identify the testimony they already had, help them understand how their testimony could grow, and encourage them to do those things that would encourage growth daily.

Of course, the activity also had to be fun! :)

During a Primary Sharing time we had all the kids trace their hands on card stock, and then color them. I took them home and cut them out to make the flower petals for the bulletin board. We had the kids trace two hands, and I think one hand would have been plenty, just FYI!

During our activity we did the following:
Let the girls color a label for their seed container
Plant a seed from a choice of flower seeds
Read scriptures on faith and testimony
Wrote testimonies on paper flowers, then colored the flowers

The flowers of testimony were added to our bulletin board, and it looks great! The girls love seeing their testimonies shared. We put names on the back of the flowers only, and will give them back to the girls when we take the bulletin board down.

The details:

We had about 12 girls attend this activity. We used 2 liter bottles (clear soda bottles) cut so they were about 6-8 inches tall to hold the dirt/seeds.

We had one large bag of potting soil and one bag of pea gravel and we had left over amounts in each bag, so unless you have a TON of girls, one bag is plenty. The pea gravel goes first, then is covered with dirt to help drainage.

We used strips of poster board (because paper/card stock was not long enough to wrap around the bottles in a single strip) to create a wrap around label that the girls could color to decorate their planter.

     You may think, as a few of the girls did... why use poster board? Why not just use the markers to color directly on the plastic? Answer: because this looks great when your container is empty, but once you fill it up with dark soil... you can't really see your design any more if you color directly on the bottle.

Supplies:
Pre-printed paper flowers, on white card stock (the flowers were about 8x8 inches in total)
posterboard strips, about 6 inches high
markers, LOTS of markers
Tape (to tape the strips together and to tape the strips to the bottles)
Flower seeds
Potting soil
Pea gravel
scissors (for cutting out the flower)
Pens (For writing testimonies)
Scriptures (John 20:24-29; Hebrews 11:1)
2 liter bottle, cut basically in half, one for each girl

In terms of timing: our activities have gone from 90 minutes to 60 minutes.
We let the girls look up their scriptures and discuss them in small groups, with a leader in each group, then share what our scripture was and what we learned. That was about 15 minutes.

Then we discussed the care of seeds, and drew parallels to the care of faith and testimony.

Then we colored our seed container poster board strips. Once the strips were done the girls got pea gravel, dirt and a seed. That part (the seed/dirt part) took a VERY short time. The coloring part took a lot longer.

Then we talked about the seeds of faith we were starting with and what our testimonies were. We asked the girls: what do you believe about the gospel? Maybe it is very simple. Maybe you believe God exists. Maybe you believe God loves you. Perhaps you believe you will be with your family again after you die, or that Joseph Smith is a prophet. Maybe you believe the Word of Wisdom will keep your body healthy and your spirit strong. Maybe you believe Thomas S. Monson is a prophet.

Think about it: what do you believe, right now? That is your testimony. It can grow as you read the scriptures and come to church. Then they wrote their testimony on the flowers. We asked them to write FIRST, color second so that 1) any coloring would not cover up the words and 2) coloring can take a looooooonnnnggggg time, we wanted to make sure the testimonies got written!

Then they cut out their flowers. We were doing this for the bulletin board. If you are just sending the flowers home with the girls they would not necessarily need to be cut out. Or they could be cut out and placed on the poster strip of the plant container if the girls were keeping them!