Arming Ourselves

This is a lesson that my sister did for her family. They are ages 11, 9, 8, and 4. They are doing a series on this type of thing and this was the first one. She did not give any songs so I choose a few that I thought would be great with this lesson.

Opening Song: We'll bring the World His Truth Children's Songbook pg 172
Closing Song: The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden Children's Songbook pg 237

Arming Ourselves
Part 1 - Parents

We started with talking about the Army of Helaman, I used this article from the Friend to summarize the story and how it relates to them.
Then we talked about the war in Heaven and how we chose to follow Christ. But Satan and his followers want us to miss out on the blessings we can get by being obedient. So we discussed how we are in a war with Satan and every time we make a good choice we are defeating him. One way to help them to make the right choices is for them to talk to us, their parents. We can help them to make better choices if they will let us know what is going on in their lives. One thing Satan will do is try to make them think that they can't talk to us. He will tell them that we wouldn't understand, or that they will get in trouble, or that we won't listen. Satan does this because he knows that parents can protect their kids from making the wrong choice. We talked about how to talk to us and discussed ways to get our attention appropriately using this article from the New Era as a resource.
Then my husband did his part of the lesson, he made a wooden shield earlier and found a wooden dowel to use as a sword. He talked about how parents are like a shield, if you use it you will be protected, but if you foolishly leave it on the ground you could be seriously hurt. Of course my husband used the opportunity to have each of the kids hold the shield then he hit it really hard and asked them how it would have felt to be hit without the shield. They of course responded that it would have really hurt. Then to close our lesson, I handed out CTR rings to the kids that had lost them. We then explained that not only does it remind them to Choose the Right, but it is in the shape of a shield to help them remember that their parents are like the shield that can help them to Choose the Right too.