Effective Teaching

Being a nursery teacher is no different than being any other teacher, in that it requires study, preparation and relying on the spirit to help you teach.  I will be studying The Church of Jesus Christ's, "Teaching no Greater Call" Book to help me learn to be a better teacher.   A few weeks ago I was using the "Preach my Gospel" Manual to help me with my personal scripture study.  On page 19 it states,

. . . you are responsible to thoroughly understand the lessons and teach by the Spirit in your own words. Teach so that others will strengthen their faith in Jesus Christ, Desire to repent, and enter into covenants with God.

Effective teachers are always working to improve their knowledge and abilities. Although you will not teach all you know about the doctrine, your increased knowledge will build your testimony and your abiltiy to teach with spiritual power. You will know you are using the lessons as intend when you:

• Help others make and keep commitments taht lead to baptism and confirmation.
• Strive to consistently study, treasure up, and apply the doctrines in your life.
• Seek and follow the Spirit as you prepare and teach the lessons
• Work with your companion to make specific plans for each person you teach.
• Focus on the central messages and doctrines as you teach.
• Adjust the order, length, and pace of the lessons to meet the needs of those you each.
• Teach often from the scriptures with clairty and conviction.
• Bear testimony frequently

I think to be effective as a teacher in Nursery we need to apply all of this as it is appropriate. We need to be studying the subject of the lesson in our personal study, as the manual points out, we WILL NOT teach everything we learn, but we will better be able to bare testimony of it, we will be better prepared for questions, and most importantly we will be more open and capable of knowing what the spirit wants us to teach.

A New Calling

Yesterday, my husband got a phone call from a member of the bishopric and asked if we could come visit with him for a few minutes in the morning. He of course said yes, and then hung up, and then came the guessing game as to who would get the new call and what it would be.  We came in this morning and we both had been called to serve together as Nursery Leaders.
Honestly I couldn't be more excited to share a calling with my husband.  Who better to serve with than my favorite person in the world.  So I am so excited that we can do this together.
My baby is Lucy, she is eighteen months old, so I have spent the last couple weeks in nursery trying to help her adjust. One thing I have noticed is that our nursery needs help. So I am excited to go and make nursery a fun and happy place to be, and to help the kids learn something new every week.
My Lucy is sick today, so after meeting with the bishopric member, Lucy and I came home.  She is down for a nap, and so I have been reading the manual, and the church handbook for ideas, and then I started searching the internet for ideas of how other people make their nursery's functional. I tried using pintrest to store the ideas I liked, but most of the ideas don't have visuals, so that doesn't help me because Pintrest is a visual way of organizing things.  I started saving some of the ideas on my computer, but I could get a very full memory that way, and some of it is not in need of a space on my computer.  So I decided the best way to collect my ideas is in blog format. So if anyone else wants to stumble on to my blog, then they can use the ideas I have collected from many places.  There are hundreds of ideas out there, so mine will be no better than anyone else's collection, it will simply be what I think might work for me.