Primary Lesson Prayer
Welcome everyone by name.
Practice the Hand Raising game. Children at this age need to practice hand raising without calling out. We usually start each lesson with a small snack and we practice raising our hands to respond to questions without calling out. We will make statements like, “Raise your hand if you like graham crackers,” or “Raise your hand if you are wearing red today.” We emphasize that they can answer the question not with calling out, but by raising their hands.
Bring a phone to the classroom and show it to the children. Ask them what it is and if they have ever used a phone. Have them tell you to whom they have spoken. (Mother, Father, Grandparents etc.) Explain how nice it is to have a phone so we can talk to people who are far away.
Image found athttp://clipart-2012.blogspot.com/2008/08/free-stick-people-clipart.html
Make a paper cup and string phone and have the children play with it. See if you can have one child go outside in the hallway and another child speak to him or her from inside the room using the paper cup phone. Explain how our voice travels over the string and is echoed in the cup so we can hear.
Show a picture of Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. Ask where they live? Is it on earth? Can we see them? Show them the phone and ask if we can call them on the phone. Tell how sad it would be if we couldn’t talk with our Heavenly father until we went back to live in heaven. Explain that there is a way we can talk to Heavenly Father and that is through prayer.
Most LDS chapel libraries have this picture.
Play and sing the song I Pray In Faith. Go over the words with the children using pictures to help them understand the words. I use a Power Point slide show with pictures for each idea in the song.
I kneel to pray every day. (Child kneeling in prayer.)
I speak to Heavenly Father. (Picture of Christ or Christ and Heavenly Father.)
He hears and answers me. (Picture of Jesus with children, or a happy child.)
When I pray in faith. (Child kneeling in prayer.)
Ask children to show you what to do when we pray. Explain we can bow our heads and close our eyes, we can kneel or sit quietly. But we don’t always have to do that. Sometimes we could pray just by thinking about and speaking to Heavenly Father in our minds. If we were in bed at night and were upset or worried or scared, we could pray while lying in our beds. When we pray with others, it’s important to be quiet, fold our arms and close our eyes and listen to the prayer. But that is not the only way we can pray.
Tell or read a story about a child praying for something important to them. Many can be found in The Friend magazine or use the one below:
Jacob was so excited to go to school in the morning. It was his turn for Show and Tell and his mother said he could take the picture of his grandfather when he was in the army. His mother told him to be very careful with the picture because it was old and the only one they had. She placed it in an envelope and zipped it into Jacob’s bag. When Jacob got to school he could hardly wait until it was Show and Tell time. He waited through coloring, and through practicing his math, and through reading and finally through lunch time. Right after lunch the teacher told the children to get their Show and Tell objects and get ready to share their stories with the class. Several children took different items out of their bags and went up front. Jacob ran to his cubby storage place and unzipped his bag. The picture was gone! He looked in every pocket and even turned the bag upside down but no picture! With tears in his eyes, Jacob realized he not only would not be able to show the picture of his grandfather to the class, but his mother would be very upset that he lost it. He slowly walked back to his desk in the class while the other children were showing their objects to the rest of the class. Jacob very quietly sat at his desk and thought about what he had learned in primary. He thought about Jesus and how he loved children. He remembered the picture he had seen of Jesus holding children on his lap. As he imagined that picture, he silently said a prayer that Heavenly Father might help him find his picture. As he prayed silently in his mind, he remembered his lunch box that he’d taken from his bag at lunch. He ran back to his bag and took out his lunchbox. There, stuck to the bottom of the lunch box, was the envelope with the picture in it! Jacob was so happy! His teacher was just calling him up to show the class his picture. Jacob proudly told the story of how his grandfather had been a soldier, and showed his grandfather’s picture to the class. That night, when he knelt by his bed to say his nightly prayers, Jacob remembered to thank Heavenly Father for answering his prayer.
Point out to the children that Jacob was able to quietly say a prayer in class with no one noticing, and also to kneel at night and pray. Let them know that Heavenly Father always hears our prayers, no matter where we are.
Give the children copies of the Prayer Book. Talk about each picture and have them color something from each pictures as you talk. I find children this age don’t really know how to color so I will model it for them and we will all color together one part of the picture. It’s good to talk them through it as you model, for example: “I am going to choose yellow for the girl’s hair because my hair is yellow but you might choose a different color. I am going to try to just color her hair and not get the color all over her face, like this.” If you try to get through the whole mini-book and have them color each page entirely, they will rush and make a mess. So talk about each page and choose one thing on each page to color together. This booklet is an edited version from the church website. I chose to make it into a small booklet instead of a handout, and to put my own labels on. I cut out each pair of pictures, folded them in the middle and stapled them to make a mini book. Then I wrote My Prayer Book on the blank front page.
The church website has some videos about prayer such as the one of Jesus Teaching the Nephites to Pray. Show this next and ask the children if they recognize anything in the video that the people are doing from what we have talked about in the lesson today.
Bring in a palm sized smooth stone for each child. Bring in stickers or markers for the children to decorate their rock. Have a small sticker that says “Prayer Rock” and stick it on the rock when they are done decorating. Read the poem to them and explain what the Prayer Rock is for. You can bring in paints and have the children paint the rocks, but if you do, you will need to plan for having time for the rocks to dry. Either do it at the beginning of the lesson, or bring in a hair dryer to speed up the process. There are several websites with idea on how to make prayer rocks.
LDS Lessons in a Box 