Seminary Saturday

Several months ago the Seminary and Institute Coordinator asked if I would be in charge of a Scripture Mastery activity for Seminary. The thoughts were for a competition of some sort but one of the Seminary teachers was concerned that her students would not come if it was a competition that focused on the individual. I had seen pictures of some of the activities that they had done on the island of Chuuk last year and so I borrowed several of the things they had done and added a few more. I tried out a few of the games in Institute to see if they would work and then I enlisted the help of my students to help me with those games.

Just like anywhere else, not everyone comes at the appointed time and so there were games set up for gathering during the first half hour. Students could choose what they wanted to do. They earned candy prizes as they played.

There was a concentration game. You had to match a Scripture Mastery reference with its clue words.

We played spoons. The teacher gave a reference and the group chased to find it in their scriptures. The first person to locate it reached for a spoon. As soon as the first spoon was taken the rest could grab for a spoon.

There was a ring toss. Each bottle had a number on it and if the ring landed around the bottle you were asked a corresponding question.

The bean bag toss had scripture references and scripture clues. The bean bags had to land in matching references and clues to earn the prize.

Here the kids were to put together scripture puzzles. Several Scripture Mastery verses had been put on paper and cut into puzzle pieces. Once they put the puzzle together they had to read the scripture to get their prize.

After a half hour of playing the pre-games we had an opening prayer and then went into separate rooms to play the team games.

This was the Jeopardy Game. They had to give the questions to Church History answers.

This game is called Bloody Knuckles. I think there were some disappointed kids that the game does not live up to its name. The teams had little slips of paper on the table that was either the reference or the clue words for the Scripture Mastery verses. The teacher would give either the clue word or the reference and the teams had to find both slips of paper for that verse then have a runner run to the chalk board, mark a big X on their side of the board and hand the answers to the teacher. When I was teaching Seminary, my students really liked this game but the kids here are too polite. It was a very calm version of the game.

The last game was "Seminarium". This is played like Cranium. They rolled a die to see if they would act out, sing, mold clay, give a one word clue, draw a picture or get to choose which one of the first five they wanted to do. This was with the Scripture Mastery verses. Not many of the kids really know their Scripture Mastery but I think they had fun with this and it was a good way to learn it a bit more.

We ended with lunch. The kids just hung around just visiting after the activities.

The Institute students used this activity as one of their YSA activities. They really helped me out and I appreciated all the help they provided. What a great bunch of kids and what a way to spend a Super Saturday.