Finalizing the Flood Plan

I'll begin my lesson with the manual's recommended Attention Activity, which is showing the children some warning signs, like STOP and DANGER, and asking what those signs mean and how they can help us. We'll discuss how these warning signs can warn us of danger and can tell us how to avoid it so we don't get ourselves hurt or killed. Then I'll relate those warning signs to prophets, who warn us of spiritual and temporal calamities and tell us how we can avoid them or prepare for them. From there, we have a clear link to Noah.

Since the children like reading, I'll have them read parts of Noah's story straight from the Old Testament. We'll read Genesis 6:5-22 (a few verses at a time, of course), which explains how the earth was wicked, except for Noah, and Noah was commanded to build an ark. Genesis chapter 7 (all 24 verses) tells about the flood itself and all those numbers I was so impressed with earlier. If we have time, we might read some of chapter 8, but I'll want to save some time for an activity, so maybe I'll just summarize the important parts.

At the end of the lesson proper, I'll bear my testimony of the importance of heeding prophetic warnings and I'll remind the children that General Conference is coming up once again. This will be the first General Conference in which President Russel M. Nelson will speak as the President of the Church. Odds are, he'll have some counsel for us and I'm sure that we'll be blessed if we follow it, so I'll encourage the children to listen carefully when President Nelson speaks so they'll know what message the Lord has for us today.

After the lesson has officially ended, we'll play a game. The lesson manual has guidelines for a matching game, matching questions on pieces of paper or on the chalkboard with various numbers. I'm not sure I'll bother using the chalkboard or paper. Instead, I'll quiz the children directly after telling them that all of the answers will a) be numbers and b) be found in Genesis 7 (in case they need a hint).

The six questions in the manual should be enough to kill whatever time we have remaining after the lesson, but if not, I might be able to squeeze a few more number questions out of chapter 7, like how many sons Noah had or how many people are specifically mentioned as  going on the ark, but I doubt it'll come to that. Reading the relevant verses should take up most of our time, and the discussions we'll have about those scriptures should take up most of our remaining time. The questions the manual provided should be enough of a filler to kill any remaining time.

This is going to be a nice lesson. I look forward to going over such a familiar Bible story in a bit more detail than these children probably have before, and it'll be good to have such a timely reminder of one of the purposes of General Conference. I hope that the children will listen to the lesson and then listen to the Prophet afterward.