A Youth Lesson about Psalms

 It's been a while!   Frankly a lot has happened since I last posted here, so here's a little personal update before I get into this lesson on Psalms:     

We've moved twice since my last post.  In case you're keeping track, that was 3 moves in 2 years that put us in 4 different wards.  {Yes, we are tired of moving and have no intention on moving again for a very long time}   We currently live in Alpine, Utah.  I never really had a desire to live in Utah, but a lot of little miracles led us here and we feel that we are exactly where we are supposed to be for now, so we are trying to bloom where we have been planted.  We became grandparents this past year and we are loving this new stage of life, though we wish she (and her parents) lived closer!  My Dad recently passed away and we've felt very blessed to have lived close to my parents for the last year.   We welcomed home a missionary in January and sent another one off to the Portland, Oregon mission this past week.   We have one daughter (a senior) who's still living at home with us. Empty nesting here we come! 

In church we teach a Sunday School class to the 11-12 year-olds.  We've found it a challenging age to teach, as they are fresh out of primary and feeling very grown up, but very much struggle with too much talking or scripture reading during a lesson.  We try to throw a creative/engaging activity into each lesson to make it more memorable for them.    I'm back today to share a successful lesson we had teaching them about the Psalms this past Sunday.  

LESSON ABOUT PSALMS: 

We talked a little about what the psalms were and some of the overarching themes of them.  The themes we picked out were:

1. Repentance/ sorrow/ coming back to God (READ THE HEADINGS OF PSALM 6 & 7)

We talked about who David was and had them try to guess how many of the Psalms David wrote. The answer is 73 of the 150 Psalms.  We also talked about some of the reasons why David felt sorrow and the need to repent.  We discussed about how God always wants us to turn back to Him and that there's no way to mess up badly enough that God won't welcome us back.  

2. Praising God (READ PSALM 111:1-5) 
We talked a little about how the root words of psalms in Hebrew is Tehillim, a word coming from the Hebrew word halal, “to praise” The same root forms the word hallelujah, meaning “praise to Yah” (Jehovah). Unlike some modern songs that tend to depress the spirit, the psalms have the power to lift one toward God. The psalms are full of praise to God!   

3. Proclaiming God and helping others come to Him – (READ PSALM 66:16)

we sent  off a missionary to the MTC this week, so we talked about why missionaries sacrifice to serve missions. What is the message that missionaries share?   Then we talked about ways we can be missionaries in our daily lives. 

Then, we talked a little about music and how it makes us feel. I had them look up in their scriptures to see if they could figure out that many of the Psalms  were written  "To the Chief Musician". We mentioned the themes that we'd just gone over and then talked about how the Psalms were the basis for many of the hymns in our hymn book.   Then we played the following game, based loosely on one of the Jackbox games our family enjoys playing together.   

PSALMS GAME (15-20 minutes): 

We came up with a list of some of the most well-known hymns that were based on scriptures in Psalms. 

This is the list:  

I am a Child of God–301

There is Sunshine in My Soul–227

Did You Think to Pray–140

The Lord is My Shepherd–108

For the Beauty of the Earth–92

Joy to the World–201

Angels We Have Heard on High–203

All Creatures of Our God and King–62

I Need Thee Every Hour–98

Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me–104

I Know that My Redeemer Lives –136

We cut the titles of the songs into strips and had each student draw one out.   Then we handed out hymn books, paper, and colored pencils.   We asked them to draw their song without using any words.   After giving them about 5 minutes to complete their drawings, we collected the drawings and all the writing utensils, except one per person.  

We then presented them with the list of possible songs (our students are only 11-12 years old and we felt that it would have been way too difficult without the list) and had them write down on a sheet of paper what song they guessed for each picture.

Here are the pictures they came up with...can you guess what they are without looking at the caption?   

I Know that My Redeemer Lives

There is Sunshine in My Soul Today

I Need Thee Every Hour and Angels We Have Heard on High

Joy to the World and All Creatures of Our God and King

Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me

Did You Think to Pray and I am a Child of God 

All in all, I thought the lesson was meaningful and memorable.  The game was right up their alley and a good way to get even the reluctant participants to engage.   

Let me know if you try it and how it goes for your class!