Did you know that there was Zucchini in the Book of Mormon? Well, neither did I, until Isaac told us that his primary class has been giving nicknames to the Book of Mormon characters, and Zucchini was the nickname for Zerahemnah. (Reminded me of Veggie Tales, but they don’t have any Book of Mormon videos).
During my recovery period after Lydia was born I had a lot of free time just sitting around, so I finally made a Pinterest account. It was a lot of fun, and I found a lot of neat ideas, but the ones that I like the most and have implemented in our home are the Scripture Journals. Do a google search and you will find lots of ideas, or check out my Devotional Board, my favorite source of inspiration is The Red Headed Hostess, but I really figured out how to do it with my kids from this post on Latter-Day Homeschooling.
We have doing our scripture journals for about a week now, and we are really enjoying them. We spend more time talking about the stories and the doctrine, trying to understand what is going on. The discussion is really good for the older kids, they get the scriptures so well, and want to dig deeper, but the younger kids were always goofing off, so now I am trying to work with the younger kids to draw pictures or write words to keep them interested in quieter. (This part doesn’t always work as well as I had hoped.)
Now back to Zucchini. I am not an artist, but that isn’t the point, the point is to try and convey something about the scriptures that will help us to remember the story or the doctrine. We were reading about Zerahemnah, and I remembered that Isaac called him Zucchini, so I drew this picture in his book for him, and then like a game of pictionary he had to figure out what it was.
It took several kids to figure it out, but once they decided it looked like a fruit, and not a banana, they got it. Isaac busted up laughing at my drawing. I’ll interpret the picture for you now.
Zucchini (Zerahemnah) refused to make an oath of peace, then he was scalped. For more information check out this wiki article or Alma 44.
Inspire, not Require!
I don’t require my kids to write in their scripture journals, and the first couple of days Isaac barely even opened his up, but he has been starting to add stickers and copy the pictures off of the stickers a little bit the past few days. Today, he produced this!
I think his artwork is much improved over mine. I didn’t even think about putting a face on my zucchini. I have a feeling he is going to remember the story of Zarahemnah for a very long time.
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I was going to write this last night, but I went to bed instead. I took a nap today, so I decided to write this tonight, I realize that the article isn’t up to my usual, my writing style doesn’t seem to flow tonight. I really miss writing though, so I’m just going to plug on and hope that as I practice again my writing will again flow and improve and inspire.
