Primary Sharing Time - Dancing Raisins & Faith

I used this for a Primary Sharing Time at church, but it can also be used as a family home evening lesson.

DANCING RAISINS & FAITH SHARING TIME
Welcome to my laboratory!
I am a scientist and you are my assistants.
Today we are going to do an experiment.
Scientists learn how things work by doing experiments.
They usually have an idea, but have to try it out before they can know for sure.
I am going to tell you what will happen in the experiment, but only by DOING the experiments will you know if it works or not!

I want these raisins to dance! Let’s see if I can take these ingredients and make them do it.
Add 1 cup water to glass
Add one tablespoon of baking soda and stir it up.
Drop several raisins into the glass
Are they dancing???
Pour vinegar into the glass until it bubbles
Wow! Look at them dance!
Mixing vinegar and baking soda together forms a gas called carbon dioxide. Bubbles of carbon dioxide stick to the sides of the raisins, act like air bags, and float the heavy raisins to the surface. At the surface the bubbles break and the raisins sink. Then the process starts all over again.

Show a picture of Alma.
Alma was a great prophet in the Book of Mormon.
He taught his followers about a different kind of experiment.
His experiment teaches us how to have faith in Jesus Christ.
Just like combining ingredients in the glass creates a reaction, if we combine the parts of Alma's experiment we will have the reaction of a testimony.

Post the word strip WANT TO BELIEVE.
The first ingredient in our faith experiment is wanting to believe in Jesus Christ. Even when we don't know, we need to have a desire to believe.

Post the word strip READ THE SCRIPTURES.
When we combine wanting to believe with regular scripture study a reaction starts to take place in our hearts. The scriptures contain many testimonies of Jesus Christ. The prophet Alma called the scriptures "the word." They are inspired by our Heavenly Father, and when we read them we can learn many things.

Post the word strip OBEY THE COMMANDMENTS.
When we do the things that Heavenly Father wants us to it is like adding another ingredient in our experiment. Alma called this "nourishing" our faith, which means feeding it good things.
Post the word strip PRAY IN FAITH
When we pray and ask Heavenly Father to help us, we are promised in the scriptures that we will know the truth.

Post the word strip = and then FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST.
Faith in our Savior is the result of the first four steps.
Just like the "dancing" raisins are the result of the science experiment, when we perform an experiment of faith we are blessed with a testimony of Jesus.

The more we perform the experiment, the greater our faith will become.
I know these steps work because I have performed the experiment myself.

Challenge the children to try the experiment in their own lives and with their families.

Song Ideas:
"I'll Follow Him in Faith" (Friend, Jan. 2003, 24)
"I Pray in Faith" (Children's Songbook, 120)
"The Fourth Article of Faith" (CS, 124)
"Faith" (CS, 96)