Book Review - Bible Origami by Todd Huisken

Let me start by saying that this book makes me happy. I will explain.

Since my youth, I have struggled with spatial things. Things such as folding paper airplanes and answering those test questions that involve imagining how an unfolded patterned cube would look when folded back up. These things tend to frustrate me and make me feel helpless.

Fast forward to my adulthood. Todd Huisken (creator of Bible Origami) reached out to me to review his new origami book.  Todd was my dear friend during our freshman year of college but after we graduated we lost touch. We reconnected when he found my blog and asked me if I would give an honest review his book.

Author, Todd Huisken

Todd sent me a copy of his book, "Bible Origami," along with some paper so that I could try creating some of his designs. (I'd kept my spatial inadequacies hidden so he had no idea how challenging this would be for me.)

So I bravely sat down to try my hand at "Bible Origami."  I started with making Joseph's Coat of Many Colors. I followed the directions and illustrations exactly. Imagine my surprise and delight when I was able to do it! I literally screamed out, "LOOK WHAT I MADE!" (Sure, my family mocked me a bit for my over-enthusiasm but they were happy for me.)

Technology - One Page Printable

Today I subbed in Industrial Tech and the 7th graders learned about technology.  I made this little one page printable to summarize the lesson.

I love it when I learn something new too.  Part of the reason I enjoy teaching is because I am able to learn or review lots of interesting things.  It keeps my mind fresh and growing.

We learned about the relationship between Science, Engineering, and Technology, as well as learning about categories of technology careers, tech superstars, and what technology means (I made a thinking map, I couldn't help myself).

This little mnemonic device was quite enlightening.

"Sam Will Eat His Tuna Melt" can help you remember the following:

Science - Why something happens
Engineering - How to turn the science into something useful
Technology - Making something useful

Click HERE for the free PDF on Google Drive.

"Fallacies in Print Ads" English Project

My son did this project for his English class.  He found ads online for the various fallacies that they discussed in class and he wrote about them.  The writing is underneath and the pictures flip up.  I think he did a great job.  Hopefully this will help another student who may have questions (please don't copy it, just use it as a resource.

Sacrament Visuals (for teaching children)

I made these visuals when I was teaching a Primary lesson on the Sacrament. To learn more about the Sacrament, visit this website.

Teaching about the Bill of Rights, Constitution, and Declaration of Independence

I whipped out these posters when I was subbing in a 4th grade class a while back.  I find that simple visuals like these are very effective.  We also discussed them as a class in more detail but this was an easy way for them to remember each important document.

Worth the Wait - A BYU Pathways College Assignment

My sister-in-law, Michelle, wrote this awesome letter for a project in her BYU Pathways English class. I was really impressed and asked her if I could share it. The assignment involved to write a love letter to an object.


Michelle has enjoyed attending BYU Pathways. She does all the work on-line and once a week she attends a local gathering with other students to discuss coursework. This has allowed her to work toward her college degree while being a stay at home mom. It is affordable (around $65/credit) and convenient. I am so proud of her! Here is a link with more information in case anyone is interested in pursuing their degree.


Worth the Wait 

My Dearest Love, I remember the day we reunited again after nearly 15 years. Seeing you there brought back fond memories of why I missed you, and strong desires to never abandon you again. While basking under the sun, I noticed you were resting on a chair. You looked lonely. I nearly heard your silent call for friendship, companionship, and adventure. I was hesitant to greet you, mainly because I did not want to commit to what you had to offer. However, as the gentle summer wind blew your cover open, I could not deny that our time spent together had always filled my own loneliness, and I remembered how much I had missed going on wild adventures with you. Without further reservation, I picked you up and held you tight to my heart. How could I have left you? Your words, stories, and wisdom had never failed me. I was the one that had failed you! Silently, I cried for your forgiveness. When I finally got brave and picked you up, you gave me butterflies and I was reminded of why I fell deeply in love with you. I was elated to see that you could still help me escape from the daily routine and give me hope and comfort when I needed extra attention. It made me long for more time with you, and I wondered how I could fit you in more often into my life. Why had we stayed away from each other for so long? You surprised me how appealing you had become; you made it so hard to put you down at night. I was even willing to lose a full night of sleep so I could find out what happed at the end of the story. Thank you for changing my life and for stealing me away when I’m having a bad day, or even feeling overwhelmed and need a pick me up. It has been entertaining to visit all these stunning places, solving murders, being inspired, and seeing the girl get her dream guy. You have stolen my heart away as you take me on the journey of a lifetime, and I look forward to being taken away to many more amazing destinations. My love for you grows stronger every day as I find time to spend with you. I love the person I’m rediscovering and I owe it all to you.Love you Forever,Michelle

The 5 Love Languages

Feeling loved is a primary emotional need for all humans.  There are countless poems, letters, stories, books, and songs written about love.

Here's one song that kept running through my mind as I contemplated writing this post -
Everybody.  The chorus repeats, "Everybody, everybody wants to love, everybody, everybody wants to be loved."  So, so true.

In Dr. Gary Chapman's book, "The 5 Love Languages," it says, "Child psychologists affirm that every child has certain basic emotional needs that must be met if he is to be emotionally stable. Among those emotional needs, none is more basic that the need for love and affection, the need to sense that he or she belongs and is wanted.  With an adequate supply of affection, the child will likely develop into a responsible adult.  Without that love, he or she will be emotionally and socially challenged." (You can listen to this book on YouTube).

Dr. Chapman shares a wonderful metaphor to illustrate the importance of feeling loved.  He heard this metaphor from Dr. Ross Campbell who is a psychiatrist who specialized in the treatment of children and adolescents.

Thoughts on Conference Talk - "I Have Given You an Example"

Love this article entitled "I Have Given You an Example" by Elder Richard G. Scott.

After reading it several times, I have been contemplating the many examples I have had in my life that have helped me become a stronger person.

Elder Scott said, "... I have reflected on loved ones whose tender influence helped me find the divinely appointed path that aided my spiritual progression.  At vital times in my life, Father in Heaven blessed me with someone who cared for me enough to help guide my choices in an appropriate direction."

I appreciate those people in my life (and there are many) who have loved me, trusted me, taught me, encouraged, provided questions, shared principles, testified, served me, etc.  I want to be the type of person who can be a positive influence on others and I know the Lord puts people in my path who help me and that I can help.

I am compiling a list of people who have been an example to me and influenced me for good.  This list will keep growing.  I know it is important to see the tender mercies in our life when people teach us things and love us.

By sincerely loving each other, we can help them feel God's love which is the most important thing, right?

3 Questions to Guide Your Lesson Preparation

Every month we give our Primary teachers at church a "Tip & Treat" to help them with teacher training.  This month I decided to focus on Chapter 31 in the manual "Teaching, No Greater Call."

These questions are great for general lesson planning, not just for teaching lessons at church.  They can be used at school, home, work, etc.

Click HERE to get the PDF on GoogleDocs (6 bookmarks per page).

PS For the treat, I am giving each teacher a few donut holes in a small plastic bag with this tag attached to them.  I would have made a treat but I was having a busy weekend and this seemed like an easy solution.  Why add craziness to my schedule if I can do something simple, right?

Click HERE to get the PDF on GoogleDocs for the Donut Holes (12 tags per page).

Wax Museum Report

I am subbing in 5th grade right now and we are introducing a new project tomorrow - The Wax Museum!  Two of my kids have already done this project and my last one is participating this year. 

The students are each assigned a famous American for their project.  They make a poster board with pictures, a stamp, quotes, etc. and also create a five paragraph written report.  This project takes a few weeks to complete.  The grand finale is Wax Museum day where each student dresses up as their famous American and stand in front of their tri-fold poster board display.  Other students, teachers, and parents come and listen to each student talk about themselves as if they were that character.  It is really fun!

I need to explain to the students how to use 3x5 notecards to collect information for their report.  We'll start the researching tomorrow so to make things very clear, I made this handout with details about how to do them exactly.  (I REALLY don't want to explain the same thing over and over and over again).  It will print 2 per page and the kids will label each of their 10 postcards per subject with the appropriate topic and highlighted color.  I also pre-counted the notecards and put them in sandwich ziplocks so I could avoid the chaos of sorting them at school.  When their regular teacher comes back she'll explain how she'd like them to do the introduction and conclusion.  

General Conference Idea - Word Treat Jars

My cute nephew.

My friend posted this fun idea on Facebook and I asked her if I could share it.  I love it!  She has candy in each of these jars with word cards attached to the front of each jar.  Every time a speaker at General Conference says one of these words, the listener gets a candy.  Brilliant!  I've added pictures of friends' and family's application of this idea as well.

I am running out to the store to buy some candy tonight so we can do this in our family. I have teenagers so I will add in some other jars with key words that I'd like them to listen for.  Way to make things fun.

We also take notes using a form that I created a few years ago.  Click HERE to see the form.

By the way, this idea could be altered for other educational purposes. For instance, if your child is learning sight words or certain vocabulary words, you could make jars like this for when they are reading a book.  If someone is concerned about loading their kids up on sugar, they could put healthier snacks in the jars like pretzels, nuts, dried fruit, low-sugar cereal, carrots, etc. (although candy or cash would work much better on my kiddos LOL).

General Conference - Notes Template

I designed this form to take notes for General Conference.  I'd found some other similar ones online, but this one works best for the way I think and take notes.  Feel free to copy and print it if you'd like to.

Euler Paths and Circuits

My son brought home a packet about Euler Paths and Circuits.  My brain was a little rusty in this area and he wasn't that familiar with the Euler concepts, so I did a little research and made him a "study sheet" to help him out (okay, I'll admit that it will also help me out if I have to teach this concept when subbing at school).  I thought I'd share my sheet with you.  Please let me know if you have feedback on how to improve it.

God Customizes Our Curriculum

As we returned to school this past week, I reflected on how unique each student is at school.  As a mother, I realize that my own three children are very different from each other and have diverse needs emotionally, physically, spiritually, socially, and scholastically.  

The same goes in the classroom.  I am not a full-time teacher.  I substitute teach in classes ranging from preschool to high school, from gifted education courses to special education.  I have literally taught a thousand different children over the past few years.  Each child is important and unique with totally different needs.  It is challenging for an educator to meet all these different needs since teachers have limited time and resources, and big classes to take responsibility for.  I watch the full-time teachers patiently and lovingly struggle to attempt to accomplish this task.

On a different note, I also had been reflecting on how Heavenly Father is the master at everything.  He is the master doctor, the master scientist, the master engineer, the master poet, the master geologist, the master therapist.... well you get the idea.  When I have a question about something, about anything, I can ask Him for help because He knows the answers.  

Then a friend emailed me this perfect quote and it all clicked in my mind. 

“The realities are that God loves us and, loving us, has placed us here to cope with challenges which he will place before us. I'm not sure we can always understand the implications of his love, because his love will call us at times to do things we may wonder about, and we may be confronted with circumstances we would rather not face. I believe with all my heart that because God loves us there are some particularized challenges that he will deliver to each of us. He will customize the curriculum for each of us in order to teach us the things we most need to know. He will set before us in life what we need, not always what we like. And this will require us to accept with all our hearts--particularly your generation--the truth that there is divine design in each of our lives and that you have rendezvous to keep, individually and collectively.”  (From "But for a Small Moment,"  NEAL A. MAXWELL,  BYU,  1 September 1974.)

I realized that one of God's most important roles is that of MASTER TEACHER.  He sent us to earth to learn.  So earth life is like school.  We didn't obtain physical bodies and come to earth to just sit around and lazily breeze through life.  We came here to LEARN.

As a master teacher, it only makes sense that Heavenly Father would have prepared perfect individualized education plans for each of us.  He CUSTOMIZED THE CURRICULUM for each of his children because he loves us.  

We will struggle to learn lessons.  We will have challenging tests.  We will feel excited when we have "ah ha moments."  We will have aides (family, friends, prophets, and church leaders) to give us advice and guidance.  We will take required courses that we didn't want to register for.  We may have classmates that we need to learn to get along with.  We have been given instruction manuals and reference books (the scriptures) to help us navigate our educational process.  We have a tutor (the Holy Ghost) to help us remember things and feel peaceful through the process.

He is the most perfect and caring teacher that ever was and His lesson plans are the best because He sees the eternal picture.

Now when I have challenges, I will remember that these are part of my customized curriculum.  And as I look at all the sweet (and sometimes sassy) students that I teach, I will remember how much each Child of God is loved and that if I have questions about how to help one of them, I can ask the master teacher for help.

Baptism - One Page Information Sheet

I found this in this Friend magazine article.  It is a simple summary for young children to better understand baptism.

Book Reviews - Suggested Reading for 4th and 5th ALP Classes

I was asked to review the curriculum for the 4th and 5th grade self-contained gifted classrooms in our school district.  Here's a list of suggested books that I have collected information on.  I have only read a handful of these books myself so I am not necessarily providing my own opinions but rather just posting info and links I have found online.  Many of the books seem to be biographical (or autobiographical), historical fiction or realistic fiction.  Many also deal with social and cultural issues.  The teachers are not required to include these books - they are suggestions.

This post is long so read on if interested...

Tips for Effective Scripture Study

We had a great Stake Conference this weekend and I took a ton of notes because I wanted to remember everything.  One of our Stake Presidency members, who is also a seminary teacher, taught us how to more effectively study the scriptures.  I made this handout based on his talk (not his exact words, but it is what I learned from it).  We are trying to use these tips as we study the scriptures personally and as a family.

The Wacky World of English Pronunciation

This shows the craziness of our English language.  Click HERE to read this awesome poem.  (I know this one is super small but you can copy and enlarge it if you want to see it or just click on the link)

Object Lesson - How The Book of Mormon was originally printed

I am very spatially challenged so this was a good thing for me to try.  This object lesson shows the printing method for The Book of Mormon in the olden days.  It could also show how other book were printed in that time frame of the 1800's.


This is directly taken from lds.org (see link at end of post):

Have each child fold a piece of paper into eight sections (see illustration). Then have the children unfold their papers and write numbers on each side as illustrated:

Make sure the children write 15 on the back of 16 and 10 on the back of 9.

Have the children refold their papers: first so that 14 and 15 touch; then so that 12 and 13 touch; and finally so that 8 and 9 touch. Each paper should look like a small book, with 1 on the front and 16 on the back. With scissors or a paper knife, cut the top and right edges of the pages so that they open like a book. Have the children turn the pages so they can see that the numbers are in the right order. (Practice this activity before class so you can show the children how to do it.)

Explain to the children that this is the way the pages of the Book of Mormon were printed: pages were arranged in a certain order and then printed on one large piece of paper. The large piece of paper was then folded and trimmed so that all the pages were in the right order. Many of these small “books” were then combined to make the Book of Mormon. Some books are still printed today using this process.

I teach the younger kids at church (age 8) so I designed my own form so that the kids could just fold the paper and cut.  I thought it would be too challenging for them to have to figure out how to write all the numbers in the right places.  Here are my pages below.  If you print them out, be sure to do them double sided and have the right pages match up on the back.  Believe it or not this was a challenge for me.  I'm glad my children inherited their dad's spatial skills and not mine.

Front side:

Back side:

Click HERE to read the Primary lesson that goes with this object lesson.

Math - Metric Conversion Trick

When I was subbing in 6th grade I was able to teach a fun lesson about metric conversions.   We read a story and introduced a sentence to help students remember the order of the metric units.  The original story was a little different than the one below.  It used the sentence "King Henry Does Usually Drink Chocolate Milk," but the students and I decided that was a boring sentence and we preferred the more interesting one that read, "King Henry Died Unusually Drinking Chocolate Milk."  So I edited the story to fit our memorization tool sentence.  Then when I subbed in 4th grade and taught the same lesson, I decided to make this detailed chart which is a mix from the math textbook and things I've learned from other teachers.

Click HERE to go to Google Drive and print the PDF file. (Note, I do not allow people to access the PDF for editing)

Click HERE to access this chart in Google Slides for editing purposes.  PLEASE MAKE YOUR OWN COPY BEFORE EDITING IT.

The arrows at the bottom of the chart show kids that you DIVIDE by ten when you are converting toward the larger units (I say "toward the giant") and that you MULTIPLY by ten when you are converting toward the smaller units (I say "toward the tiny bug").  I gave each student a copy of this chart.  The giant and tiny bug references are from the story listed at the end of this post.

Another trick to show the kids when to multiply or divide by ten involves using your arms.  True, I probably looked like a crazy person teaching the kids, but it really worked.  When you are converting from the smaller units to the larger units, you stick your arms out wide (like you are stretching bigger).  The outstretched arms look like a division symbol.  When you are converting from larger units to smaller units, you cross your arms in front of you putting one arm on each shoulder so that it looks like an "x" for multiplication.  For each square you move in whichever direction you will either multiply or divide by 10.  I tell them that 10 is the magic metric number.  I put the chart up on the smartboard/doc cam and literally did the arm motions and walked back and front of it to show kids how to do it.

The following story about Metric Conversion may help students understand how to convert between the different metric units.  I had personally always struggled with metric conversions (probably from lack of interest and from lack of a clear explanation from my teachers when I was young).  This story and technique clicked in my brain and I TOTALLY get it now, as did the kids in the class.  So I had to share.

King Henry's Story

Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a king who loved chocolate milk. His name was King Henry.

Throughout his kingdom, King Henry made sure that all of the cows were fed great supplies of chocolate to continue to provide him with his beloved chocolate milk drink.

King Henry drank chocolate milk with his breakfast. He drank chocolate milk with his lunch. He drank chocolate milk with his dinner. He even drank chocolate milk for his bedtime snack. King Henry drank chocolate milk by the liters!

King Henry wanted all living creatures in his kingdom to enjoy chocolate milk as much as he enjoyed chocolate milk. However, a liter was not the best serving size for every creature. The Royal Carpenter was called for and the command was given for new serving vessels to be created to fit every creature in the kingdom.

For the creatures smaller than the king, the Royal Carpenter designed deciliters that were 1/10th the size of a liter, centiliters that were 1/100th the size of a liter, and milliliters that were 1/1000th the size of a liter. The milliliters were just right for the Royal Beetles and Bugs of the kingdom.