Doctrine and Covenants 55:4 speaks of “the work of printing, and of selecting and writing books for schools in this church, that little children also may receive instruction before me as is pleasing unto me” (Doctrine and Covenants 55:4, emphasis added). While this revelation has a specific context, I believe the idea of helping little children receive gospel instruction has general application for all of us.
Recently, Lani and I made this video about teaching little children. We wanted to share a few additional resources for teaching young children here.
- Line Upon Line–great YouTube Come Follow Me series for kids. Sometimes our younger kids want to watch the episodes twice.
- Illustrated Scripture Stories–These church-produced videos are so good. My parents would play the audio (from an earlier version) of these when I went to bed as a child and that’s how I learned the basics of the Book of Mormon. Note that they are available for each of the standard works–highly recommended. Side note–because these are simple, and available in languages besides English they are great for learning the gospel in additional languages.
- The Latter Day Kids YouTube Channel–Jared and Marcie Austin have done incredible work in creating quality videos for kids and making them freely available on YouTube.
- While Lani herself wouldn’t come out and publicly recommend her book Celebrate Sunday, I will! It’s full of great nuggets (also available for half price here and as a cheap e-book here).
As we shared in our video, these words from President Henry B. Eyring are so important to remember when we think of teaching little children:
“A wise parent would never miss a chance to gather children together to learn of the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Such moments are so rare in comparison with the efforts of the enemy. For every hour the power of doctrine is introduced into a child’s life, there may be hundreds of hours of messages and images denying or ignoring the saving truths.
“The question should not be whether we are too tired to prepare to teach doctrine or whether it wouldn’t be better to draw a child closer by just having fun or whether the child isn’t beginning to think that we preach too much. The question must be, “With so little time and so few opportunities, what words of doctrine from me will fortify them against the attacks on their faith which are sure to come?” The words you speak today may be the ones they remember. And today will soon be gone.”
