Wow. That was over fast! It's always amazing to me how fast Seminary seems to go. The Freshmen are settling in, and they all commented during class today. Having 16 isn't much different than 12 so far, but I suspect I haven't gotten their full blown craziness yet. My first absence was today. I think he skipped because he knew we were writing devotional talks. I will have to think about how to handle that. I think he is capable of speaking, but he's afraid......

Today was a pretty good lesson, I think. Probably the best so far. It started off a little rocky because some students didn't have materials ready to go. Some have taken binders home and forgotten them, and others didn't have everything they needed (my fault). So after a few minutes of fumbling, we finally got going. The topic was "Talks That Rock". The kids listed things they like in talks. This was a pretty good discussion, and we even talked about the responsibility of the audience during a talk. This didn't happen in our branch (too small to get away with it, I guess), but some of the kids will make faces at each other to try to mess their friends up. We talked about how to sit up and look at the speaker and smile and nod your head. We even had a short discussion on the importance of having a plan -- no faking it. At the end I took one of my skeptic freshman's topics and we wrote a 2 minute talk based on his scripture mastery passage. Then I let them all write their own talk. We didn't get to the other talks because I let the discussion go a little long. The clock on my wall is slow, and on top of it I keep forgetting that we are letting out at 6:50 instead of 7:00 (though this was the last day of that).

I will figure out a time that they can work on their talks a little more. I made a tracking sheet so that I can see who has spoken and on what.

I have had one girl pass of FOUR, yes FOUR, scripture mastery passages. That girl is amazing. The rest of the class passed off John 14:15 yesterday.

I also made a wall sized map from Map 11 in the study helps to help my students visualize Christ's ministry a little better. I made a tiny cutout of Christ with an arrow and laminated it that we will move around. We may write on the map, too, so that we know what happened where when we come back to that area later.

Since I already have kids passing off scripture mastery passages, I had to make a scripture mastery chart. This year I put the chapter and verse on a tiny "Death Star", keeping with our scripture Jedi theme.
You can get my death star poster or download the graphic and make your own here: http://www.mormonshare.com/lds-clipart/death-star-themed-scripture-maste... I tried to take a couple of hours and write my lessons yesterday. I got partway done, but I was having trouble. I'm not sure if it's that I'm out of practice or that my head was foggy from this cold. Regardless, I will have to spend a few hours finishing up lessons today.

It's been a good first week. I am excited to get into the scriptures on Monday.