Lion King and Life's Cycle
by Anjella Hacking / ga08142007


 

Click here for Sunshine and quote

For this lesson I switched gears a bit. Instead of the water and evaporation cycle I played a few seconds of Disney's "The Lion King". We watched the part where it talked about the circle of Life. The antelope ate the grass, the lions ate the antelope and when the lions died their bodies returned to the Earth and became part of the grass, and the cycle began again. (It is 10 minutes in to the movie in case you wondering.) I made pictures for each part of the cycle.  I posted the pictures, one at a time, on the chalk board and reviewed the cycle/circle of life from the "Lion King" video as I put them up. I drew the arrows that connected the cycle as we went along too.

For the handout I got some tiny clay pots and put some funky long grass in them. I then made a cut out a sun with a quote on the back, attached the sun to a skewer/kabob stick, and stuck it in the grass. The  quote said:

"The testimony you have today will not be the testimony if tomorrow.  Your testimony is either going to grow and grow until it becomes as the brightness as the sun, or it is going to diminish to nothing, depending on what you do about it. -Harold B. Lee"

The girls really liked the long grass because they could trim the grass themselves with scissors and they could be artistic. So they might hold on to the handout for a bit!

I also started the lesson with some thing fun. I brought a ball of yarn and I asked the girls to cut off several long strands and tie them together making them strong and fortifying them.

I talked to one of the girls before class and asked her to do the opposite of what I said and to basically be a little stinker. She was mumbling things like, "This is so dumb, why do we have to do this??" rolling her eyes and the whole bit.

She was so convincing, at one point I had to turn around because I was laughing to my self. The other girls were wondering what the heck was going on with her. Anyway I handed her one single string, which we agreed ahead of time she would fray, tie a couple of weak knots in etc.

After a time I asked the one (disobedient) girl how it was going. I asked her to bring me her string and we tied it to a bucket and hung the bucket over the door. Then I asked her what some of the trials were in her life.

For every trial we picked up a rock and placed it in the bucket. It wasn't long before the string broke and the bucket of rocks fell to the ground.

I then asked the rest of the class to bring me their yarn and tied it to the bucket. We went through some of the classes' trials, homework, school, family, sports, etc. again placing a rock in the bucket for each trial. This time the bucket held all the rocks and was still
holding strong.

I then asked the group what was wrong with the first piece of yarn.  Pointing out that she disobeyed what I asked her to do...her string (representing her testimony) became weak and it broke under the weight of her trials. Where the group that obeyed, their yarn/testimony
stayed strong through all their trials.  I then played the Lion King movie and put up pictures for the cycle.