(Back to OT Junior Seminary overview)
Old Testament Lesson 5: The Fall
To Prepare: Read Moses 4. Be prepared to help children understand the unfamiliar terms below; print off one copy of the activity pamphlet. If you’re feeling ambitious, cut apart the words on page 4 before time to teach.
NEW! I made a smaller version for notebooking that is only 2 pages.
Beguile: Deceive, lie to
Thou beholdest: You see
Full Version
Notebooking Version
To Teach: Begin with a prayer. Slowly read Moses 4:6-13 together, helping the children understand what is happening in the story. We emphasized that Satan thought he was being clever and sneaky, but he didn’t know all of God’s plan.
Next, read Moses 4:14-19. I chose to summarize and explain the aftermath (v. 20-32) rather than reading it, and then we moved on to the activity.
If you like, have the children color the tree and the pieces of fruit. Hang them up with one piece of fruit on each side, and then help children sort the consequences and tape or glue them to the correct papers. By this point, my kids were pretty easily able to figure out which went where, although they needed some help with the definition of “progress” (I used ‘grow, and change, and get better.’)
We took time afterward to talk more in depth about why it was so important that Adam and Eve eat the fruit. I asked my boys what could make it worth sadness and pain and death and we talked about how children were necessary for us to get our chance to follow the Plan, and how without the Fall Adam and Eve could never grow or move forward. Then we talked about why God would tell Adam not to eat the fruit if it was so important. Moses 3:17 and 2 Nephi 2:25 are good verses to read in this conversation; basically we boiled it down to the fact that God would not force Adam and Eve into a life of death and pain. They had to willingly choose mortality for the Plan to move forward.
by 
