This weekend, our family bought the movie Forever Strong. It’s an inspirational sports movie that was filmed in Salt Lake City. It’s a true story about a talented but troubled high school rugby player who loses his position as the star of an Arizona rugby team when he is sentenced to a boys’ juvenile detention center in Salt Lake City. He ends up playing for Salt Lake’s notable Highland High School rugby team in the national championships – against his old team, which is coached by his father. The story has a strong message about loyalty to family and the team, respect and honor, rising above our mistakes, and service to others. Be sure to watch the additional features on the DVD to learn the signifance of the Haka dance. Deseret Book offers a free discussion guide you can download that gives tips in discussing the movie with your family.
There is also an important substory about Highland’s rugby coach. Larry Gelwix was a seminary teacher at Highland High and an assistant football coach in the fall, a wrestling coach in the winter, and a rugby coach in the spring. He has coached Highland’s powerhouse rugby team for 33 of his 58 years of life. In the past 24 years, Highland has won the national championship 18 times, finished second five times, and third once. They are the most decorated high school rugby program in the USA. You can read more about Gelwix’s story on MormonTimes.com, watch a video about Gelwix, or read an interview with Gelwix to learn what influenced him and how he’s inspired so many young men to achieve and serve missions. On top of that, Larry Gelwix was one of the principal owners of Morris Travel, CEO of WinAir Airlines, and is the “Getwway Guru” of Columbus Travel.
What’s your favorite family movie that teaches good values?
The Friend magazine has launched four new matching games for children: Scripture Stories, Apostles and Prophets, Latter-day Prophets, and Temples. They can be accessed from the “Play Games” section on the home page of the online Friend magazine at friend.lds.org.
by Larry Richman, Posted Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
Do your kids use the Internet? What sites do they visit? Do you ever wish you knew of a site that they would enjoy and you’d feel is worth their time and know it’s safe? The Church recently updated the Friend magazine Web site at friend.lds.org for this reason. Through fun, interactive games, stories, and activities, your children will enjoy themselves and learn more about living the gospel. Some of the recent updates include:
Games and activities with some animation
Online coloring pages with children’s songs playing in the background
by Larry Richman, Posted Friday, December 12th, 2008
ClearPlay is a DVD player that enables your family to watch movies, with the violence, sex, language, and other objectionable content filtered out. Each DVD movie has a custom filter created just for that movie. You can even choose which types of content are removed with customizable filter settings.
Has your family tried filtered movies? What was your experience? What do you think of this approach to creating family-friendly entertainment?
Today, I learned about BoMToons (pronounced “boom-toons”), a site created by some BYU students with cartoons and games about the Book of Mormon.
Some of the games involve battling Mormon characters and others are word games. You can even race your missionary companion on a bike. The site gets about 900 visitors a day and includes some interesting guest features submitted by users. The cartoons remind me of the HomestarRunner cartoons that are so popular among teenagers nowadays.
How helpful do you think sites like this are to parents? Are these good, Sunday activities for kids or do they encourage more mindless time on the Internet? What suggestions do you have for creators of this type of content?
What do you think is the role of the Church in creating games and activities like this? The online Friend magazine has begun to provide coloring pages, videos, and activities. Would you like to see more of this? What suggestions do you have to make it more effective?
by David Nielson, Posted Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
I have always believed that movies (and storytelling in general) can be a powerful force for good by teaching correct principles in an engaging manner. I recently came across a fun list on UnSpun by Amazon called Best Positive/Uplifting Movies Ever. The community there has ranked their favorite uplifting movies. The top five are:
Rocky
Rudy
It’s a Wonderful Life
Forest Gump
The Pursuit of Happyness
Seeing this list made me want to create my own personal list of movies and books that teach principles that my family could benefit from. Children and youth, in particular, often seem to learn things best by watching a film or hearing a story.
As a family, we sometimes watch a movie or TV show together and then have a discussion afterward about what we learned from the story. We will point out gospel principles that are embedded in the story–such as honesty, loyalty, courage, etc. Unfortunately, this drives our teenage son crazy. He will say things like, “Can’t we just watch a movie without ‘likening it to the scriptures?’” Despite his protests, I believe he appreciates these family discussions more than he lets on because I have caught him sharing the same insights we have talked about with others.
Sometimes, movies can have a powerful therapeutic effect on children. One of my favorite movies is Bridge to Teribithia. Although marketed (almost deceptively) as a fantasy movie, this is actually a powerful story about the death of a loved one and dealing with the guilt that comes with such a tragic event. My children lost their mother in 2005 and this movie provided an excellent opportunity to get them to open up and talk about their own feelings of loss and guilt.
What movies would you place on your list of the Best Positive/Uplifting Movies Ever or use to teach gospel principles to your children?
by Larry Richman, Posted Thursday, August 28th, 2008
The Church has announced a new manual for Primary nursery classes titled Behold Your Little Ones. In addition, this manual has been designed to be a great resource to help parents teach basic gospel doctrines to small children.
Each lesson contains activities that help children HEAR, SEE, SING, DO a physical activity, andVERBALIZE the doctrine of the lesson. Each lesson has two pages of visuals (a color picture and a line drawing) to visually reinforce the principles taught. Each page also has tips on how to teach the lesson successfully. Read pages 2-4 of the manual for more details about the features of the manual.
This manual will be translated into the following 25 languages: Cebuano, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, English Braille, Fijian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Tongan, and Ukrainian.
It will also be available in audio format in the following 10 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish.
A notice about the manual has been sent to English-speaking units, and wards/branches will receive one copy automatically by August 29th. Units can order more copies on the annual ward/branch order. Individuals can order their own copy anytime at LDSCatalog.com.
by Larry Richman, Posted Friday, August 15th, 2008
Ever want a PG-rated YouTube? Check out the video sharing community ItsAGoodDay.org. All their videos are filtered by a human eye to ensure that the site will be “a place where visitors may come to be uplifted, inspired, motivated and where they will feel comfortable with all the content” contained on the site.
The site also allows you to contribute videos, inspirational stories, quotes, and pictures. You can create family Web sites to share pictures, blogs, journal entries, and videos.
by Larry Richman, Posted Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
The New Era magazine has begun posting online some of the comics from its humor section, The Extra Smile. You can find them on the New Era’s home page.
Thanks to the MormonMagz blog for pointing this out.
by Larry Richman, Posted Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
The Friend has posted a gallery of its recent coloring pages, arranged by topic. This will be a welcomed resource for Primary leaders and teachers, as well as parents looking for activities for their children to do during sacrament meeting, stake conference, general conference, or a long drive.
Thanks to the MormonMagz blog for pointing this out.
The True to the Faith booklet is an excellent resource for youth and adults. This Church publication takes a topic-by-topic approach with simple explanations of gospel subjects. It was designed to be especially mindful of youth, young single adults, and new converts. The 190-page booklet contains approximately 170 entries on topics listed alphabetically from Aaronic Priesthood to Zion. In addition to teaching gospel principles in a simple yet inspiring way, each entry also contains scriptural references for further study of any topic. In the introduction, the First Presidency states that the underlying purpose of the publication is to help all readers strengthen their efforts “to draw near to the Savior and follow His example.”
In 2004, they were sent to each ward with instructions to provide them to all youth and new converts. As a bishop, I make sure that every new young woman and young man in my ward receives a copy of the booklet.
True to the Faith is available online in text and PDF formats or you can order a printed copy for US$2.00 at LDSCatalog.com. The book is published in 46 languages.
by Larry Richman, Posted Thursday, July 24th, 2008
A group of members from a Sunday School class in Connecticut have created several video animations of Old Testament stories. The videos include young people telling their versions of Old Testament Stories along with animations. These are very clever, and some are hilarious.
They invited the public and their friends to a premiere screening of the films at a real movie theater, complete with a modest red carpet. “We ate popcorn and viewed our movies on the big screen. These young people will never forget making these stories. Which was part of our plan. When you produce, direct and star in stories from the scriptures, you never forget the message…even if it is a little bit different from the official version.”
This video on YouTube has been viewed nearly 20,000 times and will continue to gain over 1,000 views per day if it continues at #1. As the first thing that people find when searching for the Church on YouTube, this is a great missionary opportunity. Note the following comment that was posted about the video clip:
“I must say, what Holland is saying here makes incredible sense and something about this video really strikes a cord with me in a way that nothing else ever has. I’ve been to many churches and have heard many sermons, and if they all use the Bible I can’t see how they all come out so different. If this Book of Mormon is indeed an addition to his word, then God sure knows what he’s doing to correct where we’ve been going wrong with Christianity.”
Having positive videos at the top of the search results for “Mormon” is a nice change, since in the past many of the top search results were videos critical of the Church.
This weekend, our family bought the movie Forever Strong. It’s an inspirational sports movie that was filmed in Salt Lake City. It’s a true story about a talented but troubled high school rugby player who loses his position as the star of an Arizona rugby team when he is sentenced to a boys’ juvenile detention center in Salt Lake City. He ends up playing for Salt Lake’s notable Highland High School rugby team in the national championships – against his old team, which is coached by his father. The story has a strong message about loyalty to family and the team, respect and honor, rising above our mistakes, and service to others. Be sure to watch the additional features on the DVD to learn the signifance of the Haka dance. Deseret Book offers a free discussion guide you can download that gives tips in discussing the movie with your family.
There is also an important substory about Highland’s rugby coach. Larry Gelwix was a seminary teacher at Highland High and an assistant football coach in the fall, a wrestling coach in the winter, and a rugby coach in the spring. He has coached Highland’s powerhouse rugby team for 33 of his 58 years of life. In the past 24 years, Highland has won the national championship 18 times, finished second five times, and third once. They are the most decorated high school rugby program in the USA. You can read more about Gelwix’s story on MormonTimes.com, watch a video about Gelwix, or read an interview with Gelwix to learn what influenced him and how he’s inspired so many young men to achieve and serve missions. On top of that, Larry Gelwix was one of the principal owners of Morris Travel, CEO of WinAir Airlines, and is the “Getwway Guru” of Columbus Travel.
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