Latter-day Village Square

The Primary monthly theme poster for July 2007 is now online. The theme is, My family can follow Jesus Christ. The portrait depicts the wonderful Davila family - Herbert, Fatima, Paul, Natalie and Matthew. They live in my ward and were happy to help out. Serene did another fine job with the portrait. We will work together to finish up the portraits for this year - I as chief toddler watcher while Serene draws! It is a challenge for a young mother to set up an art studio in a tiny apartment with three children under the age of three, so I will get some Granny-practice. I WISH Serene was my daughter, my boys just didn’t jump on the chance - they all grew up together. Anyway - you can print out the portrait, theme text and scripture text - three pages, and display them together in the Primary room. Also included are mini-posters, four per page, to hand out to the children. Bookmarks can also be found, 8 per page, that have the portrait, theme and scripture text. This makes a great incentive for memorizing the monthly scripture.

MarGene von Forell is a long time seminary teacher who adds a wealth of resources to her lesson plans. As MarGene is an active teacher, her lesson plans coincide with the official teaching manuals; however, she infuses them with a wealth of resources from her own sources and materials from her father, a long time CES seminary/institute teacher & director.

Many of our seminary subscribers give high praise to MarGene’s contributions. Out of dozens of ideas, games, quotes, or stories she provides per lesson, perhaps just one resonates with a particular teacher, as the spirit guides, adding a great deal to the teaching experience.

How do we add her lessons to the filing cabinet?

1. Review provided MS Word document for needed references or changes.
2. Add any new terms or phrases to the filing cabinet glossary. For Jewish/Hebrew info, we consult http://www.jewfaq.org/glossary.htm for their simple, concise descriptions.
3. Save the Word document in RTF format, so it can be used by those using MS Word, WordPerfect, or MACs. Note: if a document contains large graphics, the RTF format cannot be used as the file size is too large.
4. Save the document in PDF format. This preserves the original format and allows those without some of these expensive programs to print and use these resources in the classroom. NOTE: this year we will be converting more of MarGene’s images into PDF documents. Not everyone knows how to use image editing programs so these can printed directly using the PDF directly using the free Adobe Acrobat reader.
5. Convert the document to HTML format, preferred for displaying in the filing cabinet. MarGene uses a unique outlining style in her docs, these have to be converted to usable HTML numbering formats.
6. Upload the HTML article and attachments to the filing cabinet. NOTE: we also add selected articles to the Sampler Knowledgebase, making the resource available to our free membership subscribers.

We use a similar process for adding content to our other knowledgebases, whether the content is provided directly or we gather if from other sources.

We started putting one Village Download Depot Club collection up at a time in June - so people could get one collection when they do a free one week trial - and we switched from the Girl’s Camp Collection to the Family Reunion Collection on Friday.

Do you have a reunion planned or have you got photos from a recent reunion to scrap? This is a great lds clipart collection for either purpose! This is a collection I designed myself. I had some really pretty fabric that I thought would make a nice quilt like project, and I decided to use it for the collection. This was a fun project and I learned some new techniques while doing it. I hope you will find many uses for these designs. Club members should download this now - and if you are not a Club Member - you can join today! The font for this collection is a character set with the letters made out of the fabric - very fun!

It’s a known fact that using music is an easy and very effective way to memorize text. Many seminary teachers use these musical products to help their students commit the SM verses to memory. Music can help many overcome the difficult task of learning scriptures by rote. Play the CD as prelude music prior to class beginning, when introducing a new mastery verse, or anytime your class needs a pick-me-up.

We carry two different flavors of Old Testament music products, both of which can provide an easy way to get your seminary students engaged in learning.

LDS Scripture Rock Old Testament - Jason Beaird’s DC Rock (not really hard rock, more like Top 40) was VERY popular last year.Now for this year Jason improved his innovative ‘rock’ scripture mastery songs with better musicians and vocalists, giving them a more polished, professional sound. The Old Testament version is available in a music CD, or combination CD/DVD with Karaoke style words and music that play on a computer or DVD player. Tune samples are available on the product page.

Sing the Scriptures Old Testament - Learning the Old Testament mastery verses is a snap using the creative tunes on this popular CD, written by renowned Christian and children’s singer-songwriter Jennifer Wilson. Long after the seminary year is complete, the catchy tunes and verses will remain in your students’ memory. Tune samples are also available on the Sing The Scriptures Old Testament page.