Odd One Out: Teaching Younger Kids "The Books in the Book of Mormon"

Inspecting pictures to find the odd one out This simple activity was a definite hit in my Junior Primary last week. We're learning "The Books in the Book of Mormon," and over the past few weeks I've already used several physical activities. This time, I wanted to tap into the visual learning style, but I needed to find something simple enough for my brand-new Sunbeams.  Odd One Out is the result. Prep Work Prep work consists only of gathering pictures.  I used pictures from the old Gospel Art Kit, the Primary 1 manual, and some I ordered from the lds.org store.  The Gospel Art Book would also be a good source, as well as your meetinghouse library.  I chose 16 pictures total:  12 of Book of Mormon scenes and 4 of NOT Book of Mormon scenes.  The 4 NOT Book of Mormon pictures that I chose were some birds, a fish, President Monson, and Noah's ark.  I separated the pictures into sets:  3 Book of Mormon pictures with 1 NOT picture. I made sure the Noah's ark picture would be in the last set I used. Presentation Place one set of 4 pictures (3 Book of Mormon scenes with 1 NOT) on the board for the children to see. Ask the children not to say anything yet, but to see if they can figure out which picture is not from The Book of Mormon before you finish singing the song.  Start right into singing "The Books in the Book of Mormon."   When you're done singing the song once, remind them again not to say anything (you have new Sunbeams in your ward, too, right?!), but ask them to give you a sign if they know which picture is the odd one out.  Raising hands gets boring, so I had them give a different sign each time through, which related to the odd picture in some way. For the birds, for example, we used a thumb and forefinger to mimic a bird beak.   Ask for one child to point out the odd picture.  If you like, you can briefly describe the stories from each of the Book of Mormon scenes.  Then take down this set of pictures and put up the next set.  Repeat for this set and the next.  Before the last set, tell your older children that you'll be trickier on this last one, as all the pictures will be scripture stories, but one will be from a different book of scripture than The Book of Mormon.  If the children were starting to lose interest, this added challenge will bring them back in.

This activity went over so well that I'll be bringing it into my Senior Primary, as well, but using tricky pictures for the odd one out every time. :)

Happy singing!

Looking for more?  This would be an excellent activity to use when taking music into a less active child's home.  Or, check out Puzzle Pictures for another engaging visual activity.