Fun Food: Turtle Burgers!

An old friend just sent me this fun, new twist on how to serve burgers. Just take handmade ground beef (or turkey) patties, top them with sharp cheddar cheese, and wrap them in a bacon weave. Then add hotdogs as the heads, legs (with slits for toes so they’ll curl) and tail.

Place the Turtle Burgers on an oven rack, covered loosely with foil, and bake for 20-30 minutes at 400 degrees. A little crispy, not too crunchy ... just how a turtle should be, no?

Quarterly Activity: Follow the Prophet!

With “Follow the Prophet” as one of the songs we’re focusing on in Primary this year, I felt impressed that we should have a Quarterly Activity on the subject. The children were struggling to learn all the verses of the song, so I thought that bringing the song to life might help.

I work with an amazing group of women with marvelous ideas and sweet spirits, so the plan jelled quickly. We decided to focus on both modern and ancient prophets.

Our gathering activity was musical chairs to the tune of “Latter-day Prophets” – with a twist. As each child was out of the game, they were given a picture of a latter-day prophet to be used in the next activity, which was a quick telling of what each prophet was most known for. Once all of the children were “out,” they were invited one-by-one to put their picture on the chalkboard while my counselor told them a little about their prophet’s picture and added a printed note below each. The instruction would be used later in a matching game.

We then invited the children to walk in the footsteps of the prophets by following Jonah. I invited my son (because his favorite prophet is Jonah) to lead the other children to the back of the cultural hall, where we dressed him in a simple prophet costume and opened the door to the hallway, revealing an 8’ long whale for the children to crawl through to start their “Follow the Prophet” adventure.

As the children exited the whale, they found footprints with pictures of modern and ancient prophets leading them into one of the Primary classrooms. Upon entering, they found our recreation of the Garden of Eden and Adam’s prophet costume:  a garland of flowers and a child’s hoe. (Hey – it’s what we had on hand!) Once they identified who the prophet was, we sang that verse of the song. Meanwhile, one of the parents picked up all the footprints and arranged them through the hallway to the next room. “Adam” led the children this time.

Weeding Little Boys

My husband, Mike, and I were talking about his plans for the day and he mentioned taking our then five-year-old son, Nick, for a ride on the lawn mower. I said, “Great idea! The lawn needs mowing anyway.” He said no, it didn’t, so I couldn’t help but point out that the grass was knee high. Mike explained that you don’t mow the lawn for the first time in the spring until you’ve weeded it first to prevent the weeds from being flung far and wide. Of course, he said, you have to weed it again towards the fall when the weeds begin to return ...

Which got me to thinking. 

Our son was born with several challenges that we had been fortunate to have diagnosed early on, and he’d been receiving special education at the local public school since he was two. At that time we were preparing to take Nick out of Pre-K in the public school system and enroll him in a private school for Kindergarten because we didn’t want him influenced by some of the undesirable behavior we saw in some of the children in the local public school. In effect we were planning to “weed” the bad influences from his life early on so he could grow to his greatest potential. And so we transferred him to what we’d been told was a wonderful Christian school. 

But it wasn’t.

Within a matter of days, my sweet little boy began to change. He was in trouble at school on a daily basis, which meant he was in more trouble at home, and we had absolutely no idea why he had suddenly become a sullen, angry, mean child. Among his many challenges, he was at that point still mostly non-verbal; so we couldn’t just ask what was wrong and discuss it with him.

The bad behavior progressed exponentially until one day when I happened to linger behind for a few minutes after bringing him to school. What I observed broke my heart. Because of his disabilities, my sweet son had been singled out for ridicule and torment by the other children with the full knowledge and implied consent of the teacher who, when told what I had observed, just shrugged her shoulders, threw up her hands and smiled at me.