The Law of Consecration Object Lesson

An activity or object lesson that can be used for a lesson on the Law of Consecration.

law of consecration, tithes and fast offerings, teaching the law of consecration, lds, object lesson, come follow me

When doing a lesson in Gospel Doctrine on the Law of Consecration, I found a game by Melanie Day posted on Sugardoodle that I adapted and made into more of an activity/object lesson.

I printed out her cards that had images of food, clothes, time, books, talents and toys on them. I printed 6 cards of each (e.g. 6 food, 6 clothes, 6 time, 6 books, 6 talents, and 6 toys) I also had them laminated.

*laminating is optional, but if you do not laminate them, then I suggest printing them off on cardstock so they are more durable. Home laminators & color printers work well for this project or you can take them to your local print shop.

I mixed up the cards and then I invited a group of 6 people to come up. I divided up all of the cards amongst them unevenly, giving each person a different amount of cards. (I made sure a couple of people had a lot of cards while others had only one or two.)

Then I explained:

Each of you has a card or cards in your hand. The cards contain pictures of food, clothes, time, books, talents and toys. Some of you may have duplicate cards, such as 3 food cards, but not have any of another card. As a team, you are to work together and sort out all of the cards to where everyone ends up with 1 of each kind of card (e.g. 1 food, 1 clothes, etc…) No one can have a duplicate card and no one can be without a card. So in the end, you will each end up with a total of 6 cards, 1 of each thing. Understand?

Your goal is to see if you can accomplish this task in 60 seconds or less. The only thing you cannot do is set the cards down on the ground or on the table. You have to always be holding them.

Are you ready? Get set, …GO!!!

*The timer is for fun and to see how fast they can do it. If it’s not accomplished in exactly 60 seconds, let them continue until it is finished.

I then asked the following questions to the individuals who did the activity:

“What did each of you start out with?”

“What did everyone end up with?”

“How did it feel to work together and reach your goal of everyone receiving the same amount of everything?”

I then excused my volunteers to go sit down and said to the class:

“My volunteers that were up here probably didn’t even realize it, but they were teaching all of us a basic lesson in the Law of Consecration. The basic law of Consecration is when everyone looks at what they have – they keep only what they need for themselves and then they work together to divide up the extra or surplus to the poor. In the end, everyone ends up with enough and no one is in need.”

Here is the download to print out the cards: