4:15: History/Geography Conquest

There is a battle raging, it is the battle for the hearts of the children of men.  You are called to train the warriors in this battle, by leading them to search out their past. 

 

To begin our conquest please think about all of the following:  

What is your personal conquest with teaching history this year?  What personal battles do the youth you are teaching face?  

Why is the conquest of teaching history and geography important? Make a list of all the reasons you can think of that we study history and geography.  Bring the list to the training with you.  

What do we learn by taking on the conquest of history and geography.  Make a list of the skills that are taught through the lens of history and geography.  Bring the list to the training with you.

 

Arm yourself with the following inspirement:

Choose one historical person or event that you enjoy studying.   Come prepared to share with us.  

 

Choose one (or more) of the following battle tactics:

Bring a visual representation of the historical person or event you will be sharing with us

Act out, dress up, monologue or prepare a skit to teach us about your person or event

Prepare an activity that will teach us about the historical event you are sharing

Write a persuasive paper about the person or event that you enjoy studying  (this does not need to be long)

Prepare a graphic summary, character sketch, or T chart about the person or event that you will be sharing with us.

4:15 Hour: Imaginative Arts Lens: The Genius of Human Creativity (RaNae Housholder and Genevieve Peterson)

Why do we study art and literature?  

How do we choose appropriate material?  

How can we inspire the youth 

to express their creativity?

In order to help us answer these questions, 

please consider these underlying principles:

• Human beings have a divine nature with an innate desire to create.  How and what they choose to create is both an expression of their inner genius, and an expression of how they relate to the world around them.

• We can connect with souls across time, location, and culture  through the imaginative arts.

• Timeless values and truths can be expressed through the imaginative arts.

We hope to have a great discussion - but that depends on you!  Be prepared to share and to be filled as we inspire and recharge each other.  You will leave excited to spend the next year studying great art and literature with your Vanguard Youth.  We hope you will also have new energy to encourage the youth to create!

Please come prepared for this class on June 28th:

Study (know): Do all of the following:

• Watch: Ken Robinson: How schools kill creativity

 

Create-Mormon Message

• Read: Family Art  by Orson Scott Card
  
  
   Happiness, Your Heritage by Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Teach (understand):

• Think about a book that had a huge impact in your life.  What principle did you learn from it? Did it help how see things in a new way? Did you relate to a character in some way? Why did this book change you? Come prepared to share what you learned.

  
Consider which of these principles that book could fit into:

        Meaningful Life/Real Happiness

        Liberty

        Property/work

        Role of the Creator/Natural Law

        Service-oriented Leadership

        Society

        Citizenship

   

• Do a word study on create, beauty, or inspire.  
  To learn how to do a word study, Click here: http://www.vanguardnotes.blogspot.com/2013/05/word-studies.html

Link to Webster’s 1828 online, if you don’t have the actual dictionary: http://webstersdictionary1828.com/  make sure to click on the word, to get the full definitions.

Serve (Become):

• Create something! Such as: drawing, painting, music, crochet, quilting, poetry, writing, crafts, recipes, etc.  Do this on your own, or with your kids.  Bring it to show us or share with us what you did.  This doesn’t have to be a new creation, unless you want to do it, it can be something you have created in the past.
  
  

*Think about these questions: Why did you create it? What does it mean to you? How did you feel while you were creating it? How did creating this change you?  Come prepared to share what you learned. 

Through the Leadership Lens

EVERYONE is a leader, whether they want to be or not, good leader or bad.

Though every youth walks in with their own interests and talents, we want to help them build a foundation of strong principles and examples to help guide them in every walk of life.  When they learn true principles, they can use them both to guide and to back them up. 

We will be talking about why we look through this lens, where we can go to for great examples of leadership, and how we can practice leading.

To Prepare for Class:

LEARN
Look up some definitions and quotes on leadership.  Write your own personal definition of leadership.

Read "Teach the Children" p. 238-245.


UNDERSTAND
Bring two examples of someone you look to as a leader or hero - one from the scriptures, and the other from history or someone you know.  Why do you see them as such?  How has their example helped you in your life?  Bring a picture, quote, or story about/from them, and be ready to share it.


APPLY
Ponder the quote "I am not afraid; I was born to do this."  How does that make you feel?  Have you had situations in your life where you felt "born to do" something?  When?  Write in a journal, create something in another way to show, or talk to someone about it.

Bonus Inspirement - watch "Lead Like the Great Conductors" on TED.com.  20:51 of wonderful, fun, visual leadership instruction.  One of my personal favorites!

Using the "Eureka!" lens

Do you know that the ancients viewed mathematics as the pure pursuit of truth?  I am so excited to host a class discussing how to use this unique and often challenging lens!  Let's teach them to think! (...and they will probably have fun in the process :).)
 
"The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people.
The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together."
-- Eric Hoffer
 

“The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.”
-- H.L. Mencken

Just a reminder, the vision of this lens is:

To see God’s hand in the world around us as we understand and apply the natural laws of the earth and the patterns therein. We will develop the desire and ability to exercise inductive (i.e. logic) and deductive (i.e. scientific method) reasoning to find truth and to help others to find it. We will learn to better understand the language of creation

Things that may be covered:
-Great Discoveries
-Nature Studies
-Influential scientists/mathematicians
-How things work
-Logical thinking games/activities
-Synergy of the mind
-Science Experiments
-Science/Math Classics
-Scriptures/Talks

To prepare for this class on June 28th:

Gain knowledge by reading all of the following (this should take about 30 minutes or less):

-Our goal is to find truth using this lens.  It is powerful.   From the perspective of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we read in Doctrine and Covenants 84:45: "For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ."  Watch the three part series: "Patterns of Light" starting with the first on lds. org for examples of how to do this.
-Review Teach the Children pg 234-236 to see how Eureka fits in, and/or pages 144-146 in Norms and Nobility

-Read the "Introduction" to "Beginner's Guide to Creating the Universe" by Michael Schneider
(scanned readings for Teach the Children, Norms and Nobility, and Universe)

 Create Understanding by doing one or more things to take your studies further where you feel inspired to take them.  Come prepared to share what you found:
Ideas (or create one of your own!):
-read the short story "All Mimsy were the borrogoves" (not from Alice in Wonderland :)...) and think about what is has to do with the articles above
-do a word study on "truth": see how to do a word study here
-find the website from Michael Schneider (click here) and have fun exploring it by yourself or with your family or read another chapter in the Beginner's Guide.
-spend some time having fun with math (like here  where you will find a fun little movie by Abbott and Costello about how 7x13=28 :).)
-Find and read other books about how to use math and science to find patterns in the world around you like "The Phantom Tollbooth," "Go Figure!" or "The Number Devil."

Gain Intelligence by applying what you learned in your own life or doing something with it!
-Create your own class based upon what you learned.  Carry it out and come and share how it went.
-Create and share your own video that shares what you learned.  Bring it to share!
-Create your own project as you feel prompted to do so.

 

“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
-- Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)  

“[The aim of public education is not] to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . .
Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim . . . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level,
to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States…”
-- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) in 1924