Activity: Thinking Helpful Thoughts

As a child of God, you can learn to turn negative thoughts into positive ones.

Use the idea of flowers and weeds to talk about helpful and unhelpful thoughts. Help children think about how a seed grows into a plant. (If possible, bring seeds or show pictures of a seed growing into a flower.) Our thoughts can be like seeds: helpful thoughts grow into flowers and help us be happy, while unhelpful thoughts grow into weeds, which can make us unhappy.

Play a game to identify helpful and unhelpful thoughts and learn to replace “weeds” with “flowers.” Invite one child to be the “gardener,” while the rest of the children are “seeds.”

Place pieces of paper with negative and positive thoughts in a bowl. Invite the children who are representing seeds to choose a paper from the bowl. When the gardener says “grow,” the seeds scatter and pretend to grow. The gardener goes to each child and asks what their thought was. If the thought is positive, the child stays in place. If the thought is negative, the gardener helps the child make the negative thought positive. The changed “seed” gets to be the “gardener,” and the previous “gardener” gets to choose a paper from the bowl and become a seed. The game ends when each child has at least one chance to share his or her thought.

Here are some examples of helpful and unhelpful thoughts:

• “I can solve problems.”
• “People will help me.”
• “Things will be okay.”
• “I can’t do this.”
• “I’m not smart enough.”
• “My friend doesn’t like me.”

Negative thoughts can be changed to be positive. For example, “This is too hard!” can be changed to “If I work hard and take time to practice, I’ll get better.”

Please adapt activities as necessary to ensure all individuals are able to participate, belong, and contribute.

• Practice or role-play activities that will help children get rid of unhelpful thoughts. Ideas include exercise, singing a favorite Primary song or hymn, helping someone, praying, or talking to someone they trust.
• Have the children sit in a circle and take turns saying a positive thought about each person. Write them down so the children can read them at home when they need a positive boost.
• Service idea: Invite the children to write a thank-you note to someone every day for a week.

Encourage children to talk about how what they are learning can help them and others grow closer to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Discussions can take place before, during, or after the activity and should last just a few minutes. You could ask questions like the following:

• How can knowing that you are a child of God help you when you have unhelpful thoughts?
• How can learning how to change unhelpful thoughts help you feel and give love?

• Feeling the Importance of the Sacrament
• Making Good Choices in Media
• Learning to Recognize the Holy Ghost
• Preparing to Go to the Temple
• Building Positive Communication Skills
• Trying to Be Like Jesus
• Preparing for General Conference
• Developing and Maintaining Friendships
• Feeling the Power of the Articles of Faith
• My Body Is a Temple
• Understanding Lehi’s Dream