Seminary - Scripture Mastery Battleship!

So, I should start this post with an apology. I noticed that it has been over a year since I last posted on this blog. Opps!

As you can imagine this past year has been crazy busy. Here are a few highlights in a nut shell:

• Chris graduated from law school.
• Chris went through the temple for the first time at the LDS Temple in Oakland California.
• Christ took the CA State Bar exam...AND PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!!
• We got sealed for time and all eternity in the LDS Temple in Mesa Arizona.
• We had  2 wedding receptions, one in Mesa, AZ and one in Carmel Valley, CA (both were beautiful).
• I quit my job and moved to Monterey.
• We got our first apartment in Monterey, five blocks from Cannery Row.
• We started attending a new ward (as a newly married couple).
• I got 2 new jobs.
• And last but definitely not least...we were called to be the early morning seminary teachers!

We are really hoping that 2013 is less "exciting".  Through it all we have been extremely blessed!

The reason I have revisited our crazy blog is that I needed to 1) do a better job with family/personal record keeping and a blog is a great way to do that, while allowing my family to keep tabs on us as we are all on our own out here in CA, and 2) with our calling as seminary teachers we have come up with a bunch of cool things for teaching seminary and are anxious to share them.  We have found that the world of early morning seminary is small and we have garnered so much help from others in navigating our way through this new experience that we want to give back, if we can. Or better yet, pay it forward.

Therefore, for our first seminary offering:

Scripture Master Battleship

Battle Stations: Check out the "Wall of Privacy" running down the center of the battlefield.

We are constantly scouring the internet for Scripture Mastery Games.  Every Friday we have Scripture Mastery Games and the students seem to really enjoy them.  I found mention of the game Battleship for Scripture Mastery, but was unable to find a game board anywhere.  Several sites walk through the game (with some variations), but NO ONE seemed to have a game board we could use.  Then it dawned on me...I am a graphic design artist, I can make my own!

Thus, the Scripture Mastery Battleship Game Board was born.  I am including a picture of it for your reference.  I would love to share the Scripture Mastery Battleship game board with you so feel free to download a pdf of the the file by clicking here.

The seminary students LOVED it!

In short, here's how it worked.  Students each picked an opponent.   I encouraged them to select someone who new the Scripture Mastery scriptures about as well as they did.  Each team of two sat across from each other and ensured that their "wall of privacy" was structurally sound.

Each person was given a Battleship game board with two "game board" components (see .pdf).  In the top game board component they were to place their ships. The legend on the game board explains how to do this.  The game board component on the bottom was where they were to record their "hits" and "misses" as they attempted to attack their opponent.

Once they were all set up, the game began!!

Bro. Marohn is declaring a winner between combatants.

 I, or Bro. Marohn, would call out a scripture reference. (i.e. - "No man can serve two masters...").  The team would scripture chase to find the scripture reference in their scriptures. Once they had it they would hold up their hand.  The first partner to correctly find the scripture reference earned the right to "fire" upon their opponent.  That winner would call out their guess, in the traditional Battleship lingo..."B5!"  The receipient of the firing would then identify if it was a hit or a miss.  The person firing was responsible for updating the appropriate game board.

We continued playing for the whole period and when we stopped the students added up their points and decided who won.

Here I am calling out more SM.

NOTE:  Different from the traditional game of Battleship, points have been allotted for sinking specific ship types, and for each hit/miss.  This allows us to stop the game at any point and tally up the points to identify a winner.

One of the reasons that I think this game was so successful was that it allowed students to satisfy their competitive nature, but doing so against someone who is similarly prepared in scripture mastery.

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Lest you think all we do is play games, we've had some great lessons too. I'll try to post information on them at another time. Hope you give Scripture Mastery Battleship a try!