Latter Day Kids

Latter Day Kids is a free weekly Come Follow Me supplement created by a couple in Utah who animate short object lessons and pair them with printable activity pages. It is not a curriculum; it is the most widely used supplement to the LDS Church's weekly scripture reading schedule.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Literature-based / weekly supplement / Come Follow Me aligned
Worldview	LDS (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
Grades	PreK through approximately 5
Formats	Animated video, digital PDF printables, object-lesson scripts
Cost tier	Free (Patreon tier available for supporters)
Parent intensity	2
ESA-common	No (free)
Accredited	No
Established	2016 per the Latter Day Kids about page
Website	latterdaykids.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	2	Not academic; designed for devotional and object-lesson purposes
Ease of teaching	5	Video does primary teaching; object lesson and activity page require minimal prep
Content quality	4	Animations are well-produced; object lessons are concrete and memorable
Flexibility	4	Use the weekly lesson or pick-and-choose from the archive
Value for money	5	Free
Worldview scope	1	Explicitly LDS and tied to Come Follow Me; not usable by non-LDS families
Visual/design	4	Clean contemporary animation style; printable pages are nicely laid out
Support resources	3	Public archive by year, searchable by topic; active YouTube channel and Patreon

Who the publisher is

Latter Day Kids was founded in 2016 by Jared and Marcie Austin, an LDS couple who set out to create a weekly video-and-activity supplement that would align with the Come Follow Me home scripture study program used by LDS families around the world. Come Follow Me is the LDS Church's official weekly home-centered gospel study curriculum, published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 2019 as the successor to earlier Sunday School and home-study materials. The official Come Follow Me materials are written for adult and family reading; Latter Day Kids fills the gap for younger children by translating each week's assigned scripture block into a short animated video, a tactile object lesson, and printable activity pages.

Per the Latter Day Kids about page, the Austins produce the content themselves with a small team. The organization is not owned by or officially affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; it is an independent LDS-aligned ministry. Content is distributed free through the Latter Day Kids website and YouTube channel, with a voluntary Patreon subscription tier supporting ongoing production. The Latter Day Kids YouTube channel has accumulated over one million subscribers as of April 2026 and the weekly videos typically reach tens of thousands of views within their publication week.

The content is explicitly built on LDS scripture, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and the LDS edition of the Bible, and is organized to match the LDS Church's four-year Come Follow Me rotation (Old Testament one year, New Testament the next, then Book of Mormon, then Doctrine and Covenants). Per the editorial classification adopted by Every Homeschool, Latter Day Kids carries the lds worldview classification only; this is a distinct faith tradition rather than a subset of Christian curriculum, and the program's entire content reflects LDS scripture and doctrine.

The core pedagogy

The pedagogy is devotional-by-repetition, pitched to the youngest learners in a family. Each week, the Austins release a package keyed to that week's Come Follow Me reading: (1) a short animated video, typically two to five minutes, illustrating a specific gospel principle from the reading; (2) an object lesson, usually involving common household materials (a balloon, a piece of tape, a coin, a flashlight), with a script the parent reads aloud while demonstrating; (3) a set of printable activity pages, coloring sheets, memory cards, simple mazes, comprehension questions, for children to complete during or after the video.

The theory of learning is that a young child absorbs doctrinal content most effectively when the content is delivered through multiple reinforcing channels in a short time window: see the animation, watch the parent demonstrate the object lesson, hold the coloring page. A four-year-old who watches a three-minute video about the principle of obedience, then watches a parent demonstrate the same principle with a balloon and a pin, then colors a coloring page with the same imagery, retains the principle more reliably than a child who only hears the scripture read aloud. This bet tracks the broader pedagogical consensus about multimodal learning in young children.

Signature mechanics: (1) Weekly release on the Come Follow Me schedule, every package aligns to that week's scripture reading, allowing families to use Latter Day Kids in parallel with the Church's official materials. (2) Multimodal delivery, video plus object lesson plus printable activity. (3) Archive depth, the full archive since 2016 is accessible on the site's year-by-year index, meaning families can find every week's content for the current year and revisit past years' content as needed. (4) Patreon-supported independence, because the operation runs on Patreon rather than curriculum sales, the content stays free for all users.

A day in the life

A family with two children ages four and seven uses Latter Day Kids as part of a Sunday morning home worship routine. Before church, the family gathers around a laptop for the week's three-minute Latter Day Kids video. The parent pauses at the end, pulls out the object-lesson materials the Austins specified (a balloon, a pin, and a slip of paper, say), and walks through the object lesson with both children participating. Afterwards, the four-year-old takes the coloring page and the seven-year-old takes the comprehension worksheet; both work at the breakfast table for ten to fifteen minutes while the parent finishes getting ready for church.

A homeschool family integrates Latter Day Kids into weekday morning devotions rather than Sunday worship. The weekly package anchors Monday morning: video, object lesson, activity pages. Tuesday through Friday, the family revisits the week's scripture passage in small pieces, using the printable memory cards during car rides and the coloring page as a quiet-time activity. Total engagement across the week runs one to two hours of active instructional time.

What they do exceptionally well

Production quality. The animation is genuinely good, consistent style across the full catalog, competent voice acting, and pacing pitched correctly for a young audience. Compared to most amateur ministry video content, Latter Day Kids produces output at a tier more typical of paid children's media. This matters because children who watch high-production-quality content engage more readily than with lower-production-value alternatives, regardless of the underlying message.

Alignment with official Come Follow Me. For LDS families who are already doing the Church's weekly scripture reading, Latter Day Kids slots into that rhythm without competing with it. The Austins align each week to the official reading schedule, which means families do not have to choose between using Latter Day Kids and using the Church's materials. This is a meaningful design decision, many LDS children's resources operate on their own calendars, forcing families to double up.

Price. Free content with Patreon-funded production is rare in dedicated religious children's curriculum. Families in every economic situation can access the same catalog. The Patreon tier (approximately $5-15 per month per the Latter Day Kids Patreon) is optional and provides small bonuses rather than gating core content.

What they do poorly

Not a standalone curriculum. Latter Day Kids is designed as a supplement, specifically, as an object-lesson and activity layer on top of the Come Follow Me reading. It does not teach reading, math, history, or science. Families who imagine it as a primary curriculum will find the scope far narrower than that. Correct use is alongside an academic program.

Archival depth is real but navigation is imperfect. The complete archive from 2016 is searchable by date, but finding a specific topic or scripture requires some digging. Families looking for, say, a lesson on baptism across multiple years will spend time navigating the archive. Improved topic-based indexing would make the back catalog more immediately useful.

Narrow doctrinal scope is by design. Latter Day Kids's content is tightly tied to LDS scripture and doctrine. For families within that tradition, this is exactly the fit; the program is built for them. For families outside the LDS tradition, the program is not usable as a general Christian children's resource, the specific scriptural references (Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants) and doctrinal emphases (Plan of Salvation, priesthood authority, temple covenants as introduced age-appropriately) are LDS-specific. This is not a criticism of the program; it is a straightforward category note.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Latter Day Kids if: your family is LDS or LDS-aligned and follows the Come Follow Me weekly reading schedule; you want a free, high-quality animated supplement for children PreK through approximately grade 5; your children respond well to video-plus-object-lesson instruction; you appreciate Patreon-supported independence from subscription gating; you want printable activity pages keyed to each week's reading.

• Skip Latter Day Kids if: your family is not LDS, the content is entirely built on LDS scripture and will not fit non-LDS Christian, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, or secular family traditions; you want a standalone academic curriculum rather than a weekly devotional supplement; you prefer entirely print-based devotional resources; your children are older than elementary and need more substantial content.

Cost honest assessment

Latter Day Kids is free. The weekly videos, object lessons, and printable activity pages are all available at no cost through latterdaykids.com and the Latter Day Kids YouTube channel. The optional Patreon tier ranges approximately $5-15 per month as of April 2026 and provides early access to videos, occasional supporter bonuses, and voting on future topics. The Patreon tier is explicitly positioned as production support rather than premium content gating.

Compared to other LDS children's supplements, Little Latter-day Saints activity books (print, approximately $15-25 per volume), official Church materials (free for members through the Gospel Library app), or LDS seminary and institute materials (free for enrolled students), Latter Day Kids is cost-free and independently produced, which means the content is neither constrained by official Church correlation nor sold as a commercial product. Family budget for full Latter Day Kids use: $0 to $180 per year depending on Patreon tier chosen.

ESA eligibility notes

Latter Day Kids is free content and therefore not typically submitted for ESA reimbursement. A few state ESA programs allow religious-content supplemental materials under their curriculum categories; families in Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account program or Utah's Utah Fits All Scholarship could in principle claim a Patreon subscription as a curriculum subscription if the state permits digital religious-content subscriptions, though the small dollar amount generally makes this administrative rather than financial. Most families use Latter Day Kids as free content alongside other ESA-funded curriculum.

Alternatives

• Come Follow Me (official), a family would use the official Church material as the primary text, with Latter Day Kids as the children's video supplement.
• The Friend magazine (LDS Church), a family would choose The Friend for monthly print stories and activities keyed to LDS children, as a complement or alternative to Latter Day Kids.
• Little Latter-day Saints Activity Books, a family would choose this print activity-book series for off-screen reinforcement of the same doctrinal content Latter Day Kids covers on video.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Latter Day Kids about page, the archive index, the Patreon page, and multiple sample videos from the current year's Come Follow Me rotation. We cross-referenced against the official Come Follow Me curriculum pages at churchofjesuschrist.org and the Gospel Library app, and against public subscriber counts for the Latter Day Kids YouTube channel. Prices and program details verified April 2026.