Developing Talents- Napkin Rings

Tonight was a fun activity... we made napkin rings for the girls to use for their Thanksgiving dinner! (We voted on whether or not they wanted to use them for the Ward Thanksgiving Dinner and the "no" vote won.)   We got started right away.  They were very creative and had a lot of fun.  I meant to bring a hair dryer to help them dry quicker but I forgot it...so they had to blow on them.  Haha.

Gathered materials

Creative juices flowing...

Great finished product!!  Love the colors

Learning and Living the Gospel #8- Genealogy!

Prior to the meeting, I asked the parents to provide the girls with the names of their grandparents and great grandparents if they could.

The first thing I did was show them some paper chains and we discussed how they were linked together.  I told them to imagine that the first link was them and the next links were their parents and so forth back through time.  We read Malachi 4:5-6 and discussed what it meant by the "great and dreaadful day of the Lord" and who, on the chain, were the "fathers" and who were the "children".  (This was not immediately clear to them...we had to discuss).  We talked about the hearts of the fathers turning to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.  This lead to talking about the importance of the temple.  The children LOVE to learn!

Next I drew a pedigree chart on the board.  The girls really didn't know what a pedigree chart was so it was fun to share that with them.

Next I had them fill in a simple family group record that I found here.  This is the LDS family search site and it has a lot of great ideas!  I used this chart.  Click on the link to get a better chart but this is basically what it looks like.

My Family Group Record

My Dad:

Born: |Place:

Married: |Place:

His Father:

His Mother:

My Mom:

Born: |Place:

Her Father:

Her Mother:

Children

Name:

Born: |Place:

Name:

Born: |Place:

Name:

Published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 2010 

The internet has lots of pedigree charts.  I found a cute one and let them fill it in as best they could.

On the same family search page, if you go down to the "Fun and Games" section, there is a booklet that has other fun activities.  Here is the link.  I used a couple of these for the girls who finished their charts before the others.

To complete this requirement, the girls needed to share a family story.  We ran out of time but we will do this at that beginning of our next meeting.

I hope that his sparks some interest in family history!

Activity Day Art!

Tonight was a lot of fun!  We talked about different art genres and made some original art!   You cannot spend a lot of time on each activity if you want to get through them all.  I did about 10-15 minutes on each activity.

First was Impressionism. We talked about what it means and I showed different examples of impressionism from the game "Masterpiece".

Art cards from the game "Masterpiece".  This would be a fun game to play if we had more time.  Could play it next time as a follow-up and discuss the different genres as we play.

For the impressionism art activity, I had the girls tape their paper to the underside of the chair and draw a landscape picture using crayons.    This was to imitate how Michaelangelo (not an impressionist but this is a fun way for the girls to draw) painted on ceilings.  (I would NOT recommend, however, showing the pictures of his Sistene Chapel paintings. I mean, perhaps a distant overview but there are a lot of nudes in his creation and judgement depictions.)
The girls had fun with this activity drawing upside down.  This is my favorite genre so I had fun showing different examples and telling about the different impressionist artists.

Next we discussed pointillism...creating art using dots.  For this we used q-tips and watercolor.  I found an example of this technique on-line here.  First they drew a design with pencil then they did the q-tips. They LOVED making these paintings!

Next was abstract art.  Again, I showed some examples of this type of art.  I suggested that they think of an emotion and then try to draw it.  For this activity we used markers.  They got a little crazy with this one.  It was fun.

Finally, we did realism.  I had a basket of fruit and they were to draw it using a pencil.  I tried to teach them a little about shading but this was the most challenging for them.  None of them really liked this one too much.  It was much more challenging.

They were proud of their work!

For a treat I made sugar cookies shaped like rainbows!  The night was a hit!

For a follow up, I will encourage the parents to do Developing Talents #5- Visit an art museum, and the girls can share what they've learned about art with their parents.

Serving Others #4- Plan, Prepare, and Serve a nutritious meal

Service #4- Plan, prepare, and serve a nutritious meal

We did our planning last week.  The girls decided they wanted to do a big, healthy salad!  Yum!  They all wanted to bring and contribute their favorite ingredient.  I brought ingredients as well.

While we waited for everyone to arrive, I did my usual...a word search.  Find the link here.  This one had healthy foods as the topic.

Once everyone arrived we began preparing the salad.  We washed hands and we washed all of the veggies.

I supervised the use of the knives, don't worry!

They all wanted to eat some salad so I let everyone take a bowl and fill it with whatever they wanted for their own salad.  After they had filled their bowls, we combined all of the salad ingredients into a large bowl and headed to the Branch President's office to give him some salad to take home and enjoy with his wife!  The girls also wanted to share with the young women!  So we dished up some bowls for them and took them to the young women's room!  It was a lot of fun!

They were so happy to serve their salads!

Word of Wisdom-Learning and Living the Gospel #7

I forgot to take pics during the meeting but I snapped this after some of the girls had already left!

Learning and Living the Gospel #7-  Read D&C 89.  Discuss how Heavenly Father blesses us when we faithfully live the Word of Wisdom.  Help plan and conduct an activity to teach the Word of Wisdom to others.

This lesson covers the first part of the activity.
As the girls were arriving, I was playing some fun music and we had a little dance party.  We danced until everyone arrived.  I had one of the girls lead the dancing and it was pretty fun!  Lots and lots of giggles.  At first some were too timid to dance but by the end everyone was dancing!

We then gathered and read D&C 89:1-9.   While the girls took turns reading, they were supposed to draw pictures of what they were hearing.  We talked about the verses, I gave definitions and we discussed how the world glamorizes drinking and smoking and how we should avoid it.   We talked about how and why these things are harmful to our bodies.   They were very interested in hearing about how the body gets addicted to drugs and how difficult it is to overcome addiction.  I emphasized  the importance of never starting because it is so hard to stop.  Make sure that you are sensitive to any in the group who may have parents or other loved ones who may smoke or drink alcohol.

I had them turn their paper over and answer the following questions:
What have you had to eat in the last 24 hours?
How much sleep did you get last night?
How much TV did you watch yesterday?
Did you exercise?
They had fun answering and sharing their answers.

Next we read D&C 89:10-17.  We talked about healthy eating and the importance of putting good food into our bodies.

I asked them why we were dancing at the beginning of class.  Then we talked about how exercise can be really fun...like dancing.

We read the promise in verses 18-21.  Don't leave this out!  It's so important that they know of these great promises that come when we are good to our bodies.

We made smoothies!!   They LOVED this!

**While they were drinking their smoothies we planned a nutritious meal in anticipation of completing Serving others #4 that we will complete next week.

They really wanted to dance some more so after we closed, I put on another song and let them do one more dance.  They had so much fun and so did I!

Here is the smoothie recipe that I used.  I think I tripled it:

1 cup frozen strawberries
1 banana
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup orange juice

Blend and serve.

Father's Day fun and games!- Service #2

This lesson could be used to fulfill Service #2 which says:  Write a letter to a teacher, your parents, or your grandparents telling them what you appreciate and respect about them.  This is from the Faith in God book that can be found here.

Tonight was all about fathers!  

To begin I had them each write something about themselves on a piece of printer paper.  Then I had them crumple the paper up into a ball.  I gathered them and told them we would use them later.

Next I asked if they knew any songs about fathers.  We sang a couple from the Children's Songbook.  Daddy's Homecoming and A Happy Family.

As we sang each song we talked about the words and what we learn about fathers from the lyrics.

We made a list on the board of the qualities that Dads have.  I emphasize their roles as providers and protectors.

Next they filled out a worksheet:

"In our family dad is the best at sports"

"My favorite memory with my Dad is when we went to the Grand Canyon"

"My favorite memory with my Dad is when he coached me in soccer!"

"In our family, my dad is the best at eating chocolate."

It is so fun to read their thoughts about their dads.

 

I find the night works best when they get to MOVE.  This was a balloon race.  A team of two races to the wall and back with a balloon between their shoulders.  A "middle man" is allowed to go with them and replace the balloon if it falls out.  

This is where we used the crumpled papers that we made at the beginning of the meeting.  We had a snowball fight with them.  At my go, they raced to throw the "snowballs" at each other.  When I called "stop" they had to grab the nearest snowball and hold it.  If I called on them, they had to open their paper wad, read what it said, and then try to guess who wrote it.  Me and the other leader wrote about ourselves on a piece of paper as well.  They had a hard time guessing ours even after they had gone through every other person in the room.  It was kind of funny.

Their instruction was to go give the Dad Worksheet to their father on Father's Day!  It was a fun night.