Recognition Activity, Serving Others #7 "plan a parent-child activity"

• Serving Others #7
• Part 1: 
  Plan a parent-child activity, such as a dinner, picnic, hike, day trip, or service project.
• Part 2: Hold a parent-child activity

Week 1
Lesson: talk about the importance of spending time with family, talk about the importance of planning and setting aside time to do the things that matter most in life.  Talk about how to plan an activity.

Preparation: Call the girls parents and see if they would be able to come to activity days with their child in two weeks.  Bring some art supplies and a treat.

Activity: After our lesson, I told the girls that at our next activity they could invite a mother or father to come.  Then I put an outline for the activity on the white board for them to plan.

Theme:

gathering activity:

Lesson Topic:

Activity:

Decorations:

Treats:

I really wanted them to plan, so I tried to guide them without prompting ideas.  I was scared to do this activity fearing they would look at me blankly for an hour and leave confused, but I was really impressed with how great of planners they were.  I didn't prompt them at all.

Theme: hearts (because it was going to be in February)

Gathering Activity: write what you love about your parent on a heart and put it on the wall for decoration as you arrive.

Lesson Topic (taught by activity day leaders): Love one another

Activity: they wanted to do a candy craftapalooza, but I told them to narrow it down to one food craft and they decided to frost and decorate heart sugar cookies.  We made a list of who wanted to bring which items.  I called and talked to parents about it later to make sure it was okay or to give them a chance to bring different items if it was easier for the family.

Decorations:  I had brought paper and markers and so they colored valentine heart pictures for me to bring and use for decorations at the activity.

treats: NA

Two Weeks Later…

Our parent child activity was wonderful.  I liked that it was so simple.  No special time or place, just the parents coming and participating in our regular activity.  The girls got a lot of praise for their excellent planning.

Recognition Activity:  My partner gave the love one another lesson.  It was cute she had the girls help and participate which was great!  Then, in addition to what the girls had planned, I put a picture of all of our recent activities on heart doilies for a recognition activity.  

For the recognition activity, I had three columns on the whiteboard, one each for Learning & Living the Gospel, Serving Others, and Developing Talents.  I passed out the hearts and had the girls come up and share about the activity on their heart doilie  and then place it on the wall in whatever category they thought it went with.  We made sure each girl had hearts for a activities they had been to.  When they were done we had hearts in all the categories and some on the lines because they overlapped.  I thought it was good for the parents to see the overall plan of activity days and I hope this helped the girls to visualize how much they are learning in activity days and how worthwhile it is to come. 

We finished by decorating the cookies and socializing!