Faith In God Relay

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This activity was part of our Stake Day Camp, but would be a great weekly activity too.

Purpose: to introduce the girls to the different sections of the Faith in God book.

Show the girls the book and talk about why the program is important for them.

Living and Learning the Gospel Relay.
1) Prayer Rocks: Have a pail of rocks with the letters on them to spell prayer. First the girls pull out the rocks needed to spell the word prayer.
2) Balloon Pop: Have a bunch of balloons stuffed with scriptures. We had a question to go with each scripture. When the girl gets her scripture reference, have a leader help her look it up and find the answer to her question, then she is done and she can go help her teammates.


Serving Others Relay. Talk about different service activities in the book

Our stake has done lots of service relays like making a bed, sorting laundry, singing a song, doing a dance, etc. This was the one we did this year.

1)Make a meal (take mom breakfast in bed): The girls put on an apron and then loaded a tray with cereal, a muffin, a fruit cup, orange juice, spoon, and a napkin.

2)Help take care of a child: Change a diaper on a baby doll and then rock the baby and sing eensy weensy spider.

3)Service to Country: we had some little flags and they had to pick it up and say the pledge of allegience.


Developing Talents. Talk about why developing talents is important and the ones in the book (art, music, art appreciation, money management, hair, fashion, sports, etc)

1)sports: do a three legged race
2)art: have paper and markers at the end of the three legged race. The girls need to think up a food and then draw it, then their team guesses what it is like pictionary.
note: the pictionary was pretty popular, the girls liked picking what to draw and all wanted more than one turn.

My Gospel Standards. (We were supposed to do the matching game from the friend June 2008, but my daughter hates matching and memory games and begged me to do something else like bowling.)

Preparation: Have a picture for each of the my gospel standards. Put them on a poster, so that when a girl gets done bowling or golfing or throwing bean bags or whatever carnival game you choose, she can pick one off for you to discuss. I used these pictures.

For our carnival game I bought the $5 bowling game from walmart. Its cheap and no fun, but we poured about 3Tbs of salt in the bottom of each pin and taped it closed, then it became a super awesome bowling set, the difficulty was the same as a real bowling alley. If a girl got 8 or more pins down I let her pick a standard off the My Gospel Standards poster.

Review: How Do These Things Testify of Christ?

Purpose: To focus on the theme scripture for activity days, "That they might know thee". To provide an opportunity to testify of Christ at every activity. To teach the girls to understand symbolical teaching.

I wanted to teach the girls to start seeing the Savior in everything and I didn't want an activity to go by that doesn't clearly testify of the Savior, so each week. I bring a picture of the Savior and reminders of previous activities. The girls have to identify the how the reminders symbolize or testify of Christ. This activity focuses them on Christ and prepares them to better understand the teachings of the Savior who also taught this way when he used parables. So far I've done six activities, so now we have six reminders for the girls to review next time. It goes quick so I keep reviewing them again and again instead of just the last activity. I'll start dropping old ones off when I have a bigger list. My hope is that our girl's will instantly think of Christ whenever they come across them in their daily lives.

I display a picture of Christ on a table with the reminders around it during each activity.

reminders:
Lysol wipes (from nursery cleaning activity): The Savior's atonement can wipe away our sins.
Lip Gloss (from worthy thoughts activity): On the cross, the Savior's lips were parched and they gave him vinegar. He suffered so that we don't have to if we repent and come unto him.
Thank You Card (from gratitude activity): In the story of the ten lepers we learn that we should always say thank you. We do not want to be one of the ones who forgets to thank the Savior.
Birthday Present: (from birthday party) The Savior's free gift to us is the resurrection!
Orange (from Christmas Oranges): Fruit of the tree of life is "The love of God", oranges and all fruit can symbolize to us our Savior's love

Lesson Ideas for Activity Days for a year

Activity Days Ideas
8-9 year old class

November
1- Learning & Living #8 Family History stories, pedigree, and group sheets
3-Serving Others #2-Saying Thanks-Make Cards, make mini pies for treats
Preparing to Have an Eternal Family-Place Settings, the importance of the family Meal, plan a nutritious meal

December
1-Mother Daughter Gingerbread Houses-Recognition

3-Spiritual Gifts-The Littlest Angel
   Treating Others Kindly-The Christmas Orange
   Treating Others Kindly-Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer & reindeer candy canes

January
1-Living and Learning the Gospel#1-The Sacrament, Baking Bread or Bread sampling
3-Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy-Journal Jars, make flower pens

February
1-Serving Others optional project-Heart Attacks for primary presidency, new move-ins, teachers,  etc.
3-Choosing Good Friends-Friendship Bracelets

March
1- Living and Learning the Gospel #2-Learn to teach Joseph Smith and the first vision for FHE, talk about prayer.  Practice teaching first vision, Have pretzels for treats (pretzels symbolize folding arms for prayer).
3- Daily Personal Prayer-Pajama Party

April
1- Bee of Service Activity, Elder Ballard talk
3- I can Follow God’s Plan - Atonement Symbols Easter Egg Hunt
Easter Jelly Bean Jars Activity

May
1-Strengthening Family-Mother/Daughter activity/Recognition
3-CTR & repentance-Needlework Gospel Reminders

June (During the summer months it is very difficult to get girls to attend activities, I find field trips that involve parents work better)
1-Developing Talents#5-go to a free museum or free community cultural event (keep an eye out and plan ahead, sometimes there are free shows or concerts at county fairs)
3-Appreciating Gods Creations-go on a hike

July
1-Water Activity-Water increases summertime attendance, but the most important thing is teach the gospel, be sure to have a powerful lesson before the girls get wet.
3-Ice Cream, Popsicle, or Smoothie Making Class-Again, the most important thing is teach the gospel, be sure to have a powerful lesson before the yummy food.

August
1-Health & Hygiene-fieldtrip to cosmetology school?, manicures, pedicures, facials, or make sugar hand scrub, etc.
3-Pennies By The Inch fundraising

September
1-Developing Talents (#1)-Budgeting
price is right or paper money games, or
Act out the tithing parable.
Daddy Daughter Activity

3-Modesty-Modesty Paper Dolls
Repentance-Soap Carving
Before Conference Teach the Girls the updated Apostles song off YouTube.  First quickly teach the apostles so that they will understand the song (I say quickly because 15 is a lot and if you aren't quick they'll lose interest), then watch the video FIVE times during the activity and they won't be able to get it out of their heads.

October
1- Righteous Entertainment and/or Good Books-TBA (play some fun card or group games to show that we don't have to watch inappropiate movies to have fun, have a book club where everyone does a spotlight on their favorite book and or movie)

3- Living and Learning the Gospel #3-Holy Ghost-TBA  mark scriptures.  Then do a ghost craft 1) frost Nutter Butter cookies in white chocolate to make ghost cookies.  Use chocolate chips for eyes. or 2) or make Boo Cups (jello chocolate pudding, crumbled oreo topping with cool whip on top, put two mini chips on the cool whip to make it look like a Halloween ghost standing on oreo dirt)

Lip Gloss Activity

Activity: Uplifting Thoughts, Uplifting Music

I was teaching a My Gospel Standards lesson on uplifting thoughts for the activity day girls in our ward. We talked about having uplifting thoughts and how music can help us clean out bad thoughts. Then we made lip gloss. I wrote a little poem to tie it all together. It is based on Elder Packer's talk "worthy music, worthy thoughts"
This is what the finished project looked like, I had some old pots in my craft cupboard that I recycled for this project it turned out really cute. If I didn't have pots, I would go to the grocery store or a party store and get those souffle cups (like restaurants use to put sauces in). The souffle cups would be way too big, but for 8-12 year old girls they would be ideal because they would be easy to fill.

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Update:
This activity was hard to clean up and a bit hard for the girls to do themselves, but this version of lipgloss making you could have all the ingredients in a ziploc bag before the activity starts and then throw the bags away for clean-up.  Sounds like genius to me.  You could talk about the different ingredients and what they are for while the girls squish their  ziplocs to make the lipgloss and then they're all done!

When I orginally did this activity I didn't know where to get supplies for making real lip balm, but now I know that you can pick up pretty much everything at a healthfood store, so if you would like to help the girls make really high quality lip gloss, try this recipe.
herbal infused lip balm.
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"Hum your favorite Tune"
     Lip Gloss Poem

The lip gloss I have made today
Reminds me I should smile,
And make the thoughts inside
My head uplifting and
worthwhile.

For ev’ry minute that I live
My mind is like a play.
With thoughts of either good
Or bad always on display.

Now sometimes in the theater
That is running in my mind
Little dark and impish thoughts
Come sneaking from behind.
And then it is my duty,
So the Spirit can abide,
To find a way to clean them out
And shape things up inside.

The prophets have advised us
On a way this can be done,
They’ve said when thoughts
Aren’t what we want…
The best thing is to hum!

So once again I grab my gloss
And rub some on my lips
And hum my very favorite hymn,
It always does the trick!

~Poem by Regina Slaugh

We went with a vaseline/koolaide recipe when we did this activity.  You can even get vaseline with vitamin E or cocoa butter in it already, which is a nice touch. The girls wanted to know all the cosmetic benefits of the additions, I wish I had known.

What worked best was to do an assembly line with the leaders doing everything that was hot. Give each girl one or two jobs in the process and encourage them to watch the other steps. Then at the end they all get to take home one or two glosses. My girls liked swirling the pink and clear together. For the young girls (8-9) they would be just as happy to decorate a souffle cup with stickers, watch the leaders demo how to make lip gloss, and then get a bit to put in their cup to take home.

This was how we did it...

1-have one or two girls measure out the vaseline and put it in the top of a double boiler
2-have a leader start melting the vaseline
3-I used stevia because I have it, but if you're doing honey instead of stevia, have someone measure this and melt it in the microwave.
4-have someone set out a bowl for each flavor of gloss you're making and put the koolaid powder in
5-have a girl put 1/4 tsp of water in each bowl and dissolve it. A different girl can do each flavor. We did three. The pink and invisible were much more popular than the reds. The girls want to wear pink, not movie star red.
3-have the girls open up the koolaid. Most of the koolaid colors were too dark. you can google koolaid color chart online for ideas.
4-divide the melted petroluem jelly between all the bowls. (you might want to line the bowls with foil so you don't have to clean them at the end.)
5-have a leader put in the stevia or melted honey.
6-demonstrate the suggested amount and then have the girls add little pea sized or smaller globs of koolaid, its easy to get too much and make the gloss sour, so maybe a leader should do this.
7-we added mint extract to some of the gloss just to give it a tingly feeling on the lips.
8-use a knife to scoop gloss into a container when its cooled just a bit. I had souffle cups and little paint pots. The girls didn't like the scooping part because it was messy, so the leaders got that job while the girls individualized their containers with stickers. They would have had an easier time using the souffle cups since they were bigger than the paint pots, but the souffle cups are so much bigger than a tablespoon of gloss that they look almost empty, so its hard to say what is best.

Bring a mirror so they can see to put it on.






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