Showing posts with label February Activity Days. Show all posts
Showing posts with label February Activity Days. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Serving Others activity "Heart Attacks"

Note: My girls requested this one and want to do it every year…

Purpose: To put the principle of charity into action. This passes off the optional goal for Serving Others in the Faith in God guidebook.

Lesson: "All The Energy of Heart"

Activity: Heart Attacks

When the girls started arriving we had paper hearts in assorted sizes, pencils, glue sticks,and markers set out. We explained we were going to decorate doors in the ward and that we needed to make as many hearts as we could. While they worked I passed out the names of families that had recently moved into our ward for them to put on the hearts and had them make hearts that said "welcome to the ward!".

note girls can bring items to put on the goodie trays.

Then we had the prayer and lesson. I started by showing an old worn out pair of shoes and a flashlight with dead batteries. We talked about how things wear out. I asked them to remember this for later in the lesson. Then I showed them the mormanad "When saw we thee a stranger" It shows a new girl who is being left out. We talked about how it takes a long time to feel comfortable in a new ward and that we wanted to really make the new members feel welcome. Then we talked about charity, the true love of Christ, and how including others is one way we show charity. I read the scripture in Moroni Chapter 8 about how we should pray for charity with all the energy of our heart. I explained that while shoes and batteries wear out quickly, our hearts beat every second of our whole life and that takes a lot of energy. Charity is something we spend our whole life seeking after, all the energy of our heart. In the end it will be the most important measure of our life.

Then off we went to "heart attack"/decorate doors and deliver plates of cookies/brownies. We have 25 girls, so we had to break into 6 groups and get some extra leaders. Be sure to have tape for each group if you go in separate cars. We also did heart attaacks for our primary presidency and music leader. It was fun, they really enjoyed it.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

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.






tubes
lids