Activity Days: Healthy Lifestyle

We started this activity off with Stake Leaders coming to observe us. I think it was a little overwhelming just preparing for that! It ended up being only one leader and she works at the kids elementary school as the librarian so nothing to worry about in the end.

Physical Bodies
We talked about the Plan of Salvation including the connection of our physical and spiritual bodies. We used a glove to explain this. Next we placed categories were placed on the wall and there was a basket full of items to be categorized.

• Exercise: running shoes, jump rope, ball
  
• Healthy Foods: apple, nuts, water bottle
• Good Hygiene: Soap, toothpaste, toothbrush
  
• Protecting our bodies: sunglasses, sunscreen, lotion
• Rest: pillow, blanket
• Things to avoid: cigarettes (picture), beer (picture)

We discussed the need for living a healthy lifestyle and allowed the girls to give their ideas but also made sure they knew additional benefits too.

Spiritual Bodies
We used an object lesson to help them better understand what a healthy spirit entails verses an unhealthy spirit. First we placed ice cream which represented our clean spirit and then added toppings:

• Kindness = chocolate syrup
• Scripture reading = bananas
• Obedience = caramel sauce
• Prayer = chocolate sprinkles
• Family Home Evening = strawberry sauce

This entails a healthy spirit and then if we add other items:

• Cruelty = mustard
• Lying = dog food
• Bad words = dirt

The spirit is quickly contaminated and without the atonement of the Savior we cannot remove these from our spirits. With repentance we can be made clean again and enjoy our healthy spirit. We let the girls prepare their own "healthy spirit"!

Activity Days: Modesty

We had quite the crew today with 10 Activity Day girls! I started out reading from the Strength of Youth pamphlet regarding dress and appearance:

Servants of God have always counseled his children to dress modestly to show respect for him and for themselves. Because the way you dress sends messages about yourself to others and often influences the way you and others act, you should dress in such a way as to bring out the best in yourself and those around you. However, if you wear an immodest bathing suit because it's "the style," it sends a message that you are using your body to get attention and approval, and that modesty is not important.

Immodest clothing includes short shorts, tight pants, and other revealing attire. Young women should refrain from wearing off-the-shoulder, low-cut, or revealing clothes. Young men should similarly maintain modesty in their dress. All should avoid tight fitting or revealing clothes and extremes in clothing and appearance.

As Latter-day Saint youth, you can also show respect for the Lord and yourselves by dressing appropriately for Church meetings and activities, whether on Sunday or during the week. If you are not sure what's appropriate, ask for guidelines from your parents, advisers, and bishop.

I then showed the girls pictures of women wearing immodest clothing and asked them what was wrong with what these women wore. They quickly caught on with things like: her shoulders are naked or her skirt is too short. I think it helped to see the models instead of just talking about the clothing.

Next we had the girls pair up, this was done with assistance as two girls both wanted to be partners with the same girl. They traced out one of them on newsprint and were told to create a modest outfit using scrapbook paper, crayons, glue, glitter, yarn, pipe cleaners, etc. They worked together in these little teams which was great. Everyone seemed to get their creative juices flowing. It was a good activity which kept them happy while learning at the same time.

This idea came from http://ldsactivitydayideas.blogspot.com/2009/09/modesty.html

Activity Days: Articles of Faith

Our new years resolution for Activity Days is to focus more on the Articles of Faith. I've found this past year that we have fulfilled many of the areas for the Faith in God award but have somewhat neglected our focus on the Articles of Faith. We have added two girls to our group making our current roll call up to 10 girls ages between 8 and 9 years old and what a crew!!! Today I focused our attention on the Articles of Faith by first giving the girls the challenge to memorize all the Articles of Faith by the end of the year. I offered them a small treat at the beginning of each of our activities if they can recite one article of faith perfectly to me. I am hoping that after a few people start passing them off the others will feel the motivation if needed. We then played an Article of Faith matching game. I found this activity in the October 1996 Friend magazine which I printed off and glued to card stock, it was a bit small so I would enlarge it if you plan on using it. After our experience with the girls not really quite knowing the Articles of Faith yet, the idea at sugardoodle.net of using just the Article of Faith number and a keyword would have worked out better, especially with the review at the beginning. I also made flash cards of the Articles of Faith for the girls to use at home. This seemed to take up most all of our time and we weren't able to get to any other activities but there are plenty more games/activities using Articles of Faith that you can find.

Activity Days: Christmas Orange & Symbols of Christmas

The girls started out by watching the DVD of the Christmas Oranges. It was a very sweet story and a great book for children. The girls all talked about how it made them feel inside. Sue had a packet for each girl with symbols for Christmas including a copy of the document from Especially for Mormons describing each symbol and the purpose behind them. The girls colored, cut out their symbols and placed them back in the packets to share with their families for Family Home Evening. We also had sugar cookies to decorate at the end.

Activity Days: Sewing wonderful pigs

For Activity Days this week we read this little book, the Wonderful Pigs of Jillian Jiggs about a little girl named Jillian Jiggs and her amazing pigs that she makes from old stockings. We then followed the instructions at the back of the book making the wonderful pigs. There is a lot of learning for the girls to do and I thought it would be a great way for them to learn a little bit about sewing. It ended up taking about 1hour and 45 minutes rather than a regular hour long. The girls still seemed to enjoy themselves. They learned how to sew a button on, a running stitch, they either drew or stitched on a mouth and tied on little feet. A couple of the girls really got into it but some just wanted to have the finished pig handed to them. I think it ended up being a learning experience for all of us.

Activity Days: Temples

We took the girls over to the temple grounds and walked around so they could see the different symbols, talked about getting a temple recommend, worthiness, sealings, eternal families and baptisms for the dead by proxy. There was a couple who came out all decked out in their wedding apparel. This was a great way for the girls to realize that one day they wanted to walk out of the temple doors with their husband too! We then took them a little further away from the temple and took pictures of the girls with the temple in the background. The small visitors center has lots of things to help us learn more about the temple. We watched a video regarding the sanctity of families and the importance of eternal families. The girls loved looking at the Christus and we took a group picture in front after listening to the presentation by the sister missionaries.

Activity Days: Prayer

This idea came from: LDSActivityDayIdeas.blogspot.com

We began by discussing when to pray and remember to really talk with our Heavenly Father instead of just saying the same thing over and over. We gave the girls a paper and pencil. We told them to take a few minutes and write down the things they could pray about. We then had them share their first idea with the group. We then talked about how sometimes we can't hear the Spirit, even though we are doing good things.

We did a coupl object lessons to help them understand these concepts a little better. First: We told them it was Saturday and that we they preparing for Sunday by playing church music - the church music represented the spirit of the Holy Ghost. Using a CD player we played a song quietly for a second. Then we had one of the girls turn a vacuum on. We could no longer hear the music so we turned it up above the noise of the vacuum. While that was going, we had another girl play with the baby. We then had the other girls talk with each other but no one could hear! Although everything that was going on were good things, when we don't take time to listen and pay attention to the spirit, we will let the world distract us from our what our Heavenly Father has to teach us.

Second: We paired the girls off in two with partners that they don't normally hang around with. We gave them about 1 minute to talk to each other, study each others voices and come up with a plan. They were going to have to find each other without saying each others names and without seeing each other. We then had one girl from each partnership go with me and the other with my partner. We had took them in my backyard and blindfolded them. They then were told to find each other. They loved it! We told them this was like trying to listen to the spirit and recognizing it.

Next we had the girls come inside and decorate prayer rocks. That got a little crazy with painting and all but they enjoyed themselves. I hope they remembered a little about what they learned about prayer and now are to say the prayers for FHE to pass off Learning and Living the Gospel #5.