Halloween Fun

We have had so many serious activities lately that we thought a fun Halloween project would be fun! In addition, the girls wanted to just talk and play....so this activity really allowed the girls to spend time doing that but also complete the activity.  I based the activity around 4 main activities:

The Halloween Name Game
When the girls arrived, I pinned fun Halloween characters on their backs. The girls then had to go around asking people yes/no questions to try and figure out who they were. They loved this.

Jack-o-Lantern Lanterns craft
 
For this craft, you need jam canning jars, orange tissue paper, printed jack-o-lantern face, modge podge, finishing spray, orange/black ribbon, and candles.

1. Brush modge podge over surface of jar.  Tear tissue paper into pieces and place on wet modge podge (the thinner the layer the better.) Brush another layer of modge podge over tissue paper. Add face, brush over modge podge. Let dry.
2. When thoroughly dry, spray with finishing spray.  Trim top of jar with ribbon. (Do this before dry or you will need additional ribbon. Place candle in jar. Done.


Cookie decorating
The girls decorated pre-made pumpkin cookies with candy and frosting.

Halloween Tales  
I let the girls pick from a bag lines that would help them write a scary paragraph or two. The handed these in and then I strung the paragraphs into a single story which I made a copy for each of the girls that I gave to them the next Sunday.

Here are a few of the story starters:

As I carefully entered the haunted house, the door shut behind me and...
It was a cold Halloween night when...
The black cat started to hiss when...
The large cauldron of purple liquid started to boil when...
The mad scientist was creating a new monster that...
Something in the closet was making a strange noise so I opened the door and...
On October 31st, I was carving a pumpkin when...
The Halloween pumpkin slowly transformed into...

Plan To. . .

The start of this wonderful idea kind of took off on its own, but thank you to a post on ldsactivitydays.blogspot.com!

So the girls arrived and we announced we were going to make a cookies without a recipe! They were so psyched! It was pretty funny... they wanted absolutely no salt... and then they couldn't decide how much flour or eggs... and kept adding extra ingredients. The real clincher. . . . they actually got the heat right on the oven, but decided to bake it for 30 minutes!!! Yep! It turned out completely burned... and I actually had to throw out the cookie sheet. I couldn't get the darn cookies off!

So while it was cooking, we carried on the following discussion:

Does it make sense to make cookies without a recipe? Only maybe if you are a cook, right. But even then a good cook has a reference and experience in order to do it without a recipe. Even then, sometimes a good cook’s recipe can be off.

What are the differences do you think will be in the two recipes? Discuss this.

Just like those differences in the recipes, do you think it is important that we have a plan for our lives? Have we been given a plan? (The plan of Salvation. It would be handy to have a copy of these they can practice putting in order.) What is the ultimate purpose in the plan in salvation? To return to our Heavenly Father. Do you know how we return to our Heavenly Father?

1. Faith
2. Repentance
3. Baptism
4. Gift of the Holy Ghost
5. Endowment
6. Marriage/Sealing in the temple (Can we go to the temple on the spur of the moment? Are there things we have to do in order to go to the temple?)
7. Enduring to the end

These are pretty big steps. Can we easily veer off course? So the easiest way to remedy it is to set a goal and have a plan that you can implement for the rest of your life.

“With every choice in life, we are not merely choosing things or events. We are choosing ourselves, for just as surely as we shape life, it shapes us.” Robert L. Backman

So tonight, we want you each to set two or three long term goals such as marriage in the temple, serving a mission, etc. For a page in your notebook, we have a piece of paper for you to put in that you can write down those goals. If you can’t think of one or don’t want to share, you can fill that part of your notebook later. Then after you have written those, we would like you to make a goal to complete your Faith in God award.

So now that each of you wants to do this…. We want a little bit of your help. As your leaders, we need to plan activities. We don’t know what you have done or where you are at. So we have a generic activities sheet that will help us find more about what kinds of activities you enjoy, what you have done, etc. So once you are done filling out your notebook. Fill out our activity sheet. Then we will have a little bit of discussion at the end.

Discuss the last few questions on the activity sheet.

Talk about how important responsibility and leadership is. Explain their roles in making activity days a success.

Finally the girls received a copy of the recipe and were able to make a decent batch of cookies!!!

"Getting to Know You" Kickoff

Our stake recently had major boundary changes, creating a brand new ward. Since both of us activity day leaders are new, we decided to plan a "getting to know you" activity.

To break the ice and to get to know the girls better, we played the following games:

Fruit Basket: Everyone sits in a circle. Each person chooses a fruit. They can be the same as others or different. One person is in the middle. The person in the middle yells out a fruit, fruits or fruit basket (which means everyone has to move). Those people whose fruit it is must get up and find another seat. This repeats for as long as you like.

M&M game: A bag of M&M's is passed around to all the girls. The girls may take as many as they would like, but there is a catch. Once everyone has their M&M's (and they cannot eat them until the game is over), each girl must tell something about themselves for every M&M they grabbed.

Getting to Know You Exchange: Each girl is given a list of questions such as find someone you go to school with, find someone who has a birthday the same month as you, find someone who likes to sing. These are easy to make up and adjust to the group in your ward. The girls are then given a time limit and must answer all the questions.

After the games, we had them create Activity Day Notebooks that they will use throughout their activities. It was really simple and easy.

For each girl, you will need one lab notebook, two sheets of 12x12 scrapbook paper, a glue stick and a nameplate.

First, line your scrapbook paper up with the back of the binding of the notebook. Place glue next to the binding. Fold the scrapbook paper into the inside of the notebook, but do not glue yet.

Next, fold the edges of the notebook in. Glue those edges. Then fold the large part of the paper over. Glue. Let dry.

Repeat both steps for the back cover. Finally, attach with glue the nameplate to the cover.

During the time that we created these, we reviewed their Faith in God notebooks.