Search for the Treasure within (Night of Excellence)

For Night of Excellence this year the girls chose the theme "Search for the treasure within" and wanted to use a "pirate" theme as well. 

Our invitations were placed in bottles and made to look like an old treasure map

For our program we kept it pretty short and sweet. Each of the presidency took a few minutes to speak on 1. what is our treasure 2. how do we find it 3. what do we do with it once we've found it. 

Then they (parents and YW) were divided into team and given their first clue for their treasure hunt. The clues were the scriptures given in the PP book under each value. We had 8 rooms decorated in the value color and a treasure chest on a table with a treasure they took with them. Also on the table was their next clue. They went from room to room collecting their treasures and then ended up back in the RS room for the end of our program and refreshments.

Each class took a few values and were responsible for decorating their table and figuring out the treasure that went with it. 

Faith

 

for the treasure we did light bulb vases

Divine Nature

The treasure here was a little tiara

Knowledge

The treasure here was a little thing of Smarties

Integrity

Virtue

Good Works

Choice & Accountability

Individual Worth

This was our display table where the girls put out what they have been working on for the year

These are the treasure boxes the girls took with them to fill with their treasure

And our refreshment table

At the end of our program we had a special treat for the YW. I'm sure you've all see the videos out there of YM singing "You don't know your beautiful" for the YW, well we had our YM do the same and the girls absolutely LOVED it!!! We had to watch it twice it was so good. 

It turned out to be a really fun evening and one I hope the girls will remember for a long time. 

The treasure chest on the tables in the rooms and the mini treasure chest were all found at Oriental Trading. 

General Conf. treat

I like to bring the girls a little something right before Conf. to help them get the most of it and just for fun. This year we brought by a mini box of cereal and a worksheet for the girls to complete and if they did there was a reward. 

I did have to pay up on some rewards was a very good thing. 

here is where I found the worksheet

Missing

Where the heck have I been?????? Well to tell you the truth up to my eyeballs in planning. Since I've been put in as YW president my time to go through the lessons and come up with ideas has been severley cut. So I apologize to those who come back to my blog looking for lesson helps and find nothing more has been posted. 

I've been thinking as well that it may be the end to my lesson help posts because of the new ciriculum starting in January. If you haven't seen what will be changing be sure to visit the churches web site for LOTS of details. 

I am actually really excited for the change. I feel it is so much more personal for the girls and they wil feel more invested in the lessons because they are the ones helping to decide what will be taught. 

So, because we will all be teaching different things and because it's suppose to be a more personal lesson, this is the end of lesson helps. Of course there is still Sugardoodle which is an A.M.A.Z.I.N.G 

resource so be sure to go there for additonal help. 

Now this isn't to say that this is the end of this blog for me. I have LOTS of activities in the works and will be posting those as they happen or as I have time before to show you what I'm up to. 

Here's a peek at what I've go going on.

Our night of Excellence is coming up next week and this is the invite we gave each of the girls. 

We rolled these up and tied them with twine and put them in plastic bottles (which we found at Oriental Trading) with a little sand. 

more details to come

 I am also in charge of the Youth Leadership training/planning in our ward. This is the invite I did for each class presidency member which I also stuck on a plastic fork. A little more memorable than just a piece of paper.

The theme came from Sister In Zion as well as the training outline. 

also coming up the Laurels are in charge of the joint activity this month and they chose to do a Murder Mystery dinner. They are very excited about this and I know it will be a lot of fun. 

The YW are also in charge of our ward Christmas party this year and we have a fun one planned. 

We are doing "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" which will be a narrators play where everyone is encouraged to participate. 

So as you can see I have a lot on my plate and will have a lot of fun things to share so please be patient with me and I promise to try to keep you updated as these activities happen. 

Thank you to all those who leave me such sweet comments, they all mean so much.

Temple Marriage Activity

 This one of my favorite activities we've done so far. This came about because we had to skip the temple marriage lesson in the manual due to our stake leaders coming to teach that Sunday. As a presidency we all felt this was one of the MOST important lessons in the manual and we either needed to fit it in with the Sunday lessons or address it another way.

  Years ago I had found this idea through someone else serving in YW's and new it would be perfect for teaching the importance of a temple marriage. I'm sorry I can't give credit to the person who did this originally. This was also an activity we invited the mothers to as well.

Our invitations were wedding announcements, worded like an announcement, fancy font, etc. (sorry I didn't take a picture of ours) We went with a yellow and pink color scheme because we wanted to keep the yellow from our Arise and Shine theme for the year.

The basic outline of the evening was that we would divide into three groups. We would have three rooms set up to rotate to. One room was set up for the girls to try on wedding dresses and have their pictures taken. We send around a sign up sheet in Relief Society and Primary for anyone willing to loan us their wedding dress for the evening and had a great response. I think we had about 10 different dresses for the girls to choose from. We also are lucky enough to have someone who takes really good pictures.

Another room we had someone in the ward who was married in the temple, has had their children marry in the temple and has grandchildren speak. She spoke about how making the choice to married in the temple has influenced her children and the way she lives her life. She decorated her room to look "homey", while she spoke she turned the room lights off and only had on a lamp. She brought in one of the armchairs from the foyer and had lots of family pictures on the table.

The last room was the reception area and in here we had a women who was recently married in the temple speak about the decisions she made to make it to the temple and how making decisions young that the temple is your goal influenced how she lived her life. 

We also had all the YW leaders bring their wedding pictures and any other memorabilia they had to display. The girls LOVED to look at how different their leaders looked "back then". 

After all the classes we met back in the reception area for cake and a sweets bar. 

Isn't this cake amazing. One of our yw's mothers does cake decorating, lucky us!!

And of course we had to have our tables look like they might at a wedding reception

We got really great feed back from the girls about this night, as well as from their mothers. I hope they each made a greater resolve to live worthy to be married in the temple. 

Lesson 39/Manual 1

Lesson 39  Drug Abuse

If I have a theme for the lesson it really helps me with what kind of direction I go and gives me ideas for handouts. 

My sister taught this lesson a few weeks ago and passed on a great idea. She found some research that had been done on spiders. What they found was pretty amazing. 

They filled a fly with a certain drug like LSD and then waited to see what kind of web they spun. The results spoke for themselves. HERE is a link to one of the sites that had the results. You can also Google "spiders on drugs" to find some more. 

The spider results would be perfect to present at the beginning of Consequences of Drug Abuse

So with that I would use a spider theme with my lesson and since Halloween decor is coming out you shouldn't have any trouble finding spiders. I found a box of 150 spiders in the dollar bins at Target that would be perfect to attach to quotes or scriptures for the girls to read in class. 

I would also use a spider web table runner that I found at HomeGoods or you can make your own. 

HERE are instructions for the how to.

This arrangement would be really fun to have on the table as well.

image source

And these would be the perfect handout. I've seen them at Michaels and Joanns and you can also find them on Amazon HERE. They are little spider web treat boxes & spider cellophane bags which you could fill with anything. 

Here are a few printables for the lesson as well.

download HERE

download HERE

download HERE

If you are unable to download any of these email me (email can be found on the sidebar)

and I'll be happy to send them to you directly.

Have a great lesson!!

*** added 9/13/12

As I was putting some of my kids books away one that came into my hands was "The Spider & the Fly". This lesson then popped in my head and I knew it would be a perfect way to show them how Satan uses subtle ways to get us into his web. How he uses a little flattery and how if we listen we'll keep coming back. If you haven't read this book you really should.