Knowledge #2

I'll be honest, this activity did not go the way I imagined it in my head. Not even close. The young women were super excited about this activity. I was super, DUPER excited about this activity. But three hours into the activity--yes, THREE hours--the girls started to lose steam. If you do the math, you'll realize I had these Beehives--who just started school--at the church until 10 pm. As a mom of teenage daughters, this is a huge no-no for young women activities.

Let me explain what our activity was. Then I'll tell you what I'd do differently to make the activity work within the hour/hour-and-a-half time frame.

Knowledge #2 value experience requires the young women to "list the talents [they] have and others [they'd] like to develop." Then they need to "learn a new skill or talent that will help [them] care for [their] future family or home." We taught them some basic sewing skills by making string backpacks out of old t-shirts (handy as they just went back to school). A HUGE thank you to my handsome nephews--Cole, Daniel, Caleb, Quaid, Michael, and Nash--for donating tons of t-shirts for my young women to choose from.

I was hoping to get a picture of all the girls with their backpacks, but by the time they were done they had to head home as quickly as possible. So I just got a picture of my daughter (who is a Beehive) modeling her backpack. She had to wait for me to cleanup anyway.

The bags turned out WAY CUTE and the girls seemed very happy with their creations. You can find the directions to the bags here. So if I were doing this activity within the time frame, I'd either take two activity nights to finish, or I'd do steps 1-5 for them before the activity.

Because all the girls couldn't sew or cut at the same time (we had three sewing machines and three cutting boards), I had some girls working on their list of talents.

I created these forms just a little smaller in size than their personal progress journals so they could glue or tape them into their journals when they got home. I loved the quote from Elder Ashton that said being able to weep is a gift. Who knew? That's definitely one of my gifts.

You can download the talent forms here.

Smart Cookie

It's been a while since I've given the young women a personal progress reminder/incentive, so I thought back-to-school season would be the perfect time! I wanted to remind them that lots of the value experiences and projects are meant to be accomplished at school.
 

I baked them each a giant cookie, then placed the cookies in wax bags and sealed them with this cute washi tape.

After reviewing the personal progress book, I realized that lots of the value experiences and value projects mention it should be done at school. So I made a list of those on the back of the tag.

Our ward likes to keep Sunday treats to a minimum, so my initial idea was to give the girls hand sanitizer because in junior high, what girl wouldn't want herself some sweet-smelling hands? So here's what my first idea looked like:

I ended up not loving this idea as much as the cookie, but if you're interested you can find these mini hand sanitizers at Bath and Body Works.

Feel free to use the tags! PDF copy here.