Young Women in Excellence 2013

We had a really great Young Women in Excellence last night! Our theme was purse-sonal progress. Photos speak volumes, so here they are!

The invitation:

The set-up:

The program:

We showed this video--I love this story and the church did a great job putting it in video form, as usual.

Here was the highlight of the evening: instead of table displays of the girls' accomplishments, we rounded up as many cute and colorful purses as we could find, then gave a purse to each of the girls the Sunday before our event. We asked the girls to put their personal progress accomplishments INSIDE the purse, and asked them not to put their names with their stuff. All the purses were gathered back up, then placed on the tables at YWIE. After we showed the video, we had each girl and her parents take a purse that was not her own, and review its contents. Then they got to guess whose purse it was. When they guess correctly, the YW owner of the purse stood and told what each item meant. It was a fun way to spotlight each girls' personal progress accomplishments. We have a ward full of amazingly talented young women!

It seems like our program had a lot of speakers, but each were brief (me, the Stake YW Presidency, the ward YW President, and the Bishop).

The girls each got to take home a paper purse.

Inside the purse were items found in most purses, but with a YW value twist!

White tissues because when we have faith to share our testimony, we sometimes shed tears.
Blue mirror to remind them that they are created in God's image.
Red coin purse to remind them that their worth is priceless.
Green notebook so they can write down all the knowledge that comes to mind.
Orange gum to remind them to "chews" the right.
Yellow hand sanitizer to help them keep hands clean while they continue to use their hands to serve.
Purple chapstick to remind them to speak with integrity.
Gold temple recommend because maintaining virtue will help lead them to the temple.

UPDATE: You can find all the labels here, but keep in mind that some labels might not fit because all products/brands are different.

You can download the purse invitation and program here. I did not use the side gusset.

You can download the paper purse take-home gift here. I enlarged it to fit a 12x12 paper.

Our treats were amazing (put together by our YW presidency). I wish I had a picture of the table with all the cookies, but some cookies arrived a few minutes before we started and I was too busy talking to snap a photo. You get the idea though.

It was a fun, fun night!

Halloween Personal Progress Reminder

I'm changing things up a little with personal progress.

Last month, our ward had a meeting for all adults during the 3rd hour of church. The focus of this meeting was the youth. The Sunday School president taught most of the meeting, with help from the Young Women's president and Young Men's president. The gist of the meeting was this: each auxiliary exists for the FAMILY. Personal progress was specifically mentioned as a PARENT/youth program. It struck me that I've been so focused on helping the young women with personal progress, that I've neglected to include their mothers in the program.

So here's what I'm going to do. Once a month or so, I'll give the mothers a reminder to have a sit-down with their daughters. Here's the reminder I gave them this month:

I gave it to the mothers with specific instructions to share the treat with their daughter while they are reviewing her personal progress. Crossing my fingers that it works....

Personal Progress Sit 'n Sip

Many of the value experiences overlap, so I figured: Why not combine a few experiences into one night? We worked on:

Faith 2
Divine Nature 2
Knowledge 1
Integrity 4

Each value experience has to do with motherly advice, so we had a kinda-tea party. Except without tea. And the big hats. And the fancy accents.

We had four stations, divided the girls into four groups, and let them have 10 minutes at each group. At each table we had one FANTASTICLY qualified woman who lead a short discussion on each topic.

Each of the four tables had tiered plates with tea party-type food (little brownies, mini cream puffs, raspberries, and strawberries). They also had journal pages at their tables.

This activity would have been perfect for May to coordinate with Mother's Day. Or the summertime would have fit well too. As it turns out, the day of this activity the weather turned very cold and we got our first snowfall in the mountains! Shoulda served a hot chocolate bar. Or maybe I should pocket that idea for next July....?

Meet Elizabeth

Let me introduce you to my daughter, Elizabeth.

This beautiful, sweet girl earned her Young Women Medallion not once, but TWICE! She also earned her honor bee. The second time she earned her medallion, she was a senior in high school. I tell you this because if you have young women who are 16 or even 17 and think it's too late to be working on personal progress, NOT SO! In fact, maybe earning a personal progress medallion is easier the second time around because the program is familiar. We have another young woman in our ward who is also working on her second medallion!

Here's how Elizabeth did it:

She reviewed the personal progress book and highlighted every page. She highlighted scriptures to look up in blue. She highlighted actions items (talk to someone, write in journal, share testimony, etc.) in orange. Green items are time-sensitive. Yellow highlights was a personal indication of "I'm planning on doing this one." Her hand-written notes indicate that two value experiences overlap.

Most of her value projects had something to do with activities she was already involved in: Student council, community orchestra, etc. Some included new skills, like learning to knit an infinity scarf.

In this photo she is holding her new cookbook, a gift from our family. The page is opened to a recipe and picture of her with her young women president.

Last week I dropped Elizabeth off at college. Man, I miss her!

 

Personal Progress Popcorn

About once a month I invite all the young women to come to my home and work on personal progress. I usually don't make special invitations and the night is totally optional. Next week, however, I have asked ALL of them to come because I want to talk to each of them about what they are working on for Young Women in Excellence (which is going to be totally awesome--it's already in the works).

I found the greatest popcorn handout, but it was originally produced as a thank you. You can find it here. I thought the popcorn kernel idea fit so well with personal progress, so after emailing Ellie, she gave me permission to re-create her cute handout. Thank you Ellie!

Click here for a copy in Microsoft Publisher (this will allow you to modify it).

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.