Girls' Activity Day

Every two weeks I am responsible to put on a 75 minute activity program for the Church girls ages 8-11. I'm supposed to have an assistant but I don't. Every time I feel stressed out as I try to decide what to do for the girls. I have a booklet that has goals the girls are to accomplish before their 12th birthday. I get good ideas from the book, but I've cherry picked my favorites already, as I've had this position for a year and a half.

Today was Activity Day and when I woke up this morning I still didn't know what I was going to do for the girls' lesson/activity and no idea what the snack was going to be.

I got online and came across a site dedicated to Activity Day. Reading through it gave me the idea that we should be working on one of the Articles of Faith each time, as the girls need to memorize all thirteen before they turn twelve. I can do that.

We worked on the second Article of Faith and I read them an illustrated story about Adam and Eve and talked about why LDS babies are not baptized and why some other churches believe they should be. I reminded them they should always be respectful of others' beliefs when explaining why we believe the way we do.

The blog gave me an idea to teach about properly setting a table. I got out samples of all our standard and nonstandard table utensils and showed them to the girls as I put them in place and they drew pictures of the proper table setting. That kept their hands busy while I talked and demonstrated.

When I went to the store today to pick up some milk I still didn't know what our snack was going to be. When I saw the beautiful strawberries on sale, I decided to serve strawberry shortcake. As soon as I got home I mixed up a cake and got it into the oven. Thank goodness for Betty Crocker.A tub of whipped topping and Grandma to clean, slice, and sugar the strawberries and we were set. It was a hit with all but one of the eight girls.

Once again another successful Activity Day has passed. My own girls were really sorry when everyone left and wanted "the party" to have lasted longer. Success!