Our Y.W. and R.S. had a joint meeting where they discussed the "necessities" of what all girls should know: cleaning, sewing/mending, etc. Then we had skills contests like: sewing on a button, setting a formal table setting, adding a contact in a cell phone, jumping rope, peeling potatoes, ironing a shirt, finding information on the internet, sorting cooking measures, and folding laundry.

They divided into teams for nearly equal R.S. and Y.W. in each group. There were tables set up around the gym, and you had 5 minutes at each station, with 2-3 contests during that time. It was a Y.W. vs. R.S. lady. The person manning each station kept score. When each group had made it around the gym, they totaled the scores to see who won each skill!

It was fun to get to have girls of all ages having fun together in friendly competition. It was fun to go up against a beehive while jumping rope and facing off against a Laurel to search the internet for which new temples were announced in Oct. conference.

Last night we had a mother/daughter dinner. It was a lovely evening. Our class presidency planned it and made assignments. They did all of the cooking and we ate outdoors. Plastic was down on the picnic tables and the girls fed us enchiladas and salad and lemonade. Brownies for dessert!

After dinner we played a version of the Newlywed Game where there were ten questions about the daughters and ten about the mothers. Then answers were tallied and shared. Hilarious!

Some of the questions about the daughters included: What is your daughter's least favorite chore? Who is your daughter's best friend? What does your daughter want to be when she grows up? Moms and daughters both answered the questions (daughters about themselves, obviously). Some of the questions about the Mothers included: When is your mother's birthday (including year!)? What actor does your Mom find attractive? When is your parent's wedding anniversary? Again, both answered the questions - this time Moms about themselves.

Simple activity and a lot of fun!

Have a speaker come talk to the youth about choice & accountability and then do a Mystery Meal. This is a meal where you give each of the youth a menu and they select everything they want for each course - but the menu items are obscure so the youth aren't quite sure what they are getting.

You can set up the menu so that items are listed by type (appetizer, main course, dessert) or you can just let them select whatever for each course not knowing if they'll get ice cream for a main course. You can also have the eating utensils on the menu or not. It's up to you. Here are some examples I found online (feel free to make up your own!):

A Sleep Relative = A NapKin
Shovel = Spoon
Hay Stacker, That Thing in the Road or Neptune's Trident = Fork
Chip off the Old Block = Toothpick
Dipper = Ladle
Flipper = Spatula
Greaser = Knife

Eve's Temptation = Apple Juice
Farmer's Friend = Water
Pucker Power = Lemonade

Polly's Delight = Crackers

A Wedding Tradition = Rice

Smiles Galore = Cheese

Cup of Cure = Chicken Noodle Soup

Hole-in-One = Olives

Tubular = Pasta

Chicken in a Basket = Deviled Eggs

A Small Raise = Bread

KP's Agony = Potatoes

Son of Noah = Ham

Roly Poly = Grapes

Bumps on a Log = Corn on the Cob

Yuck & Yum = Broccoli & Cheese

What's up Doc? = Carrots

Peter Rabbit's Favorite = Salad

Vegas Mormon = Cantaloupe

Foreign Money = French Bread

Mr. Wiggles = Gummy Worms

Batter Up = Cake

Don't Have a Cow = Ice Cream

George's Delight = Cherry Dessert

Tall, Dark & Handsome = Chocolate Cake

This is a good activity for older Mia Maids and Laurels. Have a "how to get a job" night. Have classes on job searching, filling out applications (making sure they are complete, what everything means, proper writing style... hint: no abbreviations or text-ese, etc.), how to interview (how to dress appropriately for an interview, what to say, etc.), and how to be a good employee and a hard worker.

If you have someone in your ward who hires/fires people in their job, ask them to speak about what they look for in hiring, and why people get fired. If you don't have people who do that in your ward, ask the employment specialist in your ward, or invite someone in management from local stores to come speak to the girls. You might also consider inviting more than one manager to get different perspectives since each type of job is different: fast food or restaurant vs. other retail stores.
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How to Get Any Job: Life Launch and Re-Launch for Everyone Under 30 (or How to Avoid Living in Your Parents' Basement)

Have people from your ward who served missions set up a display with their mission memories: pictures, cultural clothing, art pieces; anything that they brought home from their mission that shows the place they served. Also, have them bring some food from the country or area for the girls to sample.

Allow the girls about 10 minutes to look at the displays, then have each person give a 5 minute talk about where they served, what they learned about the people, culture, and of course, their testimony about serving. After the presentations, have a Q&A session with the presenters. Follow that with food sampling.

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Missionary: Impossible LDS Game

We had a wonderful activity last night that I wanted to share. We had a panel with the bishopric's wives. They brought their wedding pictures and dresses and had them in the room. We had a jar that the girls put questions in for them to answer - we told the girls they could ask questions about friendship, dating or marriage.

They started out by sharing their engagement stories & their wedding day and then answered the questions from the jar which were things like: How old should you be before you get your first kiss? And, how old should you be to get married?

It was really fun & spiritual and the girls absolutely loved it!

We ended with a nice dessert & gave the girls temple hangers. We told the girls to hang their them in their closet only surrounded by modest clothing so that every day when they see it they will be reminded that they are daughters of God. They will remember what they stand for and of their goal to go through the temple someday.

-Tabitha

As the girls prepare for their future, learning to cook is very important!! Many girls are learning how to cook at home, or perhaps you've had a cooking night for an activity. A fun activity is to have a tasting night and recipe swap to encourage the girls to try new foods, and to learn to enjoy cooking.

Have each girl bring 5 recipes (you can have them bring less if you have a lot of girls in your group), and have them cook and bring one for everyone to taste. For the 5 recipes, have them bring them in different categories: drinks, salads, main dish, cookie, dessert, etc. Either purchase cute recipe cards, or bring the large size index cards for the girls to copy recipes on. Or, have the recipes typed up and copied so they can cut out and glue or tape the recipe on the card.

For a craft, the girls can paint their own recipe box.

Have a banker, financial adviser, or other person with a good knowledge of finances come talk to the girls about money: how to manage it, save it, and how interest works, and the like. This activity should include things like: paying tithing first, how to manage a check book, how interest works when you save, and credit interest, budgeting, and how to save etc.

Here's a link to some Church resources on this topic! Here's a link to a lesson in the Young Women manual (Manual 2) on this topic!

See Personal Progress Choice & Accountability, Value Experience #7 and Knowledge, Value Experience #2

Some girls are experts at styling their hair. Others... not so much. Have a "hair" night! Invite ladies in your ward who are expert braid-ers, up-do-ers, and curl-ers, and ask those girls who always seem to have perfect hair to share what they do and how they do it! Let the girls practice on each other, or let them practice on themselves so they can learn how to do it for themselves! It's a fun way for the girls to interact with each other, and helps those who struggle with their hair, by giving them ideas, tips, and confidence to try something new.

There are some other ideas in this "Makeover Night" post!

*When you advertise this activity, you may want to put a note asking all the girls to come with freshly washed hair!

So I recently joined my sister in creating a Sharing Station for BYU Women's Conference (the link will work once our booth is posted). It was quite the project! The theme was "How do you spell love? T*I*M*E" from President Uchtdorf's talk in October Conference, 2010.

Because our theme was about TIME, one of our objects for our table was a clock. I really wanted a "Families are Forever" clock, but I also wanted it to match the color scheme of our booth. SO, I decided to make my own clock face.

This would be a simple project to do with the YW and they could put the yearly theme - or a favorite scripture - or whatever they want on the face of their clock. HERE is the .jpg for the one I made for the booth. HERE is one with this year's theme. Feel free to use either or to make your own template! Here are a couple of blank templates: | TEMPLATE 1 | TEMPLATE 2 |  You can download them and add your own graphics, words, etc.*

I found instructions HERE and followed them almost completely. Before you do this, I highly recommend their advice of purchasing a clock with a PLASTIC face (I am speaking from broken glass experience on this one). The project is fairly straight forward. You remove the plastic cover with a butter knife, turn the hands to 12 and carefully slide them off, insert your new clock face (gluing if necessary), put everything back together and voila!

* Photoshop hint: If you want to do the letters around in a circle in Photoshop simply create a circle path and then select your horizontal text tool and type onto the path - it will follow the circle!

We did this as an activity days group, but it would be fun with YW too!

In a nutshell, geocaching uses a GPS or GPS enabled phone to locate "treasure" that has been specifically hidden for this activity.



Where I live, the geocache trail is in a large park. We got the co-ordinates from THIS WEBSITE. You start with one set of coordinates, then you find the hidden object that contains the next set of coordinates. I believe we had to find 4 sets of coordinates before finding the treasure. There may not be a geocache in all areas.

The coordinates and treasure can be hidden in all sorts of ways. We found one set of coordinates rolled into an old film container and hung in a pine tree. One was in a water proof plastic pouch that was magnetically held on a metal box. The treasure, or cache, was in a big coffee can, hidden in a rocky outcropping.



Inside the cache were all sorts of silly objects: golf balls, a mirror, a small compass, and things like that. If you take treasure, you must put something in the container for someone else to find. There should also be a "guest book" to sign. It's fun to see where people have come from, who also found the cache!

I'm a big believer in teaching the girls practical homemaking skills in a fun way. Sewing is one of those arts that is fast disappearing. Let the girls pick from some simple projects: tote bag, apron, shorts, pajama pants, simple skirt, stuffed animals, quilt blocks for a humanitarian quilt, etc. Some church buildings have sewing machines in the R.S. room, but you can ask ladies in the ward who sew if they would come and bring their machines and help teach the girls.It was fun seeing the girls enjoy sewing and making something that was fun and useful.

Another night could be about hand sewing and how to mend, sew on buttons, cross-stitch, and simple craft sewing (like felt Christmas ornaments).

We had a sister in our ward come speak to the YW. She had served a mission and talked with us about what the YW needed to do to prepare to serve a mission. She explained that we prepare for a mission the same way we prepare to go to the temple and talked about how the YW didn't need to make the decision today. Then she shared some of her mission experiences.

The YW made a care package for a sister missionary who was serving from our ward. We asked her Mom ahead of time some of her favorite treats, etc. We also played a trivia game with questions from For the Strength of Youth.

This is really good for all the girls to know, but especially those of driving age. We did this for a R.S. activity once too and it was well received! This was a required learning experience for me and my sister before we could get our licenses, and it amazes me how many of my kids' friends do not know how to change a tire, but they all drive. What will they do in an emergency?

Have a brother in the ward, or a couple of them, come teach the girls about basic car maintenance: how to check the oil and other fluids (as well as adding fluids when needed), and how to change a tire. The girls will have a test on the information. So have the demonstrations, then take the girls one or two at a time and have them actually do everything: check the oil, fluids, and change a tire.

We picked up a lot of large boxes (appliance boxes) from a local appliance store. We brought craft items - duct tape, scissors, markers, colored paper, etc. for decorating. We let the YW decorate their "cars" however they wanted. We had cars, the Bedknobs & Broomstick bed, the tardis, etc.

We had movie snacks and watched a church video and the YW loved it!

One of our young women had tested, compiled, and published a book of recipes for one of her value projects. Quite an accomplishment! For another value project, she taught a combined mutual activity on the basics of cooking. She had the girls put together a meal of chili, cheese biscuits, and a homemade punch. As she helped each group with their tasks, she talked about basic kitchen skills such as measuring, reading a recipe, quick pantry meals that they could do without help, and how to use kitchen equipment and utensils. At the end of the evening, they were able to sample their work! (which was quite yummy!)

We divided up into cars. Each car had a coin. We told the YW we were going to see if we could get to the temple and then at each intersection we would have the YW flip a coin. We would go right or left depending on the coin flip.

After driving around for awhile, we met back at the home of one of the leaders and talked about how getting to the temple cannot happen by chance - it is a choice and requires preparation. Then we watched John Bytheway's Standards Night Live. Simple, with a powerful message.

We then planned a trip to the temple for another night and had the YW dress up. We took their pictures and had a great activity on the temple grounds.

While attending a Stake Leadership Training last fall, our high councilman talked about value gardens from back in the day (lol). He recommended planting them at the different buildings around our stake.

We loved this idea and got together with the other ward in our building to do this as a combined YW activity. We purchased bulbs for flowers in the different value colors (you can see recommendations in this LDS Church News article from 1992) and spent the evening planting bulbs all around the Church in the available flowerbeds.

And now - they're popping up! I can't wait to see them bloom. I live in Northern Utah so it may be a few weeks, but they are going to be a beautiful reminder to the YW of the values!

We made these adorable baskets. They are super simple to make and they take about the right amount of time for the length of one mutual activity night.

We purchased some $1 t-shirts from a local thrift store, but you could have the YW bring old t-shirts for a recycle project and then they would be free!

All you need to make this craft are old t-shirts (clean, of course), scissors, tacky glue (we actually made ours without doing the glue step and they worked fine) and 12" embroidery hoops.

To make the baskets, follow the easy instructions at Family Fun (one of our favorite places to find awesome, simple craft ideas)!

The YW love to have makeover night. We invited a sister to come speak on the importance of caring for our bodies. She had some great quotes and talked about caring for our bodies, minds and spirits. Really good. Just about 10 minutes or so.

Then, we gave the YW this handout with home beauty tips. Inexpensive ways to care for their skin. We reminded them that they need to put moisture back in their skin with an inexpensive lotion or beauty cream.

The YW were then paired up and they did makeovers on one another. We had a hair station, a nail station and a makeup station.

For our hair station, we had a laptop set up with videos on different hairstyles. We used the videos found @ "Hairstyles for Girls." The LDS woman who owns this site is AMAZING and has a knack for explaining how to do hair. Check out her Facebook page, blog or Youtube Videos!

The budget was FREE and I think it was a hit! They have already asked to do another makeover night - this time mothers and daughters!

*Right-click to save the handout (pdf format) to your computer!