Flower A Porch - Serving Others

There are so many things you can do with these flowers! One idea is to "flower a porch" for new members in the ward/welcome a baby/bishopric/elderly... whoever!  Have the girls make bunch of there flowers and then leave them on the porch. Grab some tissue paper and pipe cleaner at the dollar store, spend the first part of the activity making the flowers, then the second part delivering :)

Holy Ghost Helps You - Learning and Living the Gospel

In the Faith in God Book under Learning and Living the Gospel, there is the following requirement:

Mark these verses about the Holy Ghost in your scriptures: John 14:16–17, 2 Nephi 32:5, and Moroni 10:5. Discuss ways the Holy Ghost helps you.

Since I’m pretty sure chocolate= happiness and the Holy Ghost is supposed to lead us to happiness, then an activity where the “Holy Ghost” helps us make brownies seems perfect :). Also I haven’t tried a recipe from Our Best Bites that I didn't love, so this should be a real treat!

Start the activity by passing out a recipe card with some blanks in it. The participants will get to fill this out as they try to listen to the “Holy Ghost”. This recipe card represents how we get a lot of direction in our lives through scriptures, church, prayer and so forth. This recipe card is an awesome start to knowing what to do, but we are going to need the help of the Holy Ghost to fill in the blanks. 

Next, you'll want to have the "Holy Ghost Help You Cards" ready. Since there are 9 ingredient to the brownies, there are nine of these cards. This will give 9 participants an opportunity to pretend to a prophet and then pretend to be the Holy Ghost. The cards is a strip of paper folded in 3 so you can't see the ingredient when you pick it up, you just see the front side that looks like this: 

When you flip it over, the participant is to read an exert about the Holy Ghost from LDS.org. They can pretend like they are a prophet and say it loudly for everyone to hear. 

Next, the participant will want to turn their backs to the crowd and WHISPER in a still, small voice their ingredient. This is when everyone will try super hard to listen so they can fill out their ingredient card. Everyone should be quiet and there is no repeating or sharing answers. There will be a time for this at the end. 

Once all 9 cards have been played, everyone should have their recipe cards filled out, but I imagine some ingredients were missed or written down incorrectly. Allow the participants to come together and with the help of the leader make sure their recipe is correct. Once everyone has a correct recipe, allow everyone into the kitchen to make the brownies!

  

If everyone brought their scriptures, while the brownies are baking would be a good time to mark them with the verses and maybe share personal stories of when the Holy Ghost helped them. Also pass out this handout for them to take home and hang up :)

I used this brownie recipe for the activity:

https://ourbestbites.com/perfect-chocolate-brownies/

Perfect Chocolate Brownies
Recipe (with minimal adaptations) from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, Baked NYC and Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons unsweetened Dutch Process cocoa powder
11 ounces dark chocolate, roughly chopped
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch chunks
optional: 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
5 eggs, at room temperature*
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Articles of Faith JeoPARTY! Learning and Living the Gospel & My Gospel Standards JeoPARTY

Not Jeopardy, JeoPARTY! See what I did there ;). A couple Sunday's ago I helped out in my husband's primary class and this definitely would have come in handy!! 

I made this to have 6 questions for each category (100-600). The categories are Fill in the Blank, Which Number, Name the Person,  Finish This and What's Missing? Here are some sample questions: 

Just another idea to help learn the Articles of Faith!

And since kids LOVE Jeoparty... I also made a My Gospel Standards Version - 

Happy Thoughts Activity & Craft - Scripture Search - Activity Days

So the other night my little girl came into my room not because she was scared, but because she was sad. Broke my heart and it just made me think how we could all use some reminders that there are plenty of things to be happy about!

I know that most of the time, silliness is not a problem for Activity Days! So I thought why not embrace it, let them be as silly as possible and give them a good memory? I also know that many times, these activity girls and boys go home to a not-so-happy place. I think school can be especially hard at this age, (whether its because of bad grades, not as many friends, bullying…whatever)so I thought this could be a great activity to put a smile on some faces and to dig into the scriptures. Hopefully, if they are ever in a sad spot later, they can remember this activity,that they can open their scriptures and read how heavenly father is always with us and there is hope.

For this activity, each participant will need some scriptures (I would invite them to bring their own). You'll also need a writing utensils, scissors and some glue. You'll want at least two participants but can have as many as you need. 

1. Each participant receives a “fill in the blank” scripture quote paper. Have them pair up and stand at a station. There are 8 stations. If there are more than 16 participants, have groups of three and if you don't have 16, just have some empty stations. 

2. At each station, there's a paper with "scripture search" on one side, and "being silly" on the other  (once printed, this page is folded in half so it can be double sided). Have them each pick a scripture to look up and read out loud to one another, finding the missing word and writing it on their scripture quote paper. 

3.  Once they have found and read their scriptures and filled out the missing words, have them turn the scripture search page over for the being silly part - a joke and funny action. Funny actions include "make a silly face, do a silly dance, give someone a compliment, etc. 

4. After each station, have them rotate to the next station when everyone looks done. Once all 8 scripture search stations are complete, do a happy thoughts craft with the scriptures and a other things. This can be taken home and hung up in their rooms. 

The blank canvas is two pieces of paper that will need to be glued together (they can do this part). "Happy things" for the craft include things like pets, friends, family, fireworks, camping.... anything I thought could spur a happy thought :). There are 8 of each item per page... not everyone will want everything so print accordingly. There's also a page with blank circles if they want to draw their own. 

GET FILES FOR THIS ACTIVITY HERE. 

Gospel Standards Trivia Game - Learning and Living the Gospel

Similar to Articles of Faith Trivia Game, this game is for learning My Gospel Standards. For this game you’ll want to split the group into two. Each group takes turns rolling a dice. When an EVEN number is rolled, the player may pick a “Trivia Card”. The trivia card has either a Gospel Standard or My Baptismal Covenant with a fill in the blank.  The player must read the whole card out loud for everyone to hear, and fill in the blank as they read it. Failure to read the whole card, with the correct missing word means they may not advance on the game board. If the player answers the trivia card correctly, they move forward the amount of spaces they rolled (either 2, 4 or 6). The first team to reach the end, WINS! You can get my files for this game HERE.  

In order to get the "Trivia Cards", you'll need to cut, fold and glue the printable:

Also print each player a cheat sheet that they can bring home after the activity and put them in their scriptures: 

Scripture Drawing Telephone - Learning and Living the Gospel

Ever play the game where you say something into someone's ear, they whisper it to the next person and then after going all the way around a circle, you see where it ended up? This is kind of like that but with drawing pictures. After playing this quite a bit with my family, I thought this would be great for Activity Days using scripture centered words. To start, everyone needs to pick a word. I came up with 40 scripture-related words (like prayer, temple, family, fish, whale, Christmas, baptism, brass plates, prayer....)

Everyone will need a booklet (if you plan on playing multiple times, you'll want to print this page accordingly). This can be printed and then stapled together with the cover page on the front and the final guess page in the back. The player writes their name and secret word on the second page of the booklet and then at the same time, everyone passes the book to the next person in the circle. If you have more than 6 people, it won't end where it started, but that's okay. When the books are filled with guesses and drawings, show each of the pictures to everyone and see how the word evolved, it's usually pretty funny!

You can get my files for this activity HERE. 

Articles of Faith Trivia Game - Spiritual Goal Development

Best way to learn anything is having fun! For this game you’ll want to split the group into two. Each group takes turns rolling a dice. When an EVEN number is rolled, the player may pick a “Trivia Card”. The trivia card has either an Article of Faith with a fill in the blank or an Article of Faith with “what’s the number” in which the player answers what article it is. The player must read the whole Article of Faith out loud for everyone to hear, and fill in the blank as they read it. Failure to read the whole article, with the correct missing word means they may not advance on the game board. If the player answers the trivia card correctly, they move forward the amount of spaces they rolled (either 2, 4 or 6). The first team to reach the end, WINS! You can get my files for this game HERE.  

 You'll also want to provide everyone with a cheat sheet, that they can take home with them after to work on passing off memorizing the Article of Faith.