Activity days - Building Love and Trust- obstacle course.

One part of Faith In God is helping the children to understand the Family Proclamation.  We have taken parts of the proclamation to use as a theme for some activities.
Theme: Based On family proclamation "...... love and care
for each other" We can learn now to be kind and care for each other.

We started the night by having a 5 minute mini lesson introducing the part of the proclamation that talks about how "husbands and wives should love and care for each other".  We talked about ways we know people love and care for us and how we can show others the same.  Things like kindness, friendship, trust, helping etc. We also talked about how Heavenly Father has given us guidelines to help us have great relationships with family and friends .... that lead us to our next activity.
For our main activity we partnered the children up -(we purposly separated best buddies so that the kids could work on developing new relationships within our primary)
Before the activity we set up a complicated obstacle course using the furniture in the primary rooms, ropes, ladders, gates, flags etc. We added printed road signs etc to give direction. The obstacle course ran thru two rooms, the hall way, thru doors and into the outside courtyards.
We gave each pair one blindfold, and then took the unblindfolded children for a walk through the course, to explain how we would like them to direct their partners through the obstacles.  We emphasized talking to our partners, gently guiding them, and not allowing them to fall.  Each partner had a turn navigating and going blind.  After the first round they were able to discuss things that made it hard and things that really helped.  We then let them try again.
All the children had a fun night, and made new friends along the way.
http://www.printablesigns.net/category/traffic
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We also used this FHE idea as a basis for our lesson : http://ptskjohnson.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/liahona-family-home-evening.html




Partners helped each other thru various obstacles blindfolded, navigating surprises in the course together learning trust, kindness, and working together.
We finished the night with some traffic light jelly cups and popcorn balls.
http://www.healthyfoodguide.com.au/recipes/2011/january/traffic-light-jelly-cups

Treats - Popcorn balls . Traffic light jelly cups

Activity days - Is it right on a SUNDAE?

We had such a fun time at this activity.  The theme : Is it ok on a Sundae?  
We started our actity with this great FHE lesson : http://chocolateonmycranium.blogspot.co.nz/2008/08/keeping-sabbath-day-holy-fhe.html

Following a short version of the FHE lesson above we made Sunday Cans -All of things we CAN do on a Sunday
 .
http://mormonmomplanner.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/sunday-cans.html

We ended the night of course by making some very creative and very delicous Ice-cream Sundaes.

activity days - Follow the Prophet

In the Faith In God booklet, one of the activties in the "learning and living the gospel "section is to "Read a recent conference address given by the prophet. Decide what you can do to follow the prophet, and do it".  For our April activity we invited the children to listen to the messages in General Conference and come prepared to share their favourite message with the rest of the children.
The children all did an amazing job sharing their testimonies of what they learnt from the messages of General conference.  Not only were their testimonies strenthened but I know mine was also.
We followed this up by doing an exercise in following instructions - We made origami hearts for the Mothers for mothers day.
It proved a very worthwhile activity - teaching us all that when we are not listening to the instructions given things do not always go well..LOL
The children proved in the end to be great FOLLOWERS and we made over 80 hearts on the night which we made into pen toppers by adding a springy pipecleaner to the back of the hearts. (the mothers loved them)
We followed this pattern:
http://www.origami-instructions.com/simple-origami-heart.html

Activity days - Building on a SURE foundation

We had a great time tonight learning about building on a SURE foundation (Helaman 5:12) and acting out the three little pigs story ..(we have some fantastic actors in our primary) We also worked on building some structures made of straws..... with a lot of trial and error we had some great success. Check out the photos to see what our children got up to. Some of the children took some straw kits home, to share what they learnt for an up coming FHE.

We always start our activity day with a small FHE style lesson.   Tonight we read the scripture in Helaman 5: 12.  We discussed some of the things that help us build a strong foundation - Our testimonies of Jesus Christ, prayer, scriptures study, good friends etc... then we talked a little about the things that might try to knock us about.   We then acted out the story of the little pigs, using the story to highlight how important it is to work and build a strong foundation so that the huffing and puffing (big bad wolf) of the world cannot not shake us.  The kids had  a fabulous time acting out thier roles.  We found  a great printable of  the story, and gave each child a role (they were all given the picture of their character)  - 3 little pigs, the 3 houses and the big bad wolf.   I was the narrater and just made the story us as we went along.   The "house" children did a great job of sheilding their little pigs, and then dramatising either their fall or their steadfastness.
The printable we used were similer to these

http://primitivepursuits.blogspot.co.nz/2011/03/three-little-pigs-handmade-buttons.html

Our main activity for the night was to have the children construct structures in a team and indivually using only straws cut into several lengths and a few types of connecters.  We used play-dough, blu-tac and pipe-cleaners as connecters.  The had different challenges to complete.....  the tallest structure, the widest and a pyramid.  We had  a lot of trial and error, but all met the challenges in the end, learning how important it was to have a strong foundation to start.

http://sycamorestirrings.blogspot.co.nz/2008/07/straw-shapes-activity-tutorial.html  This is the blog I found the idea for the pipecleaner connectors. 

LDS Primary activity days - Boys and girls

I love my calling as primary activity days leader.  We have such a wonderful time with the children learning about Heavenly Father and helping them progress through their Faith In God booklets.  Here in New Zealand we do not run the scout programme through the church so our boys and girls are all together for activities.    I have found it hard to find websites with activities for both boys and girls so thought I would add our ideas here for others who are searching for ideas.