The temperature is slowly dropping, the trees are starting to get ready to lose their leaves, and we’ve all started to crave pumpkin spice everything (you know it’s true!). That can only mean fall is coming! After the great success of our Summer block party, we decided to continue the community connection as we go…
This is a BIG missionary tool, we have done it for years and tons nonmembers come. We have always held this event the Saturday before Halloween, but let me say, this does not have to be a Halloween…
Día de los Muertos is full of color and images. It is also full of meaning! Be sure you include information about the significance of the celebration when you do these easy Day of the Dead crafts with kids. Meaning of Día de los Muertos This Día de los
Planning a Fall Festival? See our NEW Fall Game Ideas and Activities Page - Detailing our Top 23 Fall Ideas - Great for Church Fall Festivals, School Harvest Festivals and more!
This Day of the Dead LDS Youth Activity is a great way to get your youth excited about family history and celebrate our ancestors.
25 Autumn Self Care ideas for improved mental health. This list has some great autumn self care ideas to help you feel your best this holiday season.
Just click print-- free Halloween coloring pages, Halloween activity pages, best Halloween coloring sheets for free.
Last Fall, I was called to be in the Relief Society Activities Committee/Service Representative for the Ward. Which is basically awesome, b...
Could you use a good Kindergarten Counting Activity? This one is a cinch to set up, and is lots of fun. Counting, subitizing, and even a bit of addition.
Check out these simple, family-friendly Day of the Dead activities for kids, perfect for celebrating Dia de los Muertos!
We just had our Relief Society Fall Social and it was a BIG success! Is this because of me? NO! It was definitely a group effort and everyone was AWESOME! No one likes to be micro-managed so we decided who would do what and then let them do it. Betty Jo and Candice were in charge of decorations, Lori and Patty were over the food, Kathy brought the desserts and I was over advertising, getting the speaker arranged and making sure we had a musical number. Here is the poster. I made two of them. I used the Cricut. One for each foyer. I made announcements in RS each week, posted the info on our RS Facebook page each week and our amazing secretary Kelli sent out several emails including one saying, In just 2 hours is our fall social. At least one sister who had been planning on coming said she had forgotten until she received that last minute email. The decorations were beautiful. Sunflowers, fall leaves, and gorgeous fall colors. Dinner was ordered from Olive Garden. Soup, salad and bread sticks. It was so delicious and reasonable too. Marie Calendar Pie for desert. Also a big hit. I asked Martha to be in charge of the musical number. It couldn't have turned out better. Martha has a real knack for putting together the right voices with the right song. I knew the number would be great, but I was not expecting what we got. Six beautiful ladies came into the room dressed in choir robes. (Notice how the robes match our tablecloths.) Martha asked for some volunteers with good rhythm and handed them percussion instruments. A tambourine, a cricket and a cowbell. After Martha helped the percussionists set a rhythm, the choir began to sing. They sang the Hymn There Is Sunshine In My Soul Today which is a happy, cheerful song sung the regular way, but this choir gave it such a fun twist. (Think Black Gospel choir at a Southern Baptist church.) Everyone loved it and ended up clapping along. Next came the highlight of the evening. We had a wonderful guest speaker who talked to us about hope and keeping our focus on the Savior. She was truly inspiring. WE had a basket of these pillow box favors for everyone to take as they left. To make the favors I used pillow boxes that I already had. I got them on sale at Michael's in the baby shower section. I cut a sunflower using my Cricut, but you could easily use any flower punch. I just cut 2 and glued one off centered ontop of the other, added the circle center and a little bow. I glued it onto the box and added a tag with the saying: Keep your face towards the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind-Walt Whitman. You are welcome to use the tags. Just print them HERE and use a tag punch to cut them out. I would definitely say this was a successful activity. We had about 60 people attend which is really good for us. Come back soon,
How many rubber bands does it take to explode a pumpkin? It is important to make sure the pumpkin is not too big or too small. You want to be able to fit the rubber bands around it but also have them be tight. We put our rubber bands in piles of ten to practice […]
25 Autumn Self Care ideas for improved mental health. This list has some great autumn self care ideas to help you feel your best this holiday season.
I was just called as the Ward Activities Chair. Wow, I'm loving it! Trunk or Treat was my first challenge and it was a big one. I had 3 big problems: 1. We planned a chili cook off and the weather was strangely hot. 2. Our building was in the midst of getting new A/C's and the gym did not have air. 3. The night of the event our town was under a severe weather alert and I did not plan a rain date. I did have a moment where I freaked out but I realized that I had no control over any of the problems and there was no choice but to move on. My first mistake was not asking for help putting up the tables and chairs. We had planned for 200 people and that is A LOT of chairs for 2 people to do. We spent a good bit of time trying to figure out how to fit that many tables and chairs into our space. I took some photos and printed them so next time we'll know where everything goes. It took 23 round tables and 3 long tables for that many people. I chose not to use table cloths on these tables as we were going to be eating chili. I made all of the decorations. I was happy with the newspaper and pages from a book pinwheels. They were free and I was able to make various sizes. I also made the candy corn pom-poms following these directions. Next time I would use more of each color tissue to get a fuller ball. This table was where I placed all the carved pumpkins people brought for a contest. The winner received a $10 gift card to Target. I also made three centerpieces that came out super cheap but really cool. I used my own containers. At first I was bothered that they did not match but it didn't matter. The branches were free, the pinwheels were made with what I already had and the blackbirds and moss were purchased from the dollar store. I also found some berry sprigs in our attic that had burst from the heat. They looked great for Halloween! I also bought some parchment paper to roll down the center of each food table. I really liked the results. It took one box for 2 long tables. I also found that Wal-mart's plastic table cloths are .50 more expensive than the dollar store's but they are more opaque and look nicer. We chose to do 4 long tables to serve the food on. Two pushed together on each side of the gym. This gave people 4 available lines to get their dinner. It went fast! I also had a separate table for punch. Originally I purchased Sprite and Hawaiian Punch for this but both of those ideas were bad. Red drinks are bad bad bad and anything carbonated will go flat when in dry ice. Apple juice was served instead. At least it was served for a little while. My punch assistant and I freaked out thinking the dry ice was melting into small chunks and would injure anyone drinking it. It was just the apple juice freezing and becoming slushy. Oh well. I have plenty of apple juice left for some wassail at the Christmas party. I bought the dry ice from Publix. It comes in a flat block and costs about $1.49 a pound. Five to six pounds will last several hours. Now for the chili contest. I found this judging sheet online. It's a bit more professional than what we needed but it worked great. To be in the judging the chili's had to be there by 15 minutes after the activity started. This worked well. We only had 1 person come late. Out of kindness I just didn't tell her that her chili wasn't judged. I made a chili sign in sheet and as they came in they were assigned a number to tape onto the pot. The actual judging could have been better organized by me. Next time I know to have the judges all sit at the same table. Each chili in it's own numbered cup and each person use their own spoon to taste. Then onto tasting the next chili using a fresh spoon. In the end we had a winner and she received a $10 gift card to Target. I must say I was so proud of our ward for braving the weather and bringing what they were asked. We had our 200 people show up, maybe more. It was finally time for CANDY! We had no choice due to the weather but to put parents lining the hallways and the kids going through them. They didn't care and they had a great time. The kids that is, I think the parents were just relieved to be in the cool hallways. The clean up went surprising well. My partner suggested we do a sign-up sheet for clean up and that was a big help. Almost everyone who volunteered helped and lots who didn't sign up helped anyway. All in all I think it went well. I learned a whole lot and I'm looking forward to my next thing......the float for the town's Christmas parade.
Any one of these creative Día de los Muertos activities is a great way to honor and celebrate the Day of the Dead.
This is a fun way to help students learn the Doctrines associated with each Doctrinal Mastery Scripture. It is not my original idea. Thi...
Preschool math activities do not need to be complicated. Every day there are opportunities to expose young children to math in fun, hands-on ways!
Another fun activity! In April, we planned an activity that focused on topics that pertain to Emergency Preparedness. We had such fun brain-storming ideas for topics and ways to present them. Eventually, we had to cut a lot of what we thought of, and we probably should have cut a little more! Our rule for planning Enrichment activites is this: It needs to be worthwhile, ie. when the ladies come, they will learn something, be uplifted or strengthened, etc. AND the activity needs to have a fun element that allows the ladies to interact with each other and create friendships and sisterhood. We always put a large flyer in the binders that get passed around each Sunday. We also hand deliver a small size of the same flyer to each woman's home the morning of the activity. We are blessed to live in an LDS-rich neighborhood with small ward boundries. (Oregon) We split the ward up into 4 sections and each presidency member delivers a route. We stick the flyer on the front door with painters blue tape. We include all the less-active sisters and are starting to see some tentative responses! It takes us each about an hour. (Here is the link to the Photoshop file I created to make the flyer. It won't show a preview of the file, but you should be able to download it and edit it in Photoshop.) As the ladies entered the Cultural Hall, they had to pass through an obstacle course to be inducted into a "tribe." (When they finished the course, we gave them a colored strip of fabric to tie around their arm.This way we were able to make the tribes as even as possible. As the women were trickling in, we started playing Jeopardy. We divided the ladies in half for the teams. The game was a lot of fun, with a lot of hilarious answers. If we were to do this over, we would cut it down to 2-3 categories. 5 categories made the game last too long. Next up, the ladies divided into one of three tribes, based on the color fabric band on their arm. We moved over to the relay area. There were 4 obtacles to work through. We allowed the ladies to work in pairs at each station, but one station had to be completed before the next pair could start. The stations were: Food Storage, Gardening, Building a Shelter and Wilderness Survival. Relay course along left side of the gym We didn't specify to core the apples and one team crammed their apples in the jars, core and all! We weren't super picky about correct answers. Just that they named every seed. We thought about having each team put up a dome tent, but it would take up too much room. We put really long strings on the poles. There was a small magnet on the end of the string to attach to the paperclip on the fish. This was the funniest part of the evening! These ladies were such good sports. After a laughter-filled relay, we went back to the chairs and to a 5 minute synopsis of 72 hour kits. We had two ladies in the ward show their kits. They both go about theirs very differently from each other, but are very thorough and prepared. It was nice to see some options! A pack for each family member vs. a large kit for the family. The thought behind what is in each kit is unique, as well. Following that was a short crash coarse in Dutch Oven cooking. The man who taught it was really concise and interesting. After his words, everyone got to taste the yummy lasagna and cornbread that he had made in his dutch ovens. We also provided apple crisp as dessert.
ANGRY BIRDS LIVE! I volunteered for last nights YSA FHE lesson and activity, and decided to take an idea out of my Pinterest boards and make my very own Angry Birds Live game. It was a lot more successful than I thought it would be, thanks to the help and good attitudes of everyone who participated. Here's what I used: 6 small, 6 medium, and 6 large moving boxes (Lowe's) I went overboard here, we really didn't need that many, but they survived the night in almost perfect condition and since apartment living isn't gonna be my thing forever... I know I'll use them within a year. several green balloons 8 small plastic balls (Walmart... although if I had done Dollar Tree they would have been cheaper) 6 boxes of cereal These weren't really necessary, but I had so much cereal from couponing that I thought they would make a nice addition wrapping paper 2 "soldier helmets" I found at Dollar Tree exercise Stretch Bands I was aiming for a big water balloon launcher, but no store I went to had them. I had almost given up on my Angry Birds idea when I passed by these at Walmart and inspiration hit. all ready to go! I wrapped up the cereal to use as "bricks" one of our set-ups Some piggies had helmets Pretty unflattering... not the best photographers lol This was a pretty fun activity overall. I did go overboard with all the materials I purchased, so if you want to give it a try, I suggest using about half of what I did and you should be ok.
Discover a bushel of easy, fun Trunk or Treat games for church harvest events.
Planning a Fall Festival? See our NEW Fall Game Ideas and Activities Page - Detailing our Top 23 Fall Ideas - Great for Church Fall Festivals, School Harvest Festivals and more!
DIY Leaf Luminaries are gorgeous and so easy to make! See the colours and shapes of leaves light up with this fabulous fall craft for kids.
Most often when I am asked for help in planning events for women’s ministries (did you know that I did that? See the “Contact Us: Pick My Brain” tab for more information), I am asked fo…
Welcome Autumn with a Fall Party! My daughters and I have had a fall party for several years on Fall Equinox. But any fall day is perfect for a fall celebration! Our Fall Party has
We just had our Relief Society Fall Social and it was a BIG success! Is this because of me? NO! It was definitely a group effort and everyone was AWESOME! No one likes to be micro-managed so we decided who would do what and then let them do it. Betty Jo and Candice were in charge of decorations, Lori and Patty were over the food, Kathy brought the desserts and I was over advertising, getting the speaker arranged and making sure we had a musical number. Here is the poster. I made two of them. I used the Cricut. One for each foyer. I made announcements in RS each week, posted the info on our RS Facebook page each week and our amazing secretary Kelli sent out several emails including one saying, In just 2 hours is our fall social. At least one sister who had been planning on coming said she had forgotten until she received that last minute email. The decorations were beautiful. Sunflowers, fall leaves, and gorgeous fall colors. Dinner was ordered from Olive Garden. Soup, salad and bread sticks. It was so delicious and reasonable too. Marie Calendar Pie for desert. Also a big hit. I asked Martha to be in charge of the musical number. It couldn't have turned out better. Martha has a real knack for putting together the right voices with the right song. I knew the number would be great, but I was not expecting what we got. Six beautiful ladies came into the room dressed in choir robes. (Notice how the robes match our tablecloths.) Martha asked for some volunteers with good rhythm and handed them percussion instruments. A tambourine, a cricket and a cowbell. After Martha helped the percussionists set a rhythm, the choir began to sing. They sang the Hymn There Is Sunshine In My Soul Today which is a happy, cheerful song sung the regular way, but this choir gave it such a fun twist. (Think Black Gospel choir at a Southern Baptist church.) Everyone loved it and ended up clapping along. Next came the highlight of the evening. We had a wonderful guest speaker who talked to us about hope and keeping our focus on the Savior. She was truly inspiring. WE had a basket of these pillow box favors for everyone to take as they left. To make the favors I used pillow boxes that I already had. I got them on sale at Michael's in the baby shower section. I cut a sunflower using my Cricut, but you could easily use any flower punch. I just cut 2 and glued one off centered ontop of the other, added the circle center and a little bow. I glued it onto the box and added a tag with the saying: Keep your face towards the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind-Walt Whitman. You are welcome to use the tags. Just print them HERE and use a tag punch to cut them out. I would definitely say this was a successful activity. We had about 60 people attend which is really good for us. Come back soon,
Apple bowling! Such a fun math counting game for kids! They can even practice "counting on" while adding up their scores!
Be sure to check out our EMBARK Girls Camp posts (based on this year’s youth theme)! A great fit for Girls Camp and full of activities you could use on any weeknight. We’ve all b…
This Day of the Dead LDS Youth Activity is a great way to get your youth excited about family history and celebrate our ancestors.
FREE printable carnival signs. Perfect for a Spring carnival or birthday party.
Hosting a fall party? These fun fall games are hilarious any age! Great for classroom parties, fall festivals, and harvest parties!
Spiders and spiderwebs are a classic Halloween theme. These easy to set up kids party games add fun to any celebration and can have the rules tailored for different age groups.
In my ward we always have refreshments first:-) The plan for the activity is as follows: 6:30 Bless Refreshments/Socializing 7pm...
Day of the Dead activities for middle school and upper elementary learners - close reading activities, questions, and art projects.
Use these free pumpkin printables to build fun jack o lantern faces for Halloween!
Last night we had a Halloween activity. It was lots of fun! If you are needing an idea to end the month with, it's not too late to pull this one together. My partner and I decided that we weren't going to make the girls mark off anything for this activity. This was the first time we have ever done this so we didn't feel too bad. We invited the girls to wear their costumes but made it very clear that it wasn't necessary. We didn't want to make anyone feel pressured into spending money or doing something they didn't want to do. But not surprisingly, every girl dressed up! And they all looked great! We used the Primary Room as well as a nearby classroom. This is how the room was set up: We started out with bobbing for donuts. I am sure that everyone knows how to play this! We used yarn and thumbtacks to attach the donuts to the ceiling.Next we split the girls up into two groups. One group painted pumpkins and one group did the "Fear Factor Room." As for the painting we were able to purchase our pumpkins for less than a quarter each. They weren't very big, but if they were any bigger than the girls would have taken way too long to paint them! Now, for the "Fear Factor Room." We used a separate classroom (highly recommended because of the smell! My poor partner is pregnant and it was a little too stinky for her! She was a trooper though and stuck out the nasty stench!) For this we used bowls filled with the following: Vienna Sausages (Freaky Fingers) Peeled Grapes (Ewww...Eyeballs) Cooked Spaghetti (Icky Intestines) Canned Black Beans (Witches Warts) Wet Sponge (Bloody Brains) We had each bowl covered with a box that had a hole in the top. They each got a turn to stick their hand in the bowl and guess what the mystery item was. They loved it and some of them got grossed out. Mission accomplished! While some of the girls were waiting their turn to either paint or play Fear Factor, we had them guess how many candy corns were in the jar. Of course the winner took the jar home. Our last activity was the mummy wrap game. So easy and fun! Another easy game that everyone probably knows how to play. Just pair the girls up and give each team a roll of toilet paper. The first team to get their mummy wrapped wins. Last of all we had a costume and pumpkin decorating contest. The girls didn't know that they were being judged until we handed out the certificates at the end. Here are the categories: Coolest Costume Most Unique Costume Most Creative Costume Most Unique Pumpkin Most Creative Pumpkin Fastest Mummy Wrapper (there were two of these, one for each partner) Fastest Donut Eater Everyone got one award. The girls who did not get one of the above awards still got a certificate for "Participation in Achievement Day's Halloween Night Celebration" I am having trouble downloading a copy of the certificate for you. If I can get it later I will add it. It was lots of fun...yet very exhausting! And a little bonus.... a cute way to give your girls their invitations! Just use a toothpick, like this. For the cupcake all you need is a frosted cupcake, striped shortbread cookies, a Hershey Kiss and red gel coloring and voila!
