Follow the Prophet(ess)

I am the music leader at church for our children's program, and I love it!

This month we are teaching about prophets, and there's a fun 9-verse song about prophets from the Bible. To teach the verses, I used the cool visuals found here.

But, the feminist I am, I wanted to showcase some prophetesses from the Bible, too. I was going to make up my own, but luckily my friends sent me this link to The Exponent, where they've already written three verses!

So I made my own visuals to fit with the song verse introductions and the game.








I didn't know about female prophets until adulthood, so I want to make sure those fabulous women are remembered, revered, and discussed.

I have PDF copies of the above images; leave a comment and I'll email them to you.

Super Empowering New Beginnings

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have a youth group for the young women (titled Young Women, incidentally) ages 12 to 18. Each year, we have a program in which we welcome the new Young Women who will be turning 12 that year. This is called New Beginnings.

We had our New Beginnings program last week, and it was such a success.

The theme was superheroes, and we specifically talked about how the Young Women are empowered now by the Personal Progress Values. 

My wonderful friend made the valid point that most of what we talk about in Young Women prepares them for some future time--marriage in the temple, college, motherhood, a mission, etc. 

But we wanted to show them they have power in their lives right now, and they can be empowered by living the Values in their lives this moment, not for some future purpose.

I found absolutely amazing graphics here. We used her logos (which are SO COOL!) as individual toppers for our cupcakes, and bigger versions to explain each Value.

I used her very cool Values superheroes on our invitations.

For the new Young Women entering the group this year, I created a questionnaire, which I gave to them (and got back!) a few Sundays before New Beginnings. I loved this questionnaire, because it let us get a feeling of their personalities, while also being sassy and fun. The Wonder Woman silhouette is found here.

I made comic book exclamations for each of the incoming Young Women, and used those as decorations until we introduced the new YW; then we let them hold and take home their names.

(I generated the font here, using 'Itromatic Bold'. I can't vouch for the safety of this site, so please don't download their fonts. I didn't download the font; I created the exclamation and the name, then screen captured the resulting texts [using the Print Screen button]. Then using Microsoft Paint, I cropped the two words. I copied those words into Publisher and adjusted the size of the text. It was time intensive, but better than the possibility of a virus).

We made masks for each value color, masks based on this post. I just used hot glue to attach the ribbon to the foam. I also burned the edges of the ribbon so they wouldn't fray.

Here's how the night worked:

We invited all the current YW and their parents, the YW leaders, the Bishop, and the incoming YW and their parents.We put the chairs in a circle; we had about 35 people in attendance, and I wanted them to be able to see each other. 

We gave masks to all the current YW, and we leaders also had masks. 

We began with some words from our YW President, and then we had the current Young Women talk about the Values. I LOVED this part. We had two or three YW per Value; we gave them masks in the color of their Value, and also had them hold the superhero logo for their Value. Again, we wanted them to think about how each Value empowers them in their current lives, so I gave them a bit of a script.

I used the definition and scripture from the Church web site, and each YW either gave the definition or the scripture. I updated the definitions to make them applicable now (if it said, "I will," I changed it to "I do," or something along those lines).

Then I had them discuss how the Value empowers them in their lives right now. These YW were wonderful, and I loved the spirit they brought to the room.

We then had everyone in the circle introduce themselves. I used this idea. Instead of introducing themselves using their names, I had everyone stand and say a positive trait about her/himself, or something she/he wanted to believe. It was so wonderful! I found it very empowering to think of ourselves as being a positive trait, instead of "just" our names.

Then it was time to introduce the new YW. The best part of the night!!! We had a current YW read the answers of each new YW. Because I have a November birthday and I always feel slighted (cue violins), we started at the end of the calendar for each YW. We gave each new YW a mask, her comic name, and a few minutes in the spotlight. It was great.

We ended with some words from our Bishop, then had our yummy cupcakes. We also set up a photo booth exactly like this. And it was such a hit! I'm so glad we did it. I have very few original crafty bones in my body, so I was so grateful to be able to copy the adorable houses from the original post.

********** I made this post because I found nearly every idea on Pinterest, and I want to give others the chance to more easily plan these very huge activities. I have Microsoft Publisher versions of my handouts and the questionnaire; please leave a comment and I'm happy to email those to you.

Kids these days

While in Yellowstone in June...

Jen (far too excited, shrieking): "Nadine!!! Do you see the bison PASSING IN FRONT OF OUR CAR?!"

Nadine, barely looks up from the game she's playing on the tablet, "Oh, cool."

Seriously?




**************
Earlier that day...

"Nadine, do you want to be in a picture with us?"

Nadine pouts.

"Fine. We'll take it without you."

AND WE DID.

p.s. How quintessentially Yellowstone is it that a bison crossed in front of us?! (buffalo? whatever). It was SO cool.

Pictures!

The Nani blog has been updated. It shows our February dichotomy, where we started the month in snow and ended it in the sun (it helped that we were in California for the sun).