One of the things that appears over and over in the goals listed in thr Faith In God booklet is “describe…” “discuss…” “list…” “share…” etc. All those things seem pretty vague and well, I hate vagueness. So for the second activity we made little booklet/journals for the girls to write all of these things in and give me something concrete to measure with and something permanent for them to look back on when they’re older.
All of the materials we used for this came from the totebag the prior leader left behind so there was no out of pocket cost for us. I imagine if you had to buy these things it would cost about $0.25 a girl. (Click here to see photos of the process.)
For each booklet we used:
15 pieces of lined paper cut to size (see below about sizes)
1 piece of cardstock
2 pieces of light cardboad (like from a cereal box)
decorative or scrapbook paper
some stickers
Tools we used:
rectangular cardboard template
a ruler
pencils
glue sticks
hammer
nail
cutting board
heavy duty thread and needle
I’m not including measurements because, frankly I don’t remember them and I didn’t use a hard & fast measurement system anyways. The general rules were that the the piece of cardstock were a little larger than the lined paper. The light cardboard pieces were the same size as the cardstock folded in half. The cardboard template (used to cut out the cover paper) was 1 inch larger around than the cardstock laid flat.
I had the girls take turns using the hammer and nail on the cutting board to punch an odd number of holes (3 or 5) through the stack of lined paper and the cardstock. Once the holes were there I helped them sew the pages to the cardstock with the needle and thread and put a knot on the back of the cardstock. While they were waiting turns with the hammer they picked out the scrapbook paper they wanted to use, then traced the template and cut out the rectangle.
Once they had their bound pages, and had cut out their cover of decorative paper, we measured 1 inch in from the edge of the cover on the wrong side and marked those lines. Then we glued the 2 pieces of cardboard in place on the lines we marked with a little bit of space between them for the spine. The we glued and folded in the edges of the cover. Then we folded the cardstock/paper bundles in half and glued those in place over the folded-in edges of the cover. Let the book dry closed otherwise you’ll never be able to close it.
Only a few of the girls seemed to enjoy this activity, and they all tend to dislike when I make them write things in the booklets. However this particular thing is more about completing the goals, and making a keepsake that they will value when they are older and have grown a bit than it is about having fun. I keep the booklets at my house so that we have them when we need them.
This would count to pass off the goal under Developing Talents that says to “make an item from wood …”
They’re adorable!
I teach 8 year olds in Primary. Writing is SO hard for them at this stage. Their minds flow a million times faster than their pencil. However, they do feel pretty good about dictating and having an adult write what they dictate. There’s something about being the boss and telling an adult what to write….
Great idea, Starfoxy! I love how you came up with such a cute project, and for so little money.
So cute, and I’ve always made my YW have journals that we use in class and at activities, but they’ve just been plain spiral-bound notebooks. I never thought to have them make the books. That would make them all the more precious.
Very cute…but I don’t think it really counts as “wood”. I always hated it when our activities were white-washed. Give them some actual wood and *build* something with screws and nails and wood glue and drills and staple guns. 🙂 Maybe a jewelry holder of some sort? Those ones with chicken wire and wood frames are super cute and would probably be really cheap. I bet you could even find people in the ward who have some laying around that you could use.
Olive- I didn’t feel like spelling out the rest of the goal at the time, but maybe I should have. It reads
And don’t worry, I’m not a white washer as far as activities go- I haven’t gotten to the rocket launch activity yet. 🙂
Super ideas! I have heard about Activity Days from my friend who teaches them. I’ll have to share these links with her.