New Beginnings, Daddy Daughter, and Fear Factor

As promised from my last post, here are the 3 big activities I had to help head up in the month of March for Young Women (YW).  I also posted a picture at the end of the post of my Valentine's Day gifts that I gave to the girls last month.

Now normally the group in charge for the YW activity that month doesn't always coincide with being in charge of the joint activity that month with the Young Men (YM).  Unfortunately, that is how the calendar rotation fell in March so it made things a little crazy for me.

Also, the reason why I am posting this is because I know of at least 3 other friends from Iowa that are now serving in the YWs program in their respective wards.  After all, we could all use some ideas since we have to put on activities weekly.

Well, enough of that.  Here we go.

New Beginnings

Each year the YW put on an event called New Beginnings.  This event helps the girls, their parents, and their leaders learn more about the YW program, especially Personal Progress.  Girls who will be turning the age of 12 in that coming year also attend to help introduce them and their parents into the YW program.

Unfortunately, our YW's president was out of town that week which meant that I had to try and fill in for her during the evening.  I was a little stressed out with filling in for another person, and also with my assignments that I didn't take any pictures of the evening.  Ugh.

The group I'm in charge of for our YW are the Mia Maids, and our assignments were food and refreshments.  Since we have a limited budget, we decided to make the food part of the decorations (see photo below).  I can't take credit for the idea.  I found it on Pinterest.

Daddy Daughter activity

The week following New Beginnings was an activity that the the Mia Maids were in charge of. We had our annual Daddy Daughter night, and we decided to do a Daddy Daughter Feud (Family Feud).  Here is a picture I took of our invitations.

It was a lot of fun, but again, I took no pictures because I completely spaced!  GRR.  I got to the church and barely had enough time to set up for the activity when everyone started arriving. By the time we started taking down decorations and packing up, I realized that I didn't take any pictures.  I was really bummed too because I thought the decorations were awesome!  I went to a local store, bought some Dad's Root Beer, and used that for some of the decor.  Then, we used the root beer for the dessert as we made root beer floats.

I guess these two pictures below will have to suffice.  I fanned out my letters I made and took a picture of these at home.  The second photo is the idea I got from Pinterest to help us with our "Dad" theme.

These were the prizes that the Mia Maids made for the winners.  Simple, easy, and convenient as I had many leftover party favor bags from our invitations.

Fear Factor

The week following our Daddy Daughter night, the Mia Maids were then in charge of the joint activity with the Young Men.  We decided to do a Fear Factor night.  Again, the idea came from Pinterest (are you noticing a pattern?  Pinterest is a life saver when serving in the YW).

I didn't do everything that was posted on that blog (i.e., the "what is this" section due to budget and the yuck factor).  I changed a few of the challenges to fit our youth group better, so here are the challenges we did at our activity:

Challenge #1 Food
Instead of a purred happy meal from McDonalds (gross), we did jarred baby food.  I love the face on the girl closest to my camera -- classic!

Challenge #2 Physical
We did an M&M relay.  The contestants had to dump out the bag of M&Ms, take them to the other table, sort them into cups by color.  Seems easy right?  The rule was that they could only use a straw during this process.  It was quite entertaining.

Challenge #3 Mental
We did a quiz on matching 10 U.S. States with their Capitals.

Challenge #4 Endurance
Instead of sit ups, we did "wall sits."  These are much more entertaining that sit ups.  Plus, it makes it easier to tell who is cheating.  Who ever could sit on the wall the longest won the challenge.

Challenge #5 Scripture
Have the contestants find 7 scriptures where the Lord tells them not to be afraid.

Challenge # 6 Trust
I didn't like this challenge from the blog.  It looked like there was the potential that someone might accidentally touch someone in an awkward place, which is the last thing that I wanted to be held responsible for.  So, we put gummy worms in a jar and had the contestants guess how many gummy worms there were.  Sorry, no photo on that one.

At the end of the activity, I gave the group who won the most challenges the same prizes that we made for our Daddy Daughter activity (I didn't see any reason to make new prizes when the Mia Maids had already made prizes for Daddy Daughter.  So to simplify things we used the same stuff).  I also gave each of the contestants who one a challenge the same prize too.

At the end of the activity, I had the youth gather and I read the quotes from President Hinckley's talk (see blog post link above).  For treats, I had the Mia Maids make brownies, cookies, and Rice Krispie treats.

During the activity, we noticed that about 1/3 of the people there were wearing stripes, so we had to take a picture.  I somehow ended up in the middle.

Valentine's Day gifts
Our YW's president decided that she wanted the leaders to give all the YW Valentine's Day gifts. These were the gifts that I made for the girls.  I thought they were pretty clever. Again, thank you Pinterest.  Where would I be without you?

So far, this has been my March Madness.  Unfortunately, it is not quite over with.  We have a class presidency meeting and a class activity this coming Wednesday, then I have to prepare to teach the Easter lesson as our YW's president will be out of town visiting family.  My March Madness will literally not end until 3:30 pm on Sunday March 31st.  I'm not going to lie, I am looking forward to it all being over.