Sewing Night with YW

One of our wards is having a sewing and quilting night with their young women. They are making aprons and quilts.

Here is a fun website that offers free patterns for aprons.

http://tipnut.com/free-apron-patterns-tutorials/

Choices in Childbirth

Our next activity is a class entitled "Choices in Childbirth." I am actually teaching it, since educating women is my passion as a Doula.
A lot of women do not realize all of the options they have when in labor. We are taught one basic routine which includes, go to the hosptial, get hooked up to machines, and get an epidural as soon as possible. When these things don't work as planned, then it can be a scary experience.
This class will inform women about the safety of birthing when low risk, the choices and options they have for comfort and medication, resources to find more information, and the fact that education equals power. When you don't know your options, then you don't have any. The more you know, the more you'll be in control, and the better satisfied you will be with your birthing experience.
The outline is as follows:

Choices for Childbirth Outline:

Options for Birthing
a- Hospital
b- Birth Center
c- Home Birth

How to choose a care provider
a- OB/GYNS
b- Midwives
c- Questions to ask

Choice for Birth Preparation
a- Lamaze
b- Hypnobirthing
c- Bradley
d- Birthing from Within
e- Hypnobabies
f- Doulas
g- Monitrices

Reference list
a- Hospitals, OB/GYN, CNM
b- Midwives
c- Birth Centers
d- Doulas
e- Childbirth Classes
f- Lactation Consultants
g- Birth plan sample (benefits of having a birth preferences)

With these videos:
http://www.injoyvideos.com/mothersadvocate/videos.html

More Mini Class Ideas

Freezer Dinners: People who are interested, sign up and then are put into groups. They meet together and bring ingredients for a dish that can be frozen. They bring enough of the same ingredients for the number of people in their group (say about 5 people.) Then everyone shares their ingredients and makes FIVE meals that they can freeze and pull out on those days when there's just not going to be enough time to cook!

File Folder Games: These can be games for kids for at home, or at church. You can find some fun ideas from preschools, and by googling for ideas. Each person brings enough of their same materials to share with others in their group. Then they all trade and have supplies for different file folder games.

Mini Class on Homeopathic Remedies

We are excited to have a guest presenter come in and give a mini class on homeopathic remedies. Did you know that you can lower a fever by adding 1/4 teaspoon of GINGER to a cup of warm water, and drinking it? Add a little bit of cayenne pepper and it will really do the trick. The philosophy is if you warm your insides you body will say, "Oh, I'm warm enough now," and will start cooling down. Interesting, huh?

Mini Class on Wheat

Did you know that there are so many other things you can do with your wheat? Not just bread!

You can sprout it and it can be a fresh vegatable in a time of need
You can crack it
You don't need a wheat grinder
It can be a meat substitute

At least I didn't know these things. So we are going to have a mini class where an "expert" in our ward is going to teach us how you can cook it like rice and add it to your spaghetti sauce, your hamburger patties, your salads..etc. Who knew? We are excited

RS Birthday Celebration with a Progressive Dinner

Progressive Birthday Celebration
Bountiful 58th Ward

For our Relief Society Birthday party we had a progressive dinner in the church. We had three different sections set up for food.

The first was salad. In this area sisters sat at tables according to the month they were born in. Some tables had a couple of months.

The second was the main dish. In this room the sisters sat at tables with their birth year on it. Each table had random years on it (about 9 different years). Then towards the end of the meal we had a concentration game with questions about Relief Society.

The third room was the dessert. We had the sisters bring a baby picture of themselves and collected the pictures at the beginning of the evening. We numbered each one and taped them on the wall of the third room. Then while the sisters ate their dessert (cookies, brownies) they tried to guess who the picture was of and write it down. Then when everyone was finished guessing we went around and had people guess then tell the correct person.

The sisters loved sitting with new people at each place and getting to know more people. They also loved seeing each other as babies or young children and there were lots of laughs.

How to decide on mini classes and teachers to teach them!

You can send around a clipboard in relief society asking sisters to write down a skill or a subject that they would be willing to teach. Then choose a day during each month to have these little half hour-hour classes (keep it simple) that sisters can come to. Rotate a different person/class each month.
Examples: Cooking, budgeting, crafts, story telling, nutrition for small children, scripture study, family home evening, etc.

We also had our sisters fill out this TALENT SURVEY. That way we knew what they were skilled in and what they were interested in. This helped us to form enrichment activities....and it was a fun way to find out new things about the sisters!

Click here to get the survey...

Hymns

This activity evolved around Emma Smith’s first hymnbook. The sisters sang hymns together and were able to sing words of one hymn to the melody of another hymn with the same meter.

Local Church History Ideas

Local Church history….
Find some church history about the area in which you live.
This group started out at their old tabernacle with a homemade breakfast including homemade breads and jams. They had a speaker talk about the historical site. Then they went on tours of some of the old and historic homes in their area. For lunch they had a chili cook off. That afternoon they had mini classes.

Another ward wrote a play in which they incorporated how to teach your family about their local church history during family home evening. A packet was sent home with the sisters.

This Little Piggy - Mini Classes

Started off with a dinner of “ham” etc. Then they had different sisters teach mini classes to go along with the nursery rhyme of “This Little Piggy.”
This little piggy went to market: Smart shopping ideas, coupon clipping, etc.
This little piggy stayed home: How to bring the spirit into your home, etc
This little piggy had roast beef: A cooking demonstration
This little piggy had none: (No physical food) But spiritual food – how to study the scriptures effectively
And this little piggy cried, “Wee, wee wee!”: How to find happiness when in adversity.

Mini Class Ideas

Gardening
Canning
Colors class- what colors look best on you
Vinyl lettering
Purses out of placemats
Finance class
Table Settings

FHE for all Seasons of Life

A lesson on different ideas for Family Night whether you are single, married, young children, older children, empty nesters, etc.

Personal and Family History Night

We had a dinner and a speaker who talked about our personal and family histories. Each sister was invited to bring something to put on display....whether it was a scrapbook, a journal, their family history, books, pictures, etc. Then some sisters shared and told about their projects with the rest of the RS.

Mini Classes

We had a self defense class, a 72-hr kit class, and a class on how to make children's blankets and hair bows.

Cards

You could have a night (or part of a night) where someone teaches everyone who is interested to make a couple of cards. Everyone can use cards for thank yous and birthdays and such, and if they have template and the papers all ready to go it will be easy for anyone to put together.

-Elise J.

FHE Group

We started a FHE group and I wish our ward didn't split before we really did anything for it. You get a group together and then say there are 8 people (if you get a ton of people you could break into 2 groups) in your group. Each month, each person plans a FHE lesson with a game/activity and treat recipe. They then make copies of lessons and any other supplies that go along with the lesson and they make 8 packets with that lesson. Once a month you meet and pass your lesson to eveyone and then you will get 7 other lesson packets to go along with yours. When family night comes around, pull out a packet and you are good to go. You can get together before and decide how elaborate you want things, you can decide that all games and other things be laminated or maybe just require they are on cardstock. Just make some clear guidelines so somepeople don't go to tons of work and money and then not get that in return.

- Celeste H.