New Beginnings: Women of Value the Treasure Within

*Please see my dear friend and YW President's blog for more info and all the entire program complete with all details here

Just thought I'd link up to share this amazing night! I feel very fortunate to work with the teenage girls in our church and their amazing leaders. Every January, we hold a night where we recognize the new girls who will be turning 12 this year and introduce them to the Young Women program. We chose this year to focus on the 8 values of the program and women from the scriptures who exemplified those values. I can tell you this, I learned more and gained a stronger testimony of these amazing women from the scriptures than ever before. I feel truly blessed to know their stories and to have had a hand in introducing our young women to them. We had one of our girls who had completed that specific value introduce the woman from the scriptures (in the program we wrote) and then bear testimony of the significance of that particular value. It was awesome! I really loved this program:)

All the posters of the Women of Value were framed and placed in the front with their name plates in a smaller frame, corresponding fresh flowers for each value and the temple in the middle

Hannah (Faith), Emma Smith (Divine Nature), Rebekah (Individual Worth)

Mothers of the Stripling Warriors (Knowledge), AMAZING Salt Lake Temple Pic, Women of the Wilderness in 1 Nephi (Choice and Accoutability)

Ruth (good works), Esther (integrity), Mary (virtue)

Dessert! Cheesecake bar with toppings that corresponded with the value colors: Faith (white Chocolate), DN (blueberry sauce), IW (strawberry sauce), Knowledge (Kiwi sauce), C&A(Peach sauce), GW (Pineapple sauce), Integrity (Blackberry sauce), Virtue (butterscotch)

Winter Study in Phoenix

I know, it's an oxymoron:) How do you truly study winter in Phoenix:) You gotta get a little more creative, that's all! A couple of weeks ago, that was my assigned theme and it was so fun! We made snowglobes out of baby food jars (oops, no pics) with little snowmen erasers hot glued to the inside lid and lots of glitter in the jelly/water:) SO CUTE and even more than that, a HUGE hit with the 4 and 5 year old crowd (and Z)!
We also played in lots of fake snow (styrofoam, weird fake snow stuff from walmart and cotton balls) in the texture table with fake snowflakes thrown in and clothespins to try and manipulate with them.
I made snowshoes out of cardboard to go with the "snow cabin" and let the kids pretend to be inuits or something. They did a great job imagining this week. I think the imagination part is my favorite anyway:) They decorated their snow cabin and "bundled up" in all our winter gear while they pranced around in fake snowshoes and pretended to be hunting seals:) Too cute! I guess our snow gear comes in handy every once in awhile, right?!
We also did a science project the kids loved. I found the premise of the idea online, but can't remember where my flip flops are, let alone that website:) Anyway, the kids were able to choose 3 locations to put their ice cube (in identical containers). They chose 1. bookshelf, 2. oven, 3. outside the front door. Then they had to make a hypothesis on how it would look in 20 minutes. Third, we checked our results. We talked about WHY they chose their hypotheses and their reasoning and then reconciled with what really happened. Their little brains did some hard work and they were so happy with the results! Who knew ice and tupperware could be so amazing!?

All in all, it was a great week. I so love teaching preschool. I love doing journaling time with them and listening to their logic. I love watching them play and cohort and reconfigure and work together. Lucky, lucky me!

Oh Christmas Tree

Just wanted to post this before I forget it... This year I remembered I was assigned the theme "trees and plants" two weeks before Christmas. Soo, of course I had to do Christmas Trees! I wasn't quite sure what to do with Dramatic Play, so I made this giant Christmas tree out of felt, complete with felt ornaments and also had Santa hats, gloves, scarves, etc. for the kiddos. It was a huge hit!! So huge, I left it up for the whole season. My kids would periodically go rearrange their tree, take off all the ornaments and start over. They have never been much for bothering our Christmas tree, but I (and they) were more than happy they had their own distraction. It was super cute and cost less than $4 at walmart in felt:)