Thursday, April 25, 2024

YW & Activity Day Olympics

Last year we had a combined young women and activity day girls activity and we loved it so much that we decided we need to do it every year. As a leader I love these connection points that these younger girls and the young women have during this time. The primary aged girls look up to the young women in our ward and it also gets them excited for the young women program. It also gives the young women a chance to serve the primary girls by having fun with them and bringing some joy and light to their day.

This year we had an Olympics themed activity. I saved the decorations I made from the tri-ward Olympics we had at the beginning of the year and we came up with some fun events that the girls got to do.

Our focus for the evening was bringing light to others and that you can do this by having fun together, spending time with each other, and really simple daily things.
We paired each activity day girl with a young women which ended up being perfect. It made them mix together and not hang out as groups and it allowed the young women to focus and have fun with the activity day girl they were paired with. There were 6 events with 3 rotations so each rotation had 2 events and they got 10 minutes at each rotation.
First event was track and field: long jump, shot put, and javelin. Long jump I put painters tape on the ground in 1 foot increments just to see how far they could jump. Javelin we had some toy arrows that they were trying to throw into a bowl. Shot put we used the bean bag toss that I have and I just made it a little more Olympics themed.
Next was gymnastics. I had a deck of simple yoga positions and they would attempt to do the yoga position on the balance beam.
Then there was golf. This one was really fun to create. I used all recycled materials and whatever I had on hand to create 3 mini golf courses: one forest inspired, one Lego inspired, and the last was unicorn/fantasy inspired. 
Next was tennis and we had some fabric across two chairs for a net, paper plates with a large popsicle sticks taped to it for paddles, and balloons for the balls. 
Then there was basketball. I used our little basketball hoop and put a few X's on the ground to see how many different spots they could make baskets from.
And last was target practice. We had nerf guns and my counselor made these cool targets that spun when they got hit.
We ended with us gathering together and sharing about light. Each young women shared how they saw light in their activity day girl that night and then gave them a gold medal. This was super sweet to watch and see the activity day girls beaming. Then to end our night we hade desserts from around the world!
What a wonderful evening with a wonderful group of young ladies!

No comments:

Post a Comment