Life sized LIFE

I love creating games.  I've been teaching for......well.... a long, long time and I find that nothing teaches like games, so I whenever I can I play a game or create a game to play with whoever I happen to be teaching.    Activity Day Girls has been a continuous cycle of game playing.  Almost anything can be turned into a game.  So, this week's activity I really wanted to talk about President Monsons' talk on "The 3 'R's of Choice" .  The right to have choice, the responsibility and the Results of choice.  However, for an 8 year old this is not the most scintillating of topics.  So, I (with the help of my co-leaders) created a game.  I call it Life sized LIFE.  We created a giant playing board that was made with tape on the gym floor (I forgot to get a picture of the whole thing).  The first square is the starting square.  At the start we chose Heavenly Father's Plan to come to earth and get a body and follow Jesus Christ.  So, they all got a card with 5 points on it.  Then, they roll the dice (each in turn *it was CRAZY since there were 15 of them but they were well behaved and co-operative and did suuuper well)  some of the spaces were LIFE spaces.  they would get a card that said something like "You chose to be a good friend BLESSING 5 points" or "You chose to gossip, consequence you are not trust worthy -5 points".  They were instructed to hold onto all of their cards and tally them at the end.  Periodically as they went along they would come across a spot with a picture of a church and they would get a bonus card for going to church.  At other points there was a stop sign with various different symbols.  They had to stop and draw a card that would tell them what choice they made for example: to get baptised or not get baptised.  Then, they could move on.  The different stopping points were: baptism/ not baptised, graduate from Primary with your Faith in God award/ not complete FIG, graduate from YW with your YW medallion/ not complete, graduate seminary/ not graduate, get your patriarichal blessing/ not get it, temple marriage/ non temple marriage/ or go on mission with option to re-draw to get married or go on another mission.  They also could (but didn't have to stop on motherhood- stay @ home mom or working mom *not penalized for either*.  Most of these major life choices are in the first 1/2 of the game while most of the LIFE squares are in the later half of the game (the better to demonstrate that we have to make these choices early and then live with the consequences the rest of our life).  All in all I'm rather delighted with the game.  I feel I should add some repentance cards so that they may have their mistakes wiped away periodically, and I think I'm going to add more motherhood opportunities as only 3 of the 15 girls had the opportunity to become moms but on the whole I thought it was fun and the girls loved it!  I love it when  plan comes together!!  He He He!

emma counts her cards

They are so precious!