You Are Special

This blog has been neglected!  Holy cow!  I took a break from doing activities to take care of my now 6 week old baby but now summer is winding down, I'm feeling great and we are back at it!  We started off the new school year with a spiritual activity, ending with a lot of laughter.  I guess you could say I'm a little rusty as far as activities go, so the first portion of this activity is an idea I got from my sister.

First of all, you will need the book You Are Special by Max Lucado.  Are you familiar with it?  I picked mine up on half.com for 99 cents but I believe you can also find it at Wal Mart.

If you aren't familiar with the book, listen to it here.

We prepared for the activity by purchasing gold star stickers at the dollar store and my partner cut out black dots about the size of a quarter (any size would do).  You don't even have to do that, regular stickers would do just fine. 

We sat the girls in a circle and I began reading the book.  Many of them were familiar with it but paid attention just fine.  While I was reading my partner went around the circle sticking the stickers and dots (with tape) on the girls.  The more stickers the better!  Once we got to the part of the book about Lucia, she started removing the dots.

After we finished the book we talked about what different people and events in the book represent.  We then began talking about how we are each different and our unique qualities are what make us each special.  At this point we passed around a mirror and had each of the girls look at themselves and name one thing that they really like about themselves.  Even though the girls are young, it was still challenging for them!  The other leader and I reinforced each good thing they said and even gave each girl a compliment.

We also discussed that sometimes we are told something so much, good or bad, that we begin to believe it.  To close this part of the activity we talked about people at school that may need a friend because they might be feeling like a Wemmick with a lot of gray dots.  I asked the girls is they could think of someone who may feel this way and they all said yes.  We then challenged them to reach out to them and lift them up. 

This part of the activity only took about 20 minutes so we filled the rest of the time with a little improv.  I filled two bags with a few random items like plastic fruit, potato masher, fairy wand, sunglasses, toy cash register, etc.  The girls were split into two teams and given a bag.  They were given 2 minutes to come up with a skit using every item in the bag.  I could not believe their creativity!  They about had us rolling on the floor laughing.  It was so fun we did about 4 rounds of it and they all asked if we could do it next time.  You have got to try it!