YW handout

 I taught the YW lesson today on Strengthening our families. Click here for the lesson.

 As I was studying for this I came across this blog called Hands Free Mama and was so touched by one of her stories that I shared it with the girls.  I also used some of her words in my handout.  She talked about how she was dealing with her oldest daughter being mean to the younger one.  She shared something with her daughter that happened to her when she was little.
She told her that when she was in grade school she was a mess.  She has a bad bowl cut, too many freckles, and wore the same awful blue sweater every day.  Her hair held the unbecoming shine of ultra quick showers minus the shampoo. She had horrible smelling feet and she gained so much weight before middle school that she got stretch marks.  She was ashamed.  While her parents worked, her sister took her to the neighborhood pool.  She said her sister never said a word about my body. She only said, "I love your bathing suit." She remembered.  It meant everything that she chose to look beyond the unsightly marks.  In high school she said her sister would wave her over as she walked down the halls.  She would introduce me the awkward freshman to her senior high friends.  "She was proud of who I was.  She believed in me. She never told me I was not capable even if she thought there we no way I could make the volleyball team or move up a chair in orchestra.  As an adult she showed me the same support. She was adamant that I should start a blog. She helped me. I would not be a published author today had it not been for the unconditional love and encouragement I received from my sister."
This mom asked her daughter to pay attention to her tone of voice, notice when her sister is stressed out or struggling and say, "how can I help? instead of "just deal with it."
Weeks later her daughters began riding the bus for the first time.  On the second night of school she overhead them talking. "When the teacher says walk to the bus, you need to go as fast as you can, okay? I was worried you were going to miss it.  I kept praying you were coming.  Walk real fast tomorrow. I know you can do it." said the big one.
"Okay, I will" promised the little one.  "Thanks for letting nothing bad happen to me."
"I won't," said her protector.
*I love this story and wanted to have it on here since I went back to link it and it's no longer on there.
I told the YW don't you want to be that kind of sister!!! The one who always looks at the positive and protects. I want to be!!

 Hands Free Mama says"We all need someone in our corner, to have our back... to believe in us when we don't believe in ourselves.  We can do that! We can do that for our sisters...our brothers... and for each other.  We can be their Lifesavers (I added this sentence as part of the handout) We can do that for the people who are learning how to treat others by watching us live. "

I filled the boxes with Lifesavers.  I found these boxes at Dollar Tree during Easter time.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

The Young Women leaders decided to use the Wizard of Oz theme for our New Beginnings Program this year.

 

 For info on what New Beginnings is click here. The main focus of the evening is to recognize the girls accomplishments in their Personal Progress, talk about our new theme for the year, and get the new girls, who will be 12 this year, excited about what Young Women's and Personal Progress entails.

 The theme this year is "Come Unto Christ." We got a lot of our inspiration from the blog, The Dearth Duo. It was fun to plan this but also challenging to come up with the program.  I'm not so good at that stuff but if you want a copy of it click here.
*We made our balloon rainbow by following this tutorial.

Food Table. I didn't get a close up of Aunty Em's bread and jam but it was so yummy!

 

Fruit Rainbow

Ruby Red Slipper Cookies

 Somewhere over the rainbow cupcakes: I used the Airhead sour licorice to make the rainbow and frosting to pipe the clouds. For the stripped ones I painted stripes of gel color on the inside of a parchment bag, filled it with white frosting and piped it out.

 To print the cute toppers, tags, labels, and everything else we used go to The Dearth Duo blog here.

 

Yellow Brick Road Rice Crispy Treats

 As part of our program we had the Presidents of each class (Beehives, Miamaids, and Laurels) present our new 12 year olds with gifts that represent each class and also explain what they mean. These bee cookies are what the Beehives presented to them.

 We also came up with an incentive program for the year.  When the girls accomplish a experience from one of the values they get to chose a treat from that jar.

 This was one of the take homes we did. I got this tag and the tags on the jars from Kinzieskreations blog.

 

Here is a pic of our program.  Thanks Dearth Duo blog for making it so easy! We also printed our invitations from her site.

This was our other handout. We made bottle caps charms for the girls backpacks, scripture cases, or where ever else they wanted to hook them. I found the bottle caps and clear sticker covers at Hobby Lobby. We pounded out the bottle caps so they had a rounded edge by covering them with a board and using a mallet.  Don't pound too much! We found the Come Unto Christ images on Etsy.
Thanks ladies for all your help!