Survivor

Another fun activity! In April, we planned an activity that focused on topics that pertain to Emergency Preparedness.  We had such fun brain-storming ideas for topics and ways to present them. Eventually, we had to cut a lot of what we thought of, and we probably should have cut a little more!

Our rule for planning Enrichment activites is this: It needs to be worthwhile, ie. when the ladies come, they will learn something, be uplifted or strengthened, etc. AND the activity needs to have a fun element that allows the ladies to interact with each other and create friendships and sisterhood. We always put a large flyer in the binders that get passed around each Sunday. We also hand deliver a small size of the same flyer to each woman's home the morning of the activity. We are blessed to live in an LDS-rich neighborhood with small ward boundries. (Oregon) We split the ward up into 4 sections and each presidency member delivers a route. We stick the flyer on the front door with painters blue tape. We include all the less-active sisters and are starting to see some tentative responses! It takes us each about an hour. (Here is the link to the Photoshop file I created to make the flyer. It won't show a preview of the file, but you should be able to download it and edit it in Photoshop.)

As the ladies entered the Cultural Hall, they had to pass through an obstacle course to be inducted into a "tribe." (When they finished the course, we gave them a colored strip of fabric to tie around their arm.This way we were able to make the tribes as even as possible. 

As the women were trickling in, we started playing Jeopardy.  We divided the ladies in half for the teams. The game was a lot of fun, with a lot of hilarious answers. If we were to do this over, we would cut it down to 2-3 categories. 5 categories made the game last too long. 

Next up, the ladies divided into one of three tribes, based on the color fabric band on their arm. We moved over to the relay area. There were 4 obtacles to work through. We allowed the ladies to work in pairs at each station, but one station had to be completed before the next pair could start. The stations were: Food Storage, Gardening, Building a Shelter and Wilderness Survival.

Relay course along left side of the gym

We didn't specify to core the apples and one team crammed their apples in the jars, core and all!

We weren't super picky about correct answers. Just that they named every seed.

We thought about having each team put up a dome tent, but it would take up too much room.

We put really long strings on the poles. There was a small magnet on the end of the string to attach to the paperclip on the fish. This was the funniest part of the evening! These ladies were such good sports.

After a laughter-filled relay, we went back to the chairs and to a 5 minute synopsis of 72 hour kits. We had two ladies in the ward show their kits. They both go about theirs very differently from each other, but are very thorough and prepared. It was nice to see some options! 

A pack for each family member vs. a large kit for the family.
The thought behind what is in each kit is unique, as well.

Following that was a short crash coarse in Dutch Oven cooking. The man who taught it was really concise and interesting. After his words, everyone got to taste the yummy lasagna and cornbread that he had made in his dutch ovens. We also provided apple crisp as dessert.