beehive advising

I am no longer the Personal Progress Leader in my ward, but that doesn't mean I can't still be a personal progress cheerleader!  I plan on providing a value experience for the girls to do each Sunday that I teach.  They will have the opportunity to reflect on what they've learned as they take a few minutes at the end of class to complete it.  Just check out the Lesson tab to get handouts and value experience journal cards.  I don't teach every Sunday, but you wouldn't want to do personal progress every time, it would be a bit of an over kill! 

Teaching Take Out

Our Stake is having a YW Super Saturday and has asked all of the PP Leaders to come up with a class that the girls can attend and pass off a value experience.  Right up my alley, huh?  My sister and I created a class called Teaching Take Out. We created eight family home evening lessons, one for each value.  The girls can pass off a value experience when they teach a family home evening lesson to their family.   And they get to create and customize one of the lessons themselves. 

For the Integrity Lesson I chose Integrity #7.  The idea is to have them pick a song, scriptures, etc. that have to do with strengthening the family.  They then read The Family: A Proclamation to the World, the section on Family in the For the Strength of Youth Pamphlet, and two general conference talks on family and then create questions for their families to pick out of their chinese take out box.  They also will be decorating a paper clip with ribbon to coordinate with each value so they can separate each lesson within the manilla envelope.  What an awesome way to complete personal progress! 

Here are the LESSONS, INTEGRITY LESSON CARD,  VALUE EXPERIENCES SLIPS, TAKE OUT BOX LABEL, and use THIS jpeg to print labels for your manilla folders.

 

 

For each packet you will need to print the LESSONS, INTEGRITY LESSON CARD (2 per page), VALUE EXPERIENCE SLIPS (5 t0 6 per page); and add in 8 jumbo paper clips, a copy of The Family: A Proclamation to the World, and 12 slips of blank paper (to have them write the Integrity Lesson questions on).

 

cake!

One of my Laurels and I made, or rather, we built a birthday cake for her mom's birthday. I taught her how to make homemade fondant and cover the cake with it. She made 4 layers of cake, two yellow and two chocolate. We frosted it with chocolate butter cream and then covered it with fondant. We added white fondant polka dots and a cute peach bow made of fondant on top. I love spending time with each of the young women. 

 

The Homemade Fondant Recipe is below because I know you want to try it!

 

HOMEMADE FONDANT

16 oz marshmallows

2 pounds powdered sugar

2-5 T water

1/2 cup Crisco

 

Melt marshmallows and 2 tablespoons of water in a microwave.  Put the bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds, open microwave and stir, back in microwave for 30 seconds more, open microwave and stir again, and continue doing this until melted. It usually takes about 2 1/2 minutes total. Place 3/4 of the powdered sugar on the top of the melted marshmallow mix.

Now grease your hands GENEROUSLY with Crisco, then heavily grease the counter you will be using and dump the bowl of marshmallow/sugar mixture in the middle.

Start kneading like you would bread dough. Keep kneading, this stuff is sticky at this stage! Add the rest of the powdered sugar and knead some more. Re-grease your hands and counter when the fondant starts sticking. If the mix is tearing easily, it is to dry, so add water (about 1/2 tablespoon at a time and then knead it in). It usually takes me about 8 minutes to get a firm smooth elastic ball so that it will stretch without tearing when you apply it to the cake.

It is best if you can let it sit, double wrapped, overnight (but you can use it right away if there are no tiny bits of dry powdered sugar). If you do see them, you will need to knead and maybe add a few more drops of water. 

Prepare the fondant for storing by coating it with a good layer of Crisco shortening, wrap in a plastic-type wrap product and then put it in a Ziploc bag. Squeeze out as much air as possible. Fondant will hold very well in the refrigerator for weeks. 

When using rested fondant, get at room temp (use microwave for 10 seconds at a time) and use cornstarch to prevent sticking to counter.  Add a few drops of food coloring at a time and knead in.  When rolling out, don’t go less than 1/8 in thick and use a non-stick rolling pin if you have one, if not, use cornstarch.  When placing fondant on cake, roll around rolling pin, drape the edge over cake and slowly unroll fondant onto pre-iced cake.  Use hands and a small amount of cornstarch to smooth onto the icing of cake, use a pizza cutter or knife to trim excess fondant. 

Store a fondant cake on the counter in a sealed cake box for up to 3 days (fondant seals in moisture), do not refridgerate!  Moisture will condense and ruin fondant.  

 

 

divine nature.

To remind the girls that they inherit divine qualities from their Heavenly Father because they are His daughters I made them crown sugar cookies and attached this tag. I found the tag HERE and you can get the document to print it HERE.

 

 

 



smash.

What should these girls do with the bazillion handouts that I give them?  They are getting monthly value goal cards, monthly lesson them cards, reminder treats with tags on them, mutual value experience cards...did I forget any? 

Here is what they should do with them...staple them into their Personal Progress journals!  I love that I can write my journal entry and have the card right there so when I go back and read it I know what the value experience was!  And now there is a place for all of the goal cards, and tags from the handouts too! 

All it took was 4 different types of ribbon and a stapler.  I stapled all of the cards in on the same page as the correlating journal entry.  If there were two on the same page I overlapped them and only stapled one side so they could be lifted up.  Then I tied ribbons through the holes that were already on the cards (to hang on the flower mirror hanger) and stapled some ribbon on as tabs to lift them up.  They could even write their journal entry on the back of the card and staple it into the journal so it can be flipped over.  For the cover I used double sided tape and taped some scrapbook paper over it front to back and added a sticker of the temple.  Then I tied it with a loose piece of twine.  What a great keepsake!

Orange you glad it's summer?

I made these for the boys' teachers.  They are orange rolls with THIS tag!  Just thought I'd share.  You could use the tag with something much more simple than orange rolls - orange slice candies, orange soda, or anything orange!

“Knock Knock.”

 “Who’s There?”

 “Orange."

“Orange Who?”

 

Orange You Glad It’s Summer?!

We are too!

 

summer personal progress handout.

I made these and am going to give these to the girls the Sunday after school gets out to encourage them to work on their Personal Progress during the summer.  If they complete two values (all six experiences and project for each) OR 20 hours of service and half of the Book of Mormon for their Honor Bee I will have a breakfast or lunch for them at my house. This idea came from www.marcicoombs.blogspot.com. 

Your summer will ROCK

if you POP open your

Personal Progress book and

work on it non-stop!

“Personal Progress provides a wonderful way for you to nourish your testimony step by step. Value experiences and projects are small steps that will nourish your testimony of Jesus Christ as you learn His teachings and regularly apply them in your life. This constant nourishment will keep you safely on the path.”    - Mary N. Cook

Print the handouts on card stock HERE, cut them out, and then staple to another color of cardstock on sides and bottom.  Trim with pinking sheers and staple some rik rak or ribbon to the side to spunk it up. Put your pop rocks inside and you have a super cute reminder!  I found the Pop Rocks at Dollar Tree - One three pack is $1.  Have fun rocking out on this one!