I am the Personal Progress leader for our ward (if you have no idea what I'm talking about you can check out the LDS Personal Progress program
Here). I thought I would share my most recent activity (plus my mom asked me to post some pics so she could see). I can't take full responsibility for the activity, I saw the idea to make timelines in a YW idea book, but I came up with the rest!! Instead of just normal timelines we made Divine Timelines!!
So yes, the value for this month was Divine Nature. I "divided" our divine natures into four categories: Life Experiences, Values, Aspirations, and Talents. We talked about each category and how it related to our Divine Nature and then each girl listed her own. I made sure we wrote down either the grade or age for each listing so it would be easy to put on the timeline.
For example. Life Experiences included anything that has happened birth till now that made an impact on your life. I asked everyone to include birth, baptism, and entering Young Women's. (I made special markers for each of these, see below.) But this category also included things like moving, new pets, births or deaths, making friends, etc.
Under Values we talked about the different ages we came to realize that we valued something. I gave the example that in the third grade I learned that I valued art. During this time I would collect my classmates art projects that they didn't want because I thought that all art was valuable and deserved to be viewed. Most of the girls wrote down the ages that they came to value music or the gospel or money. Which I thought was cool.
Under aspirations we wrote down what we wanted to be when we grew up at different ages. My favorite was Britt's, she wanted to be a bunny when she was 2 or 3.
Talents was probably the easiest category to determine an age for, but I worried that some of the girls would feel like they didn't have any talents. So I asked each girl to include "smiling" on their list. I explained that it was the first talent they learned, that we all learned. I have experience this with Bradley. He has a beautiful talent for smiling. All babies do. We still have that talent, we just choose not to share it as often as babies do.
After all the writing and talking came the creating!! We had lots of buttons and little bangles left over from Girl's Camp crafts, so we used those to embellish our timelines. This is what mine looked like. We used a different color of paper for each category and everyone got a "My Divine Timeline" headline for their page.
Each girl got a Smiling Baby bauble to symbolize their birth and first smile!
Each girl also got a CTR ring bauble to symbolize baptism.
They also got a YW's torch to mark when they entered YW's.
Just some of the fun stuff we used to decorate.
Value Examples: When I came to value good grades.
Bradley is currently sleeping. Which is why I was able to post!
Portland is currently pouting.
The baubles were easy to make, but probably not "archival." I just used a glue stick to glue on the print out (tacky glue made the image blur) onto a clear squished marble.
I loved seeing how all the girls made their timelines. None of them looked like mine at all. Some used a similar style, putting all their events on a line of some sort, and some took a totally different approach. I thought they were all really creative, even if not all the girls think they are creative.