Young Women's Smash Book Activity

Fact: Young Women's is new to me. I mean, yes I attended young women's class as a teenager at church, but this is my first time called to it as an adult. It's a learning curve, but I'm tentatively enjoying the process.

I feel like our last mutual activity was a success, in part do to the wonderful hoarding of goodness knows how many previous presidencies. Our YW closet, it turns out, is a treasure trove of stickers, jewels, and scrap booking do-dads. Add to it some awesome scrap booking paper and wasabi tape one of the counselors inherited from work, plus some dollar store composition books, and we were set. If you have a similar stash of materials available, this might just be the activity for you: we made "smash books," the internet-sensation, journal/scrapbook with no rules and no pressure. I hoped this would be a good prelude to upcoming personal progress activities; after all, so many experiences have a journaling component. It's also a nice start-of-the-year activity, don't you think? Resolving to document your thoughts and adventures of the upcoming year?

Here's hoping. As the girls arrived, we played a few rounds of "This or That?" as a get-to-know you opportunity. I printed the ideas from Amateur Craft Hour and cut each  suggestion into a strip of paper, thrown into a bowl. It was fun to hear which "item" each girl would pick, and hopefully a good bonding experience, too!

Next, I explained we were making "smash books" and showed some online examples to get the girls excited and give ideas of what to do. I then asked why we are commanded to keep a journal or record, and answered it a couple of ways. One, there's this great, short video from President Eyring's talk O Remember, Remember. After watching the video, we passed around and read some of my favorite quotes pulled from the New Era article The Angels May Quote from It by President Spencer W. Kimball. It's a fabulous message.

Now on to the creating! Almost. With all of these crafty supplies on hand, this is also a natural time to write an amazing birthday card, a thank you, or a "we miss you" message to anyone to whom the YW might need to send their appreciation! If the bishop or a member of your ward needs a pick-me-up, it's easy to spend 5 minutes expressing love and appreciation... in every color. And with stickers. In our case, it was the YW president's birthday, so each girl wrote a birthday note and decorated a giant card (poster, really) to leave on her doorstep.

Then, on to their books! With the 2019 youth mutual album playing in the background, we just chatted and decorated. It's nice that these books are open-ended and low pressure. We'll see if the girls bring these journals with them to Young Women's on Sunday; I feel more motivated as a leader to provide handouts when I teach so I can encourage them to glue them in. It was a fun activity.