Primary Activities


Grunt
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10 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Children is primary.  Youth is Young Men/Women.

In our ward last October, we had a combined EQ/RS meeting where all the Primary and Youth also were in attendance.  We had videos of the new Primary/Youth program and the Bishopric explaining the new program.  Then they handed out the pamphlets for each family to fill out with their children.  As a Den, we started to wean off the BSA requirements and started free-flowing.  Unfortunately, our Primary Presidency spent October through Christmas preparing for the Sacrament Meeting Primary Program that we didn't have until 2 Sundays before Christmas so we never got good coordination to get the pamphlets back or any support for the planning of next year's activities.  And that's why, I'm going to end up winging it this year.

We had that combined meeting and video as well, only they didn't hand out books.

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21 minutes ago, Grunt said:

We had that combined meeting and video as well, only they didn't hand out books.

In our meeting, we got this:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/ldsorg/content/pdf/children-and-youth/16855_000_Children_and_Youth_Introduction.pdf?lang=eng

 

and then we got this that we needed to sit down with our kids, discuss, and fill out:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/ldsorg/content/pdf/children-and-youth/16857_000_LtrHlf_Youth_Brochure.pdf?lang=eng

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Just now, anatess2 said:

Yes.  I've since found those online.  Our Primary leadership didn't know anything about them.  I'm going to talk to the secretary this weekend about ordering them.

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11 minutes ago, Grunt said:

Yes.  I've since found those online.  Our Primary leadership didn't know anything about them.  I'm going to talk to the secretary this weekend about ordering them.

Yeah.  You're gonna need that 2nd one filled out before you can effectively do Primary Activities.  If you can hand that out this Sunday to the parents of your girls, you can ask them to bring it on your first activity this month. 

That's what I'm going to be doing for both activity meetings in January - get it filled out for each kid, then the 2nd meeting will be putting together all the goals from all of the pamphlets and come up with activity ideas for the rest of the year.  Ideally, we'd spend 3 months out of the year on each area of development.  So, I'm thinking of guiding the kids to design either  3 1-month long activities or 1 3-month long activity to achieve a goal on each area of development.  We'll have to see after we figure out what they're all interested in.

Edited by anatess2
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On 1/1/2020 at 9:46 AM, Grunt said:

So, my kids never got anything to take home to work on with us.  Were they supposed to?  As I'm researching what we're going to do next week and putting together a plan for the year, I'm finding booklets and things online for certain groups.  My REALLY stupid question is:  What do they consider primary?  I see books for "Children" and other books for "Youth", but nothing for Primary.  Does it fall into one of those categories?

They should have gotten this pamphlet and you should have gotten this manual. We handed them out at the beginning and end of president Ballard's meeting in October. Primary is considered "children", while the YM/YW are the "youth".

https://www.deseret.com/2019/7/17/8936741/church-announces-replacement-for-boy-scouts-personal-progress-children-and-youth

I would have linked to the church's website but it's currently blocked at my work. :(

If the adults and children in your ward didn't get the pamphlet and leader guide to review at home then that's not good... It should also be available to print off online, but I would get your Exec Sec/Ward Clerk on that ASAP.  We just called our boy's leaders last week and have had them talk to the current activity day leaders for the girls to get an idea of what they had been doing. This is a new area for the men as we've never really done anything with activity days. Before starting anything I would first make sure the kids actually have goals set. The children and youth need to understand that these goals aren't about making church like school...they need to learn that they can develop a relationship with the Lord, and that he wants to help them grow and develop in ways that are important to them.

Edited by scottyg
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7 minutes ago, scottyg said:

We just called our boy's leaders last week and have had them talk to the current activity day leaders for the girls to get an idea of what they had been doing. This is a new area for the men as we've never really done anything with activity days.

Pack meetings has always been family activities in Scouts so we've had some events where Activity Days and Scouts combined for those - like we've combined boys and girls for pinewood derby and raingutter regatta and zoo trips and service activities, etc.  But, in our ward, boys and girls activities are still segregated in the new curriculum.  

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10 hours ago, anatess2 said:

Everything you mentioned here is not a January activity.  This was an October activity.  We tried to do all that already.  As a matter of fact, we did that every year with Scouting.  We planned Scouting activities with the parents for the entire calendar year starting in October.  Scouting is not much different from this new Primary Activity.  It is all parent-children designed activities.  The only difference is that the BSA sets certain requirements to get awards for certain achievements whereas the new activities set up is the requirements/awards are parent-children designed as well.  Scout den leaders just facilitate the activities just like what primary activity people are gonna be doing in the new program. 

At least with Scouting, if the parents don't get involved, the den leaders would just pick an adventure from the massive list of BSA adventures that they feel their den would be interested in and run the den according to BSA requirements for that adventure.  This time, the primary leaders will be running blind without the parent's involvement.  What I plan to do is, if parent involvement ends up like Scouting, then I'll just do what I always do - pick an adventure from the BSA manual that the kids would like to set as a goal.  There are tons of really cool ones like the Super Science, Bear Necessities, and Duty to God adventures...

You totally missed my point. <shrug>

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On 1/1/2020 at 1:44 PM, Jane_Doe said:

You can if you want to.  I've never done so as the Activity Days leader.

~ Ages 18 mo - 12 years = Children = Primary 

~ Ages 12 years - 18 years = Youth = Young Men and Young Women's.

Now that being said, you obviously want to tailor things to your particular class.  If you think something in the "youth" booklet will be good for your mature 10's year olds, then use it.  And on most days, you probably don't want to use the little kids wiggle stuff for older primary kids. 

But the only children involved in this program are the 8-12 yr old classes.

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13 minutes ago, dprh said:

 You had brought up the point of parent involvement.  @Manners Matter was giving suggestions on how to proceed with that idea.  It's too late (or too early :) ) now to do it in October.

And I was telling her we already did that idea last October and we've been doing that idea and others around that same theme every year in Scouts too.  The fact still remains that parent involvement is the biggest failure in Scouts.  It doesn't get resolved by that idea or any kind of primary leaders hand-holding parents.

Edited by anatess2
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It is an eye opener that you have so many activities a month!  Here in the UK we had one a month. Attendance was always sporadic, although the "challenging" children always seemed to be present. We also did not have a specific activities coordinator it was down to primary presidency. 

I am now out of primary, but was chatting to my old primary Pres about how the changes were going.  She is very happy to support the parents and intends to spend lots of time talking to, calling and emailing parents and encouraging them.  her biggest challenge is teaching the adults how to set goals in a meaningful and supportive way, so that is going to be the Jan activity.

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I was surprised to get a call to meet with the counselor to the bishop last Sunday.  It sounded like they're going to release me from my calling.  I was very anxious because I really love my calling.  Sure enough, I got released as a Cub Scout Den Leader.  But then, on the same breath, I got called as a Primary Activities facilitator.  Whew!  I got released and called in Sacrament Meeting and set apart after Sunday School.  I thought it was silly to have to do all that when it's the same calling, but then the counselor gave me my blessing and boy, was I glad they set me apart because he said so many inspiring things in that prayer that has just given me more drive to magnify this calling.

This year is gonna be great even if I have to drag the year kicking and screaming into it.  Hah hah.

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  • pam unfeatured this topic

So first meeting, we had 4 out of 8 children present plus 2 visitors.  2 parents out of 5 attended plus the grandma of the 2 visitors.  We started 37 minutes late waiting for the 2 parents.  It wasn’t going to be worth anything without parents so we let the kids play basketball until they showed up.

I set this up on the board:

6ED66CE3-F5F1-48EE-82ED-DFAC17B279B7.thumb.jpeg.f41fdf2f317b0971bcc4e32adea95776.jpeg

I started with the scripture in the middle then walked the discussion through the left side.  Then, because we didn’t have much time, I just handed them a blown up copy of the activity pages from the pamphlet and told them to take it home and fill them up with a goal that they want to work on as a group for each development area.

Then I showed them the tentative calendar that we have from our discussions last year.  Next meeting we’re going to work on adjusting the existing calendar and filling up the vacant months.

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@Grunt, I gotta share this with you.  So a long time ago - at least 15 years ago - at ward council, the Primary President brought a cake, chocolate with luxurious frosting.  She showed it to the council and asked who wants a piece.  We all raised our hand and she smashed the cake with her hands and tried to give us fistfuls of cake but we, of course, didn’t want it then. She then told us - no matter how great the message and the lessons and the work is that we’re doing, if we just hand it to members like fistfuls of cake, nobody will want it.

I didn’t know if it’s gonna work with kids and their parents.  I was worried the kids would be “Give me smashed cake give me give me!”.  I tried it anyways... and it worked.  The kids were very sad to see the cake smashed so it was easier to get them to make serious contributions to the discussion which, normally, boys don’t like much - they prefer to get up and be rowdy.

So just a thought that you might be able to use the same object lesson in your class.  

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13 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

@Grunt, I gotta share this with you.  So a long time ago - at least 15 years ago - at ward council, the Primary President brought a cake, chocolate with luxurious frosting.  She showed it to the council and asked who wants a piece.  We all raised our hand and she smashed the cake with her hands and tried to give us fistfuls of cake but we, of course, didn’t want it then. She then told us - no matter how great the message and the lessons and the work is that we’re doing, if we just hand it to members like fistfuls of cake, nobody will want it.

I didn’t know if it’s gonna work with kids and their parents.  I was worried the kids would be “Give me smashed cake give me give me!”.  I tried it anyways... and it worked.  The kids were very sad to see the cake smashed so it was easier to get them to make serious contributions to the discussion which, normally, boys don’t like much - they prefer to get up and be rowdy.

So just a thought that you might be able to use the same object lesson in your class.  

Thanks!

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35 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

@Grunt, I gotta share this with you.  So a long time ago - at least 15 years ago - at ward council, the Primary President brought a cake, chocolate with luxurious frosting.  She showed it to the council and asked who wants a piece.  We all raised our hand and she smashed the cake with her hands and tried to give us fistfuls of cake but we, of course, didn’t want it then. She then told us - no matter how great the message and the lessons and the work is that we’re doing, if we just hand it to members like fistfuls of cake, nobody will want it.

If her point was that we need to approach teaching our students as a sacred task that we do not take lightly, that we prepare for, and that we pray to get inspiration for, then I'm with her 100%. But I'm afraid that many would take away from such an object lesson the idea that we should worry excessively about our presentation and make sure to incorporate lots of entertaining tricks (like smashing a cake) to draw our students in. Maybe I'm naive (maybe?), but I think a simple discussion with the Spirit present will do far more good than an intricate, excruciatingly prepared, fabulously entertaining lesson in which the Spirit does not bear witness.

This is not to criticize your Primary president at all, but to reinforce that in gospel teaching, substance is always, in every case, more important than presentation.

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3 hours ago, Vort said:

If her point was that we need to approach teaching our students as a sacred task that we do not take lightly, that we prepare for, and that we pray to get inspiration for, then I'm with her 100%. But I'm afraid that many would take away from such an object lesson the idea that we should worry excessively about our presentation and make sure to incorporate lots of entertaining tricks (like smashing a cake) to draw our students in. Maybe I'm naive (maybe?), but I think a simple discussion with the Spirit present will do far more good than an intricate, excruciatingly prepared, fabulously entertaining lesson in which the Spirit does not bear witness.

This is not to criticize your Primary president at all, but to reinforce that in gospel teaching, substance is always, in every case, more important than presentation.

This was ward council.  We didn’t talk about “methods of presentation” in ward council.

I used the object lesson to illustrate to the kids (and parents) that we are going to be doing activities to help one or more kids in the group accomplish their goals and that even if it happens to be not one of their goals, it would really suck if they “smash” it.

Edited by anatess2
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