Dangers of Gossip and Lipgloss

I recently moved to a new ward.  When I received my new calling, I just smiled and accepted.  I was the Activity Day leader for the 8-9 year olds in my old ward, and received the calling of Activity Day Leader for the 8-year old in my new ward.  I was shocked to receive the same calling, but SO excited!  I had lots of fun activities I had done before that I am excited to repeat, and know which ones flopped.  After getting this calling for the second time, I decided to start documenting what we have been doing.  Hopefully this helps some new leaders that need ideas!  

This was actually a new activity for me, but the girls had fun doing it.  We started off by sitting down and having a conversation about how if feels when someone talks about us behind our backs, whether it be true or not.  We talked about defending our friends when someone talks about them.

Then, I told the girls we were going to experiment with the dangers of gossip.  The girls sat in a circle and we played the "telephone game."  I started by saying a sentence into one of the girl's ear and let her repeat what she thought she heard to the next girl, and so on down the line.  If one girl didn't hear what the previous girl had said, I made a rule that they couldn't repeat it.  By the end it was completely different than what I had said.  We had enough time, so each girl got to choose a short message to pass down the line.  Experiment #2:  We went outside and I put glitter in one girl's hand and told her she had to pass the glitter in her hands down through each girl and make it to the end without losing one piece of the glitter.  Obviously, this was not possible.

We talked about when we hear something, parts of the truth may not be passed on or they can be twisted, and by the time a few people talk about something or someone it may not be true at all.

Then we made the lipgloss.  I just went to the store and bought some different flavors of KoolAid packets, got some small jars at the craft store in the section where they have beads, and grabbed some Un-Petroleum Jelly, and coconut oil.  Instructions can be found here. 

So at the end of the activity each girl got to go home with 2 different lip glosses, the cute poem to remind the girls to speak kindly (found here), and since it was Valentines week, I send them off with a little Valentine (found here).