Activity Days Tea Party

For almost 4 years I have been serving as Activity Days Leader in my ward. At the beginning of my service I held a mother daughter tea party.  It was such a great success I decided to do it again now that I have a completely new set of girls.  Most Activity Day leaders only have one age of girls, but I have all of the girls from 8-12 because we have a small number.  So, I can't repeat activities from year to year.  

This time around I decided to really get the most out of the tea party and I planned 3 months of activities that would lead up to the party, selecting activities that counted for Faith in God requirements while also helping us prepare for this special day.

If you are an Activity Day Leader, you might be interested in what we did.  And that's pretty much the only reason I'm sharing this- well, because my friend said I should. So, I hope it will be helpful to someone. And, if it is, let me know.  If you are not an Activity Day leader, you should just stop reading now.  I'm serious.  It's going to be very very boring for you.

Here's what we did and which requirements we were working on;

Activity 1:  Manners

Requirement: Learn about and practice good manners and courtesy.( Serving Others)
ALSO Learn to sing, play, or lead a song from the Children’s Songbook. Teach or share the song in a family home evening or at Primary. Discuss how developing talents helps prepare us for service to Heavenly Father and others. ( Developing Talents)

This was our first,"get ready for the tea party" activity.  We talked about different scenarios of good manners, both for eating and telephone etiquette. After talking, the girls acted out scenarios to practice their phone manners.  We ended by having a mini tea party with some snacks, where we practiced chewing with our mouths closed, saying " please" and "thank you", elbows off the table, and asking people by name to pass things rather than reaching across the table.

During this meeting I also introduced two short songs for the girls to learn and perform for their mother during the tea party.  They were:
My Blessings

file:///C:/Users/SLCardinal/Downloads/2012-10-132-my-blessings-eng.pdf

https://www.lds.org/music/library/search?query=My+Blessings&x=0&y=0&lang=eng

and

Sing Me a Song

file:///C:/Users/SLCardinal/Downloads/2012-10-154-sing-me-a-song-eng.pdf

https://www.lds.org/music/library/search?query=Sing+Me+a+Song&x=0&y=0&lang=eng

Both songs originally appeared in the friend magazine.

Each time we met, we spent a few minutes singing the songs for practice.  This fulfilled the requirement in Developing your Talents to plan and complete your own activity


Activity 2: Hairbows
Requirement: Make an item from wood, metal, fabric, or other material, or draw, paint, or sculpt a piece of art. Display your finished work for others to see.
(Developing your talents)

For this activity I taught the girls how to make simple, yet adorable, hairbows from felt.  Here's a link to a tutorial showing how to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYQwh5_VR1g

 This activity was extremely inexpensive, and I just donated my personal materials.  All you need is a few felt sheets, hot glue, clips, scissors.  They turned out so darling. The girls each made two, one for them and one for their mothers.

Activity 3: Invitations
Requirement: This activity didn't really meet a requirement, but could be used for service for a write in activity.

I provided cardstock, paper, stickers, and glue and let the girls each make an invitation for their mother. Since our theme was flowers, I also gave them some silk flowers that they could choose to glue on.

Activity 4: Decorations
Requirement: Developing your talents write in

For this activity the girls each received a small foam ball and had their choice of oodles of flowers to glue on them.  We then stuck a wooden dowel into the ball and put it in a pot.  They turned out so darling! This was the most expensive activity we did.
Here's a breakdown of the cost to make 12.
foam balls= $8 for 12 at walmart
wooden dowels-$2 for 12 at walmart
hot glue- $6 for 50 fat stick. We used a ton of hot glue.
flowers- $17 at the dollar store, plus about that much or more from my personal stash that I bought in grab bags at Walmart.
yellow paper stuff- $1 at the dollar store.
pots- $3 for 12 at the dollar store.  These plastic pots were not heavy enough and we had to add rocks. Terra cotta pots would be better, but Joann's was closed already by the time I went out to shop.
paint- donated mine
foam for pots- $2.47 at Walmart.  I used all of it.

This was a pricey project considering that I have a $10 a month budget. You could easily come up with a much less expensive centerpiece.  These ended up costing over $3 a piece and would have been closer to $5 if I hadn't donated flowers from my supply.

We used these to decorate the tea party, and at the end the girls got to take them home. We made enough for everyone whether they came to any particular activity or not.

Activity 5: Cake Balls
Requirement: This could be a write in for either developing your talents or service, since the cake balls were being made for the tea party for their moms.  

I do a lot of activities where I make up my own activity that fits with the category. I guess I mostly do this because we run our of activities to do over 4 years when we meet 24 times a year and there are only about 28 ideas total.  So, that only gives me something to do about 25% of the time when I feel like I can't repeat anything specific for 3 years.



Activity 6: Tea Party
Requirement: 

• • 
  Plan and hold a parent-child activity, such as a dinner, picnic, hike, day trip, or service project. (Serving Others)

You've probably noticed that none of these activities count for Learning and Living the Gospel.  We'll focus several activities on that this fall, as we did in the Spring.  

My daughter Audrey

My daugther Clara

I didn't make food assignments, but had a true potluck. We ended up with  a great variety.

Here's a picture of the girls singing for their moms.

The tea party was a wonderful culmination of 5 activities of preparation.  Out of 11 girls, we had 10 come to the tea party. This was fantastic!  I usually get 6 or 7 on a really good day, so I was very happy that so many girls came. There were 20 people in attendance and we fit very nicely at 3 rectangle church tables pushed together to make one long table.  The girls topiaries lines the center of the table, the flowers were clipped onto the napkins, and I hung tissue paper puff balls above the tables.  2 packs of multicolored tissue paper from the dollar store made 5 puff balls.  We had one more table set up for refreshments and each girl brought one or two items to share. 

For our beverage we were treated with "Mormon tea"  which was actually tap water.  I had planned on serving lemonade, but I completely forgot about a drink until 15 minutes before starting time.  Whoops!  

At the beginning the girls sang their two songs for the Moms and we had a short review of good manners. Everyone acted like a princess and had a great time eating and enjoying each other's company.  At the end, I talked to all of the moms about the schedule for the school years to make sure that my planned meeting time of Fridays at 3:30 would work for everyone. It was really nice to have them all together at once to get that settled.  

So, that's it.  

6 activities.

6 or 7 requirements accomplished.  

11 happy little girls.

Note about the cost:

As I mentioned earlier, the decorations for the table were pricey.  You could easily come up with a project that costs less.  I chose to buy plastic tablecloths, paper plates.  We could have used real plates and tablecloths. I'm turning in a receipt for the cookies and coconut we coated the cake balls in, but I donated the cake supplies and dipping chocolate.  I asked each girl to bring a dish to share. I donated the supplies for the invitations and the flower hairbows.  I wasn't trying to be crazy frugal, but I was trying to be careful, and I'm turning in receipts totaling almost $60, which is half my budget for the year.  But, since we spent 3 months on these activities and I usually come up with completely free activities, I'm doing fine on my budget. It's actually the only money I've spent all year.  If you want to do a tea party, and budget is an issue for you, consider asking girls to bring supplies for home if they have them.  Ask parents what they have that they could donate. Lots of people have extra craft supplies lying around that they bought and never ended up using- people like me who can't resist buying an 8 ounce jar of red glitter for $1.49.