If there is one thing that I really learned from this last meeting is that the girls love to play games. They LOVED the games this month.
There is a lot of helpful information in the leader’s manual to help with planning. Jessica started the lesson by explaining the virtue of friendliness. She made sure to point out that there is a difference between friendship and friendliness. Friendliness is about being warm and kind to all, not just our friends.
The saints of the month are Ruth and Naomi. Jessica read us their story. Since we have talked about Ruth and Naomi before, the older girls knew the story. It's wonderful that these stories and saints are being reinforced time and time again.
After talking about the saints, the girls gathered to hear the story, "The Selfish Giant", by Oscar Wilde. I think this was a new book for all of us which was surprising since this isn't a new book. This was one of the activities the girls could do to help earn their badge for the month. YAY!!
We did one more activity before the games. Jessica had the girls do a heart activity. The girls were given construction paper and then draw a large heart. After that, they wrote down all the friends that came to mind. Each name was given a certain amount of points depending on the relationship. The point of the exercise was to have the girls look at all the different people in their lives who are their friends (other Little Flowers, classmates, siblings, parents, grandparents, ourselves, cousins, our Guardian Angel, Jesus). Let me tell you, it was sort of funny because they were getting a little confused and focused too much on adding up the points which of course was not the point of the exercise. I did see quite a few light bulbs going off as a new group of people were called out.
Then it was game time!! These games were found at ehow.com.
The Human Knot
Best played in groups of six to 10, this game
involves the cooperation of the entire group. All the members of the game stand
in a circle and grab the hand of someone in the circle, but it cannot be the
person to their right or left. Once everyone has grabbed hands, they must
untangle themselves without letting go of their companion's hands. The
participants must communicate and plan how they are going to break the knot.
Some of the players may end facing outward, which is okay, as long as no one
lets go.
I'm Your Friend
This game encourages children to learn to
recognize their friend's voices. One child is chosen to be "it." The
child who is "it" sits in front of the rest of the children, her eyes
closed. One of the children in the group quietly walks up behind the chosen child
and says, "I'm your friend," and then returns to his original seat.
The child who is "it" must then guess who it was. It's important that
the children who are not "it" do not trade places and that they speak in their normal voices, to assure a fair game.
The girls were so disappointed when the meeting came to a close. I had to promise that we would have time in the coming meetings to keep playing.
