Celebrate the return of the school year by reminding kids that learning can be fun. Invite ward members to run each of the workshops so you are free to supervise"
1. Gathering: Since LDS people are notoriously late, start a craft at 9:30 AM, and plan for it to take a half hour. As children arrive, give them a colored name tag to decorate, and then send them to the craft table to stay until 10. Have several crafts to appeal to different ages, and to let the faster-working, earlier arriving kids make more than one. Provide a bag for each child and place his craft or materials for an unmade one in the bag. Children can take them home to finish. Possible crafts include: book marks, book covers, or something related to the Book of Mormon.
2. 10:00 Have opening prayer and divide into four mixed age groups. You can use the colored name tags to create the groups--each group has a color.
3. 10-11:30 Worshops. Each one lasts 20 minutes and is held in a corner of the gym.
History: Choose someone to run this who loves history. At ours, the children are learning what school was like in pioneer days. Choose an aspect of history related to children and try to include hands-on elements, such as period games or food.
Language arts: Have the presenter read a story and then provide an activity related to the story, such as acting it out, or making puppets for the story. Teaching children to write poetry is also popular.
Science: Science experiments using safe ingredients. Look for books called Kitchen Science or something similar.
Music: A band teacher is going to get our kids interested in taking band. Another option is to learn some fun or educational songs, learn to conduct music, or play with rhythm instruments.
11:30 to 12:00 Take the children outside for ice cream (lunch?) and then play an active game (gym class) until the parents arrive. Don't forget a closing prayer when the first parent is prepared to leave.
Great Ideas for Primary Activity Days
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