It's A Jungle Out There!

Sometimes, I think the girls make PP harder than it has to be.  It can be so much fun as well as educational.  Personal Progress encompasses so many aspects of their lives.  Each year, when they begin school, they are often "setting goals" without realizing it.  I like to discuss what classes they will have and what they are learning.  Are they taking Spanish or French for the first time?  Are they learning a particularly hard piece of music in piano lessons?  Have they joined a class government or volunteered at a hospital?  All these can be incorporated into goals for Knowledge, Individual Worth, Good Works, etc. YW in Excellence is to celebrate the girls' experiences, projects, and goals accomplished in the past year. Each girl was assigned a portion of a table to "show off" their talents and projects.  Our class of Beehives displayed a quilt they had just finished making.  One YW who is a ballerina in a local dance company brought her toe shoes.  One girl brought some of her ribbons and trophies won in competitions with her dog.   Our tables were full of YW group projects, trophies and photos!  The highlight of the night was a DVD put together by one of the girls of the YW involved in many of their activities and camp this past year.  It was wonderful!

One speaker talked about using Personal Progress to strengthen faith and one spoke on using Personal Progress to add to our temporal as well as spiritual knowledge.  One of our girls presented a song in ASL and one of our girls played the piano.  The decorations were super!  A garland of leaves was made on the sewing machine with leaves cut from green construction paper and hung to make vines.  We had a cute blow up monkey Oriental Trading and several stuffed animals were placed about.  We had a few palm trees with plastic snakes hidden inside. Small water bottles were covered with zebra duct tape and placed in a bucket warning the recipients of possible crocodile attack!  A pond was made out of blue tissue paper and the crocodile was placed in it although he was not very menacing.  Tables were spread with vinyl covers and cut with a ragged edge.   A large table was covered in a jungle print table cloth and covered with fruit kabobs, monkey bread, banana bread, animal crackers, and nut cups.  This theme worked well and was easy to incorporate in our talks and testimonies.  

Unfortunately, my photographer (a Laurel) did not get all the pictures I had hoped.  I'm afraid your imagination will have to work harder here!  But, no harm done and the night was a success for the girls and their parents.