Ocean Theme
Idea by Cori Gubler
 

We are having our recognition night in a couple weeks and the girls are very excited to have their families come see all that they have been working on. We are having a ocean-(mainly starfish) theme. We will share the starfish story with the girls - the one about the child throwing the starfish back into the ocean and the gentlemen walking on the beach tells her she can't possibly make a difference since there is miles and miles of washed up starfish and the girl replies, " I made a difference to that one!" as she throws one more back into the ocean. We want the girls to know that each goal they accomplish they are making a difference in their lives. We want them to know they are exceptional young ladies and the activities that they do are helping them continue on the path towards remaining outstanding young women. We are going to give each of them a starfish with the complete story. The story talks about a boy, but of course we are changing it to a girl. We will have a slide show - we've been taking photos at our activities. A few of the girls will verbally share what their favorite activities have been - we'll have lots of visuals of the things we have been doing over the past 6 months also, we will read the first presidency message from the faith in god booklet and have a member of the bishopric speak. Also, the girls we sing "Choose the Right" - it accomplishes a requirement. We will have girls say the prayers, lead the music and play the piano! They also made the decorations of octopus and starfish made out of clay and "I am a child of God" watercolor hangings. This is their night! For refreshments we are having fruit pizza and to continue the 'ocean' theme goldfish crackers in goldfish bowls with blue jell-o with gummy fish inside - simple refreshments because we have 20 active girls who will all attend with their families.

P.S.  For the star fish theme recognition night - we will have each girl recognized individually through our slide show. We did an activity were the girls wrote something nice about each other on paper-we will take those comments, condense them, and add to them as leaders and read them as each photograph is shown. As far as being recognized for their accomplishments we are not doing that--we are blessed in that our girls are very active and go through their things very quickly. We really have done their requirements as a group --we will have the visuals out as to represent all they have done, but we are not going to have each girl stand up and say what they have done, because we would be listening to the same thing over and over 16 times. Although that is a good idea for other groups, it doesn't work for ours since we are all pretty much working at the same rate.