Eternal Family Olympic Games

Saturday morning was my very first primary activity - that is, from the planning vantage point. I work with amazingly creative and fun women who totally know what they are doing, and I was very grateful to only have a supporting roll in the planning process.

This year our theme in Primary is "My Eternal Family." Since families need to work together to be successful, we settled on an Olympic game theme, and created outdoor relay activities that related to gospel concepts we've been talking about in primary so far this year.

• Love Strengthens Our Families – Balloon Hug Relays
• Dads Strengthen Our Families – Stroller and Lawn Mower Relays
• Moms Help Build Strong Families - Rotation Relay - make PBJ, diaper baby, fold towel, sign check.
• Immersion (Baptism) Game – Dunk the Bishop game
• Prophets teach us how to strengthen our families game - Follow the Prophet Cakewalk
• Temple blessings unite my family – Tug o War for temple picture game

I got to use some of my creative skills in the tasks I was delegated and I have to say it was a lot of fun to spend some time doing a little sewing and graphic design in preparation for today's activity.

I made the makings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of felt - because Moms help us eat nutritious food. There are lots of really complicated and involved ways you could do this, but was going for fast, simple, mass production, and this totally worked for what we wanted [and the kids have been having a blast running PBJ restaurants and making stacks of sandwiches for each other!]. I'm thinking of creating a little PDF tutorial on how to do this, if anyone is interested, let me know.



I also made some baby doll diapers out of scraps of flannel - because Moms care for and nurture their children. Sam and the girls are seriously excited about this addition to their doll clothing collection! I used this pattern. It's super easy, and I was able to make five of them pretty easily. If you make these for a small doll like the ones my kids have (they are about 14-15" dolls), consider shortening the back tabs that wrap around to the front a good half inch on both sides,



My graphic design - and I use that term loosely as to not offend those who are truly skilled in graphic design - dabbleings were put to work making the advertising fliers. We invited parents to stay for our activity as spectators to cheer on the different events - the Olympics simply wouldn't be the same without cheering spectators! So I created tickets, loosely based on the Salt Lake City Olympic Game Ticket I found on eBay. The great thing is we had quite a few parents come and watch, which was great fun!


I needed a fourth "event" in the Mom Relay ... and came up with this one ... Moms help us obey the commandments and live the gospel, like paying our tithing. I made big faux tithing checks and had the local print shop turn them into a pad of paper for me.

Did any of you see this craft in the July issue of FamilyFun? I thought it would be perfect for any of the little sibblings who came with moms and dads as spectators. We modified the construction a bit to fit the supplies we had on hand. We'd gotten a box of straws donated from Sonic for another project and had lots of extras. Instead of using a dowel, we'll taped three big Sonic straws together for the handle. We also used our rotary cutters to cut and fringe the bags - so slick and made making 25 possible. One last tip ... used bags make better pom poms than new bags. New bags take a bit of russeling and scrunching in order to fluff up and make a decent pom pom. The kids LOVED these and several asked to take theirs home!