Activities for Laurels

The following ideas are compiled from some suggestions on Laurel activities that help girls prepare for adulthood on the…The following ideas are compiled from some suggestions on Laurel activities that help girls prepare for adulthood on the lds-youngwomen Yahoo Group:

“We usually do things at one of our homes like making rolls, showing them how to use Quicken to balance their checkbooks, make freezer jam. We’ve made skirts and tied quilts for the Humanitarian Center. Sometimes we have a junkfood night and just get together and catch up on where they are in life. You could also give them x amount of dollars and take them to a furniture store and let them furnish their imginary ‘apartment’.”

“I like the concept of comparing recipes to the scriptures….both are instructions that you must read from start to finish BEFORE you start if you’re
going to have things come out right…. Might be a way to bring a spiritual message in with making something fun like cinnamin rolls or something practical like meatloaf.”

“Cooking Challenge! 2 teams, identical ingredients, 45 minutes — The teams will start out with identical ingredients (that happen to be college-budget-friendly, such as ground beef), and then I’m going to have 4 bonus items that they can earn by answering related questions correctly first. My bonus items will be sour cream, canned tomatoes, grated cheese, and canned beans, I think. Then we’ll give them the remaining 40 minutes to create a meal using the ingredients they have. They were really excited about this when I brought it up. They wanted to do quite a bit of cooking. I haven’t narrowed the ingredients down yet, other than ground beef and rice. I wanted to keep the ingredients basic and cheap, and I thought I’d just sit and think of something from each of the food groups. I also thought about doing it a meatless meal, either total vegetarian or else with a can of tuna. I think I
will bring some squash and tomatoes from my garden. I will have standard kitchen pantry staples on hand. I am bringing my spice basket, ketchup, mustard, salsa, worchestershire sauce, soy sauce, boullion cubes, cornstarch, maybe some eggs and milk, oil, vinegar, pots/pans/microwaveable dishes. I also thought I’d type up a list of kitchen staples for them to acquire when they are setting up their own kitchen. I know already that one of the “bonus” questions I am asking is: How do you cook rice? (Since rice is one of their ingredients.) And then at the end, we’ll all taste the dishes, and my Counselor and I will maybe suggest other things they could do to make the meal more tasty, appealing, or timely, such as, “This rice could have been cooked with a couple boullion cubes, a tablespoon of minced dried onion, and a few shakes of dried parsley for a pilaf, like Rice-a-roni.” Maybe we’ll talk about all of the different ideas we had of things we could have made with the ingredients.”

“We will be doing a checking account activity in October. We just asked them, ‘What things would you guys like to learn before you head out on your own next year?’ “

“We are doing a cooking thing tonight too. We did it to coincide with the Being Dependable lesson. Each girl was assigned an ingredient and they have to show up in order for the recipe to work! Yours sounds like fun too. We also did a checking account thing a few months back. I had them pick a job you could do just out of high school and then budget rent, food, car, gas, entertainment, CELL PHONE, etc. Some of the girls were really shocked at how it will be to live on their own.”