Book of Mormon Olympics – Quarterly Activity

Activities:

1. Samuel the Lamanite: skittles placed on a wall (we used the steps from the stage), how many can you knock down with three throws?

2. Anti-Nephi-Lehi’s: a small sandpit with little pick-up-sticks swords buried, how many can you find in one minute?

3. Lehi’s Journey: blowing a ball with a straw from one point to another (like travelling by sea to the promised land).

4. 2000 Stripling Warriors: Dress up in helmet, sword and shield run to a divider and pop a balloon, run back, ‘undress’ and let the next person go. 5 balloons per senior team. The juniors dressed in helmet and sword and we used the shield instead of balloons. They had jewels that they had to velcro on to the shield. The jewels, shield and sword were made from cardboard.

5. Joseph Smith’s Translation: A Book of Mormon message to decode and the key to help. We had two sets as they finished the first pretty quick. Thanks to Wendy Beus for that one.

6. Captain Moroni & the Title of Liberty: pillowcase race holding a title of liberty on a stick

7. Nephi’s Bow: Bow & 3 Arrows, through a target hanging from the basketball hoop to try and hit the picture of the animal on the wall.

8. The Wilderness: as in Nephi and Lehi and family travelling when they left Jeruselem. This was an obstacle course and the seniors had to carry some scriptures with them as they did it. They went through it once then time-trialled the second time.

For a month prior to our activity the children earned reverence tickets. If they participated, listened, sang well or did an assignment they would get a ticket. With these tickets they ‘purchased’ their dinner. They all got 1 x Helaman’s Hamburger,
1 x Sariah’s Sundae (Basic ice-cream with sprinkles) and 1 x Joseph’s Juice. With their tickets they could also buy:

1 ticket = 1 slice of cheese for their burger, or 1 mini chocolate bar (Teancum’s treat), or 1 Lehi’s Liahona Ball (popcorn ball), or additional toppings on their ice cream (choc chips, wafer, nuts,
sauce)

2 tickets = another hamburger. I don’t think anyone went home hungry as we weren’t real strict with the tickets or what they could buy with them. It was good to see the children had taken responsibility for looking after their tickets as they weren’t replaced if lost.

I did have one more activity in case we had time to spare, but the kids were happy to just play with the activities they hadn’t done while they waited for parents to pick them up.

We average 20-30 kids in primary per week and we had 27 come to the activity, so we thought that was really good. I think the reverence tickets helped, along with having the teachers call a few days before the activity to remind the children and the parents it was on. We were also able to check if rides were needed.

A few things I would do differently next time = firstly no balloon popping. I knew that some of the juniors wouldn’t like popping balloons but they were still in the same room and heard them. I didn’t know one boy had a real fear of balloon popping so he was taken home with his brother shortly after the activity started. I felt bad! I spoke with his parents though and took him and his brother some popcorn balls from the activity.

Secondly = I would make sure my adults were more organised. I wanted to have one stationed at each activity but I didn’t know who was coming or how many I would have so i just put 2 or 3 adults with each group (2 teams). That could have been better.

Other than that we were real pleased with our activity and the kids and parents really enjoyed it. Simple to prepare, fun to play!

p.s. Yes we did have a pretty good budget available for this activity but we only spent it on food, as all props for the activities were found around our homes.

From a post on the Primary-Page Yahoo Group.