Sunbeams – Flower Study Badge Week 1

Long time, no see!  I apologize for the lack of posts last week as it was a VERY busy week.  This week, however, is a bit slower pace and should include more regular posting.

Spring has FINALLY arrives so today’s post is the Sunbeam lesson plan for the first week of the Flower Study Badge.  If you’ve noticed, I have been going through the badges needed to earn the Commissioner’s Sunbeam Award (and if you haven’t noticed, there you go.)  This one is an optional choice and counts towards the award.

This week students will be learning about state flowers, parts of a flower, and even planting their own!

Flower Study Badge – Week 1

Parts of a flower – taken from this website

 

**The Word Search in task 10 is flawed.  Most of the words you are supposed to find in there are not in there!**

Instead, grab this one: http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/quizzes/wordsearch/flower.html

Sunbeams – First Aider Badge Week 1

This week in Sunbeams we begin our “First Aider” badge.  This is a 2 week badge that will focus on how to do basic first aid and provide students with a mini-kit to take home at the end of the badge.  You will need to purchase a decent first-aid kit for this badge.

 

First Aider badge – Week 1 – lesson plan with games and activities

First Aid Jumble – An interactive way to complete Task 1

First Aid Match – Matching handout for Task 3

 

Graphics links: Band-Aid & Injured Blue Man

Camp Flyers

Can I just say how much I love knowing talented people!  It makes life so much easier when you can utilize the God given gifts of others.

With that being said, this post features flyers from Jordan Lyle, Corps Program Director in Greensboro, NC.  She created these camp flyers for her corps and graciously shared them with all of you!  Since these are PDFs and harder to customize you can either use them as is (especially if you are in the NSC Division!) or create your own using these as a starting point.

If you like these, leave comments below!

AC Camp Flyer -Adventure Corps Camp

GG Camp Flyer – Girl Guard Camp

Junior Soldier Camp Flyer

Older Adult Camp Flyer

SB Camp Flyer – Sunbeam Camp

Sunbeams – Bird Study Badge Week 2

We have finally reached the week of Sunbeams that I have been saving up supplies for and looking forward to for 2 months!  It’s birdfeeder (and some other things) week!  This week’s lesson completes the Bird Study Badge by studying habitats of birds, endangered species, and making a birdfeeder!  There are supplies needed ahead of time for this lesson, so be prepared for that.

Bird Study Badge – Week 2

Habitats Fact Sheet

Endangered Birds

 

 

Websites used to create the “Habitats Fact Sheet” file:

http://water.usgs.gov/nwsum/WSP2425/birdhabitat.html

http://www.defenders.org/grasslands/temperate-grasslands

Websites used to create the “Endangered Birds” file:

http://birds.audubon.org/birdid/resources/endangered

http://www.mycutegraphics.com/backgrounds/bird/black-blue-bird-background.html

Corps Cadets – February Week 2

Finishing up this month’s Corps Cadet lessons is an awesome look at Hebrews 11, what faith is, and what it means to our young people in the church.  For the most part I went along with the CrossTraining for Corps Cadets curriculum, but changed one section and added in a fun activity on the “Faith Hall of Fame” where your teens can create their own Hall of Fame wall.  (Template base from http://blackcarrot1129.deviantart.com/art/Trading-Card-Template-Front-161301321)

This is a limited resource activity with just some print offs and a couple of copies to make, so not much prep work is needed.

Corps Cadets – February Week 2

Faith Hall of Fame Plaques

Sunbeams – Bible Badge Week 1

Yay!  It’s the moment you all have been waiting for…maybe.  I’m lesson planning again!  I have worked up a badge plan for the Sunbeams which I’ll add at the bottom of the post.  If you want to work your schedule around this one, feel free.  Some of it is personalized for our corps, such as vacations and such, but feel free to use the basic framework as this is how I will be posting lesson plans each week.

This year we are moving our Youth Programs to Wednesday evenings instead of Monday afternoons and my husband and I are taking Mondays off, so expect that change in posting as well.  Now Sunbeam lessons will be posted on Tuesdays (Wednesday at the latest!!)  You’ll also notice that the time for each class has been shortened from an hour long class to only about 40 minutes.    I’m excited about how much fun we are going to be having in Sunbeams this year as we are geared up to complete 10 badges before summer! (Yowza!)

This week we being the Bible Badge (necessary for the Commissioner’s Sunbeam Award) week 1 of 2 completing tasks 1, 2, and 3 in the Sunbeam lesson plan.  There are some additional resources that you can use for this lesson plan in the Junior Soldier Bible Beginnings course from September 2013, or find something similar on Google.

Bible Badge – week 1 – lesson plan for this week

Sunbeam 2014 Badge Plan – framework for badge postings and lesson plans until June

Celebrating Creation wheel (Repost from Preliminaries Bible Basics – Creation)

The Fall- Take home

Below are pictures of the adjusted take home that I made for my corps members.  I was able to get the apple design for only 50cents in the weekly deals section of the silhouette online store and used red cardstock to cut the design 4 to a sheet.  Since I didn’t have any labels the right size for the front, I just handwrote and then printed 1 Corinthians 10:13 on labels for the back.  If you have a Silhouette Cameo or Portrait and want to use this instead of the PDF previously posted, let me know!

Back of fruit

front of fruit

front and back together

Sunbeams – Homemaker Badge & Celebratory Tea Party

We’re wrapping up our youth programs for the Christmas season over the next couple of weeks.  That gives us time to finish the Etiquette badge this week, do 1 week of the Homemaker badge, and then throw a Tea Party to wrap up our time together.  The Etiquette badge was posted a couple of weeks ago (Category: Sunbeams) so today I have for you:

1. Sunbeams Homemaker Badge Week 1
2.  Wax Paper Stained Glass Instructions
3. Sunbeam Tea Party Plan (With crafts and games!)

 

The Tea Party craft uses the Tea Pot kits from Oriental Trading that we had leftover from Community Care Visitations a few months back, so just a heads up if you want to use that, order it now!

 

Homemaker Badge Week 1

Wax Paper Stained Glass Instructions

Sunbeam Tea Party

 

These will be the last Sunbeam lesson plans posted until January!

Friday Fun – Songbook Craft

So about a month ago I took an informal survey of the Facebook world to see if I would be shunned for using old songbooks for crafts.  The consensus was, it was ok!  So here is the tutorial for how I’m doing it.  We are planning on selling these as a fundraiser for Women’s Ministries.

 

So a closet was cleaned out and then this is what resulted: tons of old (and I mean old!) songbooks.  They’ve been hiding in the closet for at least a decade, so I decided to once again show their pages to the world.

What happens when you clean out a closet in the corps!

 

Supplies I used for this project:  Small(ish) canvas board, mod podge, sponge brush, songbooks, paint, and a small paintbrush

 

The first step is to pick out a song.  Today I chose the Founder’s Song- – O Boundless Salvation.  Then I cut the song out from the rest.

For this project I ended up needing the song from 6 song books.

Next (and the hardest step I think) is to lay out the pieces how you feel looks best.  At first I tried the straight and standard approach, but didn’t like it so tried something different.

Finally, I decided on a wrapping technique making sure that all spaces were covered.  This required wrapping the pieces around to the back of the canvas and taping it down like so:

Once you have everything figured out, put a layer of Mod Podge on the canvas, lay the paper where you want it, and press it down.

When you’re finished with the layout, put a layer of Mod Podge over the top and sides of the entire project.

 

After this dried, I took the acrylic paint and painted words across to add a little extra oomph

Red, Yellow, and Blue are the obvious choices for a song so steeped in Salvation Army tradition.

 

All in all this project took only about an hour (or would have if I hadn’t taken a trip to Wal-Mart while the Mod Podge was drying!)  It’s fairly easy to do and doesn’t require a lot of supplies.  We had our women’s group start this project a few weeks back (I’ll post those pictures on Monday!)

 

Be on the lookout for these and more at the NSC Women’s Retreat in April!

How it Went- Community Care Ministries

Today we started back our Community Care Ministries (formerly known as League of Mercy) aka Nursing Home visitation.  This was something that hasn’t been done here for a while so we’re building relationships and trying to get it back on the regular schedule.

So today we visited 2 homes in Durham to drop off War Cry’s, smile at people, and make new friends.  At the first place, we were given the task of providing and leading a craft time.  Knowing what I know about our friends in these facilities, I went on a mission to find something fun and user friendly.

I finally decided on the Teapot Treat Holders from Oriental Trading (link at the bottom of this post.)  These have adhesive pieces that all come in one baggie so no need to haul a lot of stuff.  They are super lightweight and fairly simple to put together, unless you get the foam pieces stuck together!

What worked:
Crafts were affordable, lightweight, and something of interest
All the pieces came in a baggie – no lugging around a whole lot of things

What didn’t work:
What seemed like an easy craft to me, and what I thought would be a good fit for the nursing home because of its larger pieces and adhesive backs, was still quite difficult for most residents.  For the most part we ended up having to put them together for them, which was fine by us (don’t get me wrong!)

 

So next month we’re doing a sing-a-long with super large font word sheets for all of the residents which will be something I’m sure all will enjoy.  The next time we do a craft, I will take this lesson into consideration and hunt far and wide for the perfect thing.  And when I find it, I’ll let you know!

 

http://www.orientaltrading.com/teapot-treat-holder-craft-kit-a2-48_9320-11-1.fltr?xsaleSku=48/8662

^ Teapot Treat Holders – super cute!