YW Mutual: French Macarons

I was so happy to share a new skill that I have recently gained to my Young Women in my Ward.  Over the last 2 years I have become addicted to a delightful, yet expensive, little treat: French Macarons.  It all started when Jason and I traveled to NYC and had some at the famous Ladurée macaron shop.  I couldn't stop buying them, but depending on where you buy them, they can range from $1 to $6 per cookie!  Well, I'm always up for a challenge, and so I began to do some research on how to make homemade French macarons.
Since then I am amazed with how popular they have become, and how many guides there online. Don't believe, just search for it on Pinterest!  I only had a couple of sources I could find and had to do a lot of experimenting to get good at making these bad boys, but I finally got it down to where I could consistently make delicious looking macarons.
It was fun to invite the Young Women to my place and let them learn the tips and tricks to making the macarons.  I let the girls pick the colors of the cookies and the frosting.  They had the neat idea to make the cookies different colors.  I hadn't done that yet, so it was fun to see them be creative, which I fully support in everyone!  I wasn't so sure of the color palette they went with, but honestly it didn't look too bad.  Blue, purple, and orange... how bad can it be?  To me it screams '80s, but neon colors are back in, right?  I wanted to teach the girls just the simple vanilla recipe, and then from there gave them suggestions on what to do next.  I do have to mention that my favorite add-ins are Nutella and lavender (never together, yuck!).  
We had a great time making the macarons, and since there is so much down time letting them air dry and then bake that we played games and just goofed off.
Overall, I would say it was a very successful mutual night!

The Claw: the Language Grabber!

Here is another simple activity that can be used in a large group, small group, or even one-on-one that isn't hard to prep and for some reason, the kids love.  The only material you will need that can be an investment is a plastic arm-extension grabber.  The kids version of what they use to pick up trash on the freeway.  I've seen them range from $5-$10 depending on the store, but honestly I bought mine at the 99 cent only store.  I got it in case I needed a really great prize for a student, but then came up with this idea.
You can start out the lesson with different vocabulary options, such as: machines that help us, cleaning up the community, or prepositions (open/close).  I decided to do a pragmatic lesson and talk about hands, and pretended that the grabber claw was my hand.  I then would give the students scenarios on what would be appropriate for me to do with my hand (claw).  I asked if I should keep my hand (claw) to myself or be touching my neighbor.  Then we talked about good places to put our hands (pockets, lap, on our desk, folded, etc) and bad places (in our friends desk, on our friend, in our mouth, etc).  That took only about 5 minutes then it was on to letting the students actually use the claw.
I photocopied some pictures to elicit N+V sentences and then crumpled them up like the picture below.  At this point you just need to call on a student and then have them pick up a piece of paper.  To work on teamwork within the classroom, I would have one student pick it up with the claw and then have to pick another classmate to give it to.  That classmate would open up the paper and then tell the group what he/she sees.  I made a big deal about how "I can't see what you have" so it would encourage the students to be specific and give details in what they saw.
This particular lesson was with a moderate-severe classroom with 2nd and 3rd graders that needed to work on past tense sentences.  So they would open up the paper and would say something like "running."  From there, I would encourage the student to tell me more, like "who is running" etc.  Once a full sentence was produced, we would practice it as a class.  From there, I would tell the students to replace the word "is" with the word "was" to make it happen in the past.  Then they would give me examples of "was" sentences (i.e. "I was sleeping").
You really could do anything you want with this lesson as long as you had the correct picture to get what you want out of the students.  You could have them work on prepositions, pronouns, adjectives, articles, really anything.  It just takes a little creativity to modify this.

The crumpled pictures just teasing the children to be picked up.  

My 99 cent claw that provided multiple activities for my students.  

It was quite easy for my students to use the claw to pick up the paper.  The only student that couldn't do it has dysarthria and couldn't keep the paper 

One of the pictures that I used to elicit language.  

Age of interest (in years): 3-12 years

Level of motivation (with 10 being the highest): 6-7 

Level to maintain attention of a group (how long until they get bored): 15-20 mins

I would say that if I could go back this week and redo this lesson, I would have had an interactive break after about 15 minutes to not cause the kids to get bored.  The ones that didn't have a turn yet were still engaged with the activity, but the ones that did have a turn knew they wouldn't get picked again and weren't participating as enthusiastically.  

Even with a couple of the students losing attention after a while, it was still a surprisingly effective lesson that encouraged a lot of language, multiple repetitions, and everyone had a good time.  

As always, I ended with a high give and stamp on their hands.  

Good luck!

--- Speech Teacher Lisa :)

New Beginnings 2016!

For those that are not familiar with my calling at our local ward in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I pretty much have the best calling in the world!  In each ward we are asked to volunteer our time and efforts to help everyone grow and gain a love and testimony of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  I was asked over 5 years ago to help encourage the Young Women (ages 12-18) to set their standards high and become more Christ-like during those trying years.  I was eventually called to become the Young Women's president, but in my opinion just getting to be around the girls is significantly important, no matter the calling.  I love working with the Young Women and seeing them be extraordinary girls with self-worth and compassion compared to the media telling girls to be conceited and selfish.  At the beginning of every year we meet with the Young Women and their parents to discuss upcoming events and reflect on the past year's events.  This is called "New Beginnings."  This year I had the idea to really focus on the scripture that was designated as the Youth theme in the church: “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life” (2 Nephi 31:20).
I broke up the scripture and then each member of the YW presidency spoke about what it meant to them.  As we did this, we each turned on a lamp that had the piece of the scripture in it.
This was a simple craft that could be done with vinyl, but I was in a rush and printed out the words on clear plastic projector paper.  You know the kind that we grew up with in school where the teachers would write on them with a projector for math problems?  (Man, kids these days don't even know what we went through with those projectors.  Now they have smart boards that are AWESOME!  But that's a different topic that is not spiritual, like this evening was).

A picture of the lamps and the lines from the scripture shining through!  

I remember having to speak about "Steadfastness" and "Enduring to the End."  With steadfastness, I spoke about runners and how they are constantly trying to increase their speed and strength towards a goal, and how we should be like that towards Christ.  We should be constantly moving towards becoming like Him by doing those things that we need to do every day.  I liked talking about "Enduring to the End" and how some look at it as a positive thing and others as a negative thing.  But if we do what we are supposed to be doing, and have faith in all things, then the "enduring" is quite wonderful.  Then I shared one of my favorite quotes that I try to remember every day: "In all of living, have much joy and laughter.  Life is to ENJOYED, not just ENDURED" by President Hinkley.    
We finished the evening with delicious treats that my amazing hubby helps set up every year.  Thank goodness we have lots of opportunities to use the chocolate fountain.  I love getting to speak to the families in our ward, because being away from our family, our ward is our adopted family.