I thought about going all out to decorate... but what goes up for decorations must come down, and I was ready for a very simple evening. I blew up (with the help of a balloon pump) about 50 balloons of all colors and just put them all on the floor, free floating. I set up our chairs in a circle, pushed all the balloons into the circle, and put a gift on each chair. We set out the cake so it was visible. Add in our party music, and the fact that I had a party blower for each girl, and it was plenty festive! :D
We had a short spiritual lesson to start. I used the Primary song "I Will Follow God's Plan" to talk about how each of our lives is a gift from our Heavenly Father... and each birthday, and really, each DAY, is an opportunity to use our time on Earth wisely. We talked about ways we could use our life wisely, including getting an education, learning to work, cook, play music, etc.; serving others, building a testimony and so on. We talked about what God's plan was for all His children, and how we could choose to fulfill that plan. The end of the message was to remind each girl that they are a special daughter of God with a unique purpose, and to wish them a happy and successful birthday.
As the girls were gathering we passed out balloon shaped cut outs and pens and asked them to write three facts about themselves on the balloon. We put up a list of "fact prompts" that included:
- how many pets do you have, and what are they?
- how many siblings do you have?
- what is your favorite TV show?
- What is one interesting place you have visited?
- what is your favorite food?
- favorite color?
- what is your favorite animal?
- what city were you born in?
- what musical instrument/s do you play?
- what is your greatest talent?
- Is your room messy or clean right now?
- how many stuffed animals do you have?
- what is your favorite video game or app?
- how many times were you dunked on your baptism day?
- where do your grandparents live?
- what is your middle name?
- do you know how to swim? tap dance? do taekwando? play piano?
We taped the balloons up around the room. After our spiritual lesson, our first game was "Guess the Girl" using the balloons that were now up all around the room. One by one each girl got to pick a balloon, read the facts on it out loud, and guess who she thought it belonged to. If she got it right, we all blew our party blowers and wished the balloon girl happy birthday. If she got it wrong, the balloon went back on the wall and the next girl chose a balloon. We just did this till everyone was correctly identified and wished a happy birthday. When we got down to the last three we had the remaining girls stand in the middle and we all guessed who went with what. It was pretty fun! Even with 15 giddy girls this only took about 15 minutes.
Next we did our gift exchange. Again, the idea was to get the girls to know a little more about each other, so we did a three round gift exchange. I wrote passing prompts on popsicle sticks. (With 15 girls, some identical prompts were written on more than one stick to get up to the 15 stick total.) There were enough sticks for each girl to have one for each round. Each round had a different theme to get the girls interacting. The idea was whoever was following their prompt could trade with you, so you would at least trade ONE time (to exchange your gift according to your prompt) but might trade SEVERAL times per round, depending on how others fulfilled THEIR prompts.
Round one's them was "look around." The prompts included:
- trade gifts with a person who has the same color eyes as you
- trade gifts with someone wearing the same color as you
- trade gifts with the girl who has the shortest hair
- trade gifts with the girl who has the longest hair
- trade gifts with someone who is wearing tennis shoes
- trade gifts with someone who is wearing glasses
- trade gifts with someone wearing blue or pink
- trade gifts with someone wearing green or red
The second round was "meet someone new"-- with the prompts designed to give each girl a chance to interact with someone that maybe she usually didn't.
- trade gifts with someone older than you (if there is no one older than you, trade this stick!)
- trade gifts with someone younger than you (if there is no one younger than you, trade this stick!)
- trade gifts with someone whose house you haven’t been to
- trade gifts with someone who does not go to your school
- trade gifts with someone whose name you don’t know (find out their name!)
- trade gifts with someone who has the same pet you do
- trade gifts with someone who likes the movie Frozen
- trade gifts with someone who does not live in Warsaw
- trade gifts with someone who can do a somersault
- trade gifts with someone who can make scrambled eggs
- trade gifts with someone who can find the area of a triangle (is good at math!)
- trade gifts with someone who knows how to braid hair
- trade gifts with someone who likes to draw
- trade gifts with someone who likes to read
- trade gifts with someone who has a brother
- trade gifts with someone who has a sister
After they opened their gifts, some of them wanted to trade items, which took another short amount of time. Then we all sang "Happy Birthday" to each other, and had cake and ice cream.
That cake and ice cream also disappeared very quickly! Because so many of our activities went faster than planned, we had a lot of time left. Luckily it was nice day, so after everyone finished their cake and ice cream we took our music, went outside, and played missionary tag for about 20 minutes.
When we left I told the girls to each take a couple of balloons with them (which they wanted to do anyway) and so clean up was very quick and simple, and everyone had a great time!
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