Building Temples

Yesterday was activity days.  For those of you who do not know what activity days is it's a program for the 8-11 year old girls in LDS Church.  I was just recently called to be an assistant activity days leader.  Yesterday was my turn to teach and do the activity.  It was on building temples.  When I saw what the lesson was on all of these ideas start coming into my head, and I couldn't think of where to begin.  I didn't want to make it confusing, or too much, but I wanted it to be fun and a good learning experience for the girls.
I found a couple of ideas online.  I started out by asking the girls why we build Temples.  There answer was to get married!  I said yes, but it's much more than that, and told them why we build temples.  I got my info off of lds.org temple page.  I wanted a hands on learning activity and I found it online. I had a bag full of objects symbolizing things n the temple.  The girls each took turns taking an object out of the bag and telling what it was. I read the meaning of the symbol.  It felt like the girls really wanted to know, and we talked and answered questions.
I saved the best for last we built our own temples out of marshmallows and toothpicks.  You should have seen the excitement on their faces.  I said you can't eat the marshmallows until you go home and have shown your parents what you made.  They all did pretty well following that rule, I was kind of worried!  I should have taken pictures of all the Temple's the girls built.  They were very unique, and well done!  I'm so glad the activity went well and it was a success.
When I got home Kenzie and Maddie were in awe of the marshmallow temple and wanted to eat it right then.  I told them they could either have some later after dinner, or the next day.  It ended up being today.  I told them they could have the marshmallows with some hot chocolate when they got home from school.  They were so excited!  Matt made the hot chocolate and gave them a good portion of the temple marshmallows and left the room.  He came back in to find them sneaking more, the little stinkers.  They ate almost the whole thing, it was a lot of marshmallows too!  I'm glad they enjoyed themselves.  I'm wondering if any of my activity days girls ended up having hot chocolate with their marshmallow temples, or if they finished eating it before they even got home.  I know for sure on a couple that they didn't last!  Fun times, i'm excited to do more activities with these girls, they are fun!

My Marshmallow Temple: