Year 8 ~ Overview in pictures!
Highlights of what we’ve been up to!
Getting to Know Each Other
(Sept. 28, 2026)
Opening Activity Sheet:
As we wait for everyone to arrive the girls worked on a hidden activity sheet: Noah’s Ark: find 2 cats, 2 bunnies, and 2 mice.
Reviewed the Explorers Purpose
Game #1: Get to Know You
“My Name is; My favourite colour is?; My favourite animal is, etc.” Can they remember what everyone said each time we go around the circle?
Game #2: How many names can you remember?
Each girl went around the circle and said as many names as they could remember, which caused limitless laughter as we all got more than one wrong. Everyone received a prize of a “Smiley God Loves You! Bendy Guy” for their memory efforts!
Game #3: Crazy Chairs
A circle of chairs equal to number of players.
Leader says a statement, examples: “If you have the colour red on ~ move two chairs to the left; or “If you have blue eyes ~ move five chairs to the right” (you sit on whoever is already there).
Hilarious pileups ensue!
Explorers’ Memory Boxes
(Oct. 27, 2025)
Unfortunately the red bucket hats we generally order, for the girls, have suddenly become very pricy! So this year the girls are stencil painting a wooden Memory Box for their Explorers Keepsakes instead.
Opening Activity Sheet:
As we wait for everyone to arrive the girls worked on a hidden activity sheet: Widow’s Mite: find the 10 hidden coins.
MEMORY BOXES
Choosing name letters and a wooden box:
Once everyone had arrived the girls were sent off to God’s Story Table room where the table was covered in an assortment of wooden letters. Once they found letters to spell out their name, they brought them back and selected a box, placing their letters on top of it. Then we all headed over to the paint table.
Paint Table:
At the paint table Luanne demonstrated how to paint with stencils:
1) Stencils: How to remove stencil from the sheet and then position the sticky back stencil onto their box.
2) Brushes: Called “sponge dabbing brushes”, 3 sizes to choose from, size chosen will depend on the size of the stencil you are painting. Small stencil you will want to use the smallest brush. With each paint colour there are 3 sized brushes. Those 3 brushes stay with that paint colour, so we will be sharing the brushes.
3) Acrylic Paint: Showed them how you only place a small amount of paint in bottom of bowel—one colour per bowel. We had lots of colour shades to choose from: black, brown, green, pink, purple, yellow, blue, and red. We will be sharing the bowels of paint.
4) Applying paint to your brush, then stencil: Showed them how you lightly touch the brush into the paint, then dab off excess paint onto a paper towel, then dab over the stencil doing their best to stay inside the stencil. They may have to do this a few times to fully fill in their chosen stencil(s). If they wanted to paint a single stencil with different colours they had to use a single brush for each colour, not to dip any brush into more than one paint, this would also give them cleaner looking colours.
5) Masking Tape: Showed them how to add a strip of painter’s tape to any side of the stencil that came too close to the edge to help avoid getting paint outside the stencil.
6) Everyone could also pick a sheet of 4 glass heart stickers.
7) When they finished painting their box they positioned their name (wooden letters) where they wanted it, then let Luanne know it was ready for her to glue on the letters for them, using a glue gun.
Also, had baby wipes on hand for any messy fingers. The wipes also worked well to clean the paint off the stencils if you got to them while paint was still wet, although they didn’t clean any stray paint off the wooden boxes (we tried-LOL). Right afterwards I placed the paint brushes that had been used into the white plastic cups and filled each cup with water until I could rinse them well individually under tap water, squeezing until they rain clean, then squeezing them with paper towels, then let them air dry (surprising most of them came out pretty clean.)
They were really good listeners, paying attention to my instructions, as you can tell from their finished memory boxes, which were all totally different and each a beautiful work of art! (Names blocked out for privacy.)
