4th grade girls Life of Faith kickoff!

This is the 3rd year at our school that an all 4th grade girls Life of Faith group (based on http://www.alof.com/club_overview.html ) has been started by moms at our school. It is a group that's primary focus is to foster friendships and love for one another and the Lord.

4th grade is the year that friendships become tighter and cliques begin to form and people get left out and feelings get hurt. The goal of this 2 year group is for this class to bond together and get to know and love one another for the individuals that God created each of them to be and to always show kindness and respect to one another.

Friday was our kick-off with an after school Christmas party. Starting in January, we will meet once a month at rotating houses where there will be food, fellowship, games, craft, and lesson. Guess who's craft mom for this group? Go ahead, guess...yep, yours truly. :) I got to do the ornament craft for this party and will get to come up with all the crafts for this group. I'm excited!

We have a very small private christian school...about 500 students total in K-8th grade. All of the 4th grade girls total about 37 (spread between 4 fourth grade classes). At the Christmas party 31 of the girls were able to come. It was great fun. The girls changed into festive clothes after school and we dove right into the craft. They enjoyed making the ornaments and did a good job with them (see Crafty Mom post for an example of the ornaments they made).

Part of the goal of the group is to get the girls out of their comfort zones and get to know girls outside of their core friendships. To that end, the girls were assigned tables of 5 to sit at. It was interesting to see that this was initially really hard for some of the girls, to not be with their closest friends and having to branch out to get to know better the girls at their table.

Each girl brought a wrapped christmas mug to exchange and then have hot cocoa in. I don't think I saw one duplicate mug in all those 31 girls! They were all such cute and fun mugs!

There were sweet treats and an overview about this group starting and some conversation starter questions. All in all, it was great fun and I am excited to get to know each of these 37 girls better. We are blessed to be part of this school and the wonderful families in it!

Here are some pics of the fun! My E is in the red sweater with the snowflake and elf hat.