Okay, I’m about to do something I don’t do too often… I’m gonna let the crazy out of the box a bit.  To make up for it, I’ve got some printable valentines that are totally boy-approved for you!  I try not to be a helicopter mom and to let my kids explore and learn for themselves, but I’m still the mom and there are just some things my kids are not ready for.  Big J is only five, after all.  It should be years before he starts talking about girlfriends and kissing and romantic love, but I will be lucky if girls still have cooties in three years.  I want to keep him little as long as possible.  See… here it comes… the crazy.

While we were at the store the other night, I took Big J down the Valentine aisle and we looked at the cards.  There were boxes of Ninja Turtles, Superheroes, and even Mickey Mouse asking “Be my Valentine?” or “Be Mine?”  He’s five!  I should still be his valentine!  He should still adore me!  Not some adorable little five-year-old girl with pigtail braids.  And he has a very limited understanding of “mine” and it means ownership.  I don’t want him thinking people can be owned.  Annnnd there it is, the CRAZY.  I warned you.  Sooo, in my over-protective, helicopter mom moment I made him some Valentines that were focused on friendship.

Get your free printable valentines!

Follow the link above to get your printable valentines that your boys will love.  Print them out, cut them apart and attach a candy. if you like.  They are formatted to 8.5×11″ and I would suggest printing them on cardstock.

I will be making some more for Big J to hand out to his friends this year, so sign up for the mailing list if you’d like to get your hands on those too.  They should be going out next week.  That big bar at the top of the page is what you’re looking for, just put in your email and the rest of the series will show up in your inbox.

What’s your worst helicopter mom moment?

If there’s one thing you need to be organized, it’s a calendar, right?  Well, this set of 2015 Primary Calendars should help out.  A place to keep track of baptisms, primary activities, presidency meetings, training meetings, and other important events.  I wanted the monthly theme on each calendar.  There are also spots to write in who is conducting and who is teaching sharing time.  Our presidency has actually decided to do sharing time differently this year and teach one sharing time a month, instead of teaching a whole month at once, so I made a few adjustments to our calendar.

It’s a pretty basic calendar, but having the theme right there makes it easy when you’re conducting or making opening exercise assignments.  It’s also a nice quick reference when someone needs to know dates, especially ones that are a ways out and not right on your radar or are stake events.

The pages of the 2015 Primary Calendars are formatted to 8.5×11 and will print best on white paper.  The text of the theme and conducting/sharing time schedule are colored, but are dark enough to show up on photo copied pages too.  The banners will definitely look better in color though.  I tried to leave space for extra notes, should you need to make any.  It’s the perfect place to write down what you are supposed to bring to the next training or presidency meeting or ideas on that training you’re supposed to give.

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Get your 2015 Primary Calendars and organize your year!

Side note: Nikki at Melonheadz LDS Illustrating has some super cute illustrations you can add to your calendars if you want a little picture to dress them up.  There’s cute ones of Christ, Joseph Smith and lots of other possibilities.  Definitely check her out if you have a love of clip art.  She’s got some awesome sets on Etsy too.  I put them on my calendars and they are adorable.

Hey, it’s day 3 of this little Primary Printables series.  Did you miss the Opening Exercise Organizer or the Birthday Lists?  Check those out for ultimate organization!

Today, I have for you another goody: Opening Exercise Assignment Hand Outs.  These are the papers you hand to the child, in the hopes that they will take them home and complete the assignment.  It’s also nice if they make it to mom and dad… but, unless you hand deliver, this is not a guarantee.  Personally, I don’t.  I don’t have time to track down parents amid the millions of other things I’m trying to get accomplished in two hours each week.  Opening Exercises has run smoothly enough with the kids taking the reminders home themselves, so I’m not gonna rock the boat.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

This is the previous version I used up until last week. The new version has a little more information for the kids.

These have four hand outs to a page and are black and white for easy copying.  I made a colored set, but it just didn’t look as great after I had it copied and I wasn’t about to print out 30 pages of hand outs that were going to end up in the trash on my home printer.  You can also copy them on colored paper (neon yellow, anyone?  Maybe they’ll get noticed by parents more?) and you’ll still get great results.  They are formatted for an 8.5×11″ paper with 0.25″ margins.  If you’re worried about it, you can set your print settings to “fit to page” and it should make sure nothing gets cut off.  Your margins might change though.  Just a heads up for when you’re cutting them apart.

The actual reminders are a simple check box system, which makes them easy to fill out.  I found my Primary kids wanted more guidance (Give a talk on what?  A scripture about what?) so I added in spots to put that info in for them.  Usually it just consists of the month’s theme.  It also has made our opening exercises more applicable to sharing time, which has been nice.  Oh!  Also, I found that it got a little old to write my name and phone number on each one, so maybe do that BEFORE you get it copied… just sayin’.

GET THE OPENING EXERCISE ASSIGNMENT HAND OUTS TO HELP YOUR PRIMARY RUN MORE SMOOTHLY!

As I mentioned yesterday, I am now the Primary Secretary in our ward.  Along with knowing what’s going on and keeping on track of Opening Exercise assignments, I quickly discovered I needed an easy way to see if there had been any birthdays in the last week that we needed to recognize.  Because how awful do you feel when you realized you missed that adorable, shy little 3-year-old’s birthday?!  Pretty awful, let me tell you.

So, I created these Birthday Lists to ensure an at-a-glance method of checking birthdays.  I keep meaning to go back and make some sort of little notation for each week so that I will even more easily know which birthdays need to be announced when.  Until then, I just have to refer to a calendar.

These lists have worked out really well so far and the other ladies in our presidency have made their own copies too.  If you write in pencil or on a page protector with a wet erase marker, it’s super easy to update and add new kids who move in or erase the kids when they graduate out.  It’s a re-usable list, since birthdays are always on the same day, every single year.  How thoughtful, right?  So, even when little Bobby moves up a class, you won’t have to make any adjustments to your birthday lists.

It’s pretty straight-forward, but such a life saver!  In each date slot there is space to write the names of any birthdays.  I split up my columns and had Junior Primary birthdays on the left side of the column and Senior Primary birthdays on the right.  Don’t forget your teachers too!

These lists aren’t just great for Primary though.  They’d be fantastic in any organization.  My grandma keeps a running list of birthdays as the family keeps getting bigger and the great-grandkids get more numerous.  She uses and loves the lists too!  Add them to a family binder for quick reference.  There are lots of ways to use these birthday lists to help organize your life a little more.  Want your own set?  Download them and get to organizing all those important days!

GET THE ENTIRE SET OF THE BIRTHDAY LISTS AND NEVER MISS ANOTHER BIRTHDAY!