This coming week I am teaching a young Women’s lesson from Manual 1, Lesson 11: Growing and Maturing in Self-reliance, Part 1. There’s a poem in the lesson that uses a chick hatching out of it’s shell as a metaphor of a young women growing in self-reliance.

I like this concept because just as a chick has to break out of it’s shell on it’s own in order to thrive, so must a young woman learn to be self-reliant on her own to make it in this world. Before introducing the poem I will have a young woman break a baby chick out of an egg shell:

Peep Peep!

I created a small hole on the side big enough to empty the egg out and to stick a chenille chick I got from a craft store into. I then “glued” the pieces back on with egg whites (they’re amazingly sticky.) While she’s breaking it open, we will talk about how we have to become self-reliant on our own and that it comes bit-by bit, moment-by-moment. I will refer to D&C 93:13-4, 20 as well as a quote from Elder M. Russell Ballard saying, “We stand at a crossroads, each minute, each hour, each day, making choices”.

For the handout, I found a cute idea to make a “Surprise Egg” from not martha. She has a great tutorial on her site, which I followed, except I used spray starch (found at the dollar store). I used jelly beans and one of the chenille chicks for the innards.

Egg-stremely cute!

Hopefully it will be a fun surprise for them!

I then copied the poem and pasted it on an egg-shaped cut-out I made from my mother-in-law’s Sizzix machine. I love how it turned out, but it would also work to paste the poem on an egg-shaped paper if the Sizzix isn’t available. I also cut out a Sizzix chick and glued it to the inside. I glued this on the “pull me” string on the eggs:

For the chicks

The poem could easily be attached to a plastic egg, which would also be a lot less time-consuming (the eggs need at least 18 hours to make since the starch has to dry twice.) However, as my husband put it, “You sure are an over-achiever!”

Download the PDF of the poem or Inkscape SVG . (Please note: the SVG will only work in Inkscape (it’s free!) and this is the easiest way to change text, format, etc.)