Sign Language & Hot and Cold Ornaments

This Sunday in Primary I opened singing time by telling the kids that we were going to learn to sing with our mouths and our hands. We then spent about half of our time learning "Picture and Christmas" and the sign language to accompany it. I learned this in Primary as a little girl, and it was one of my favorites. I will try to get the sign language directions posted up here soon. There is a pretty good version at the Idea Door, you can find it HERE .

After we sang through Picture a Christmas a few times I brought out a Christmas ornament I had brought from home. We played hide the ornament. I would send one child out into the hallway, and ask another to hide the Christmas ornament somewhere in the room. When the first child comes back into the room you simply begin to sing, you sing quietly if they are far away from the ornament, and loudly the closer and closer they get to the ornament. I just used Christmas songs for this, but any Primary songs would work.

The best hiding spot of the day was when one little boy climbed on a chair to hang the ornament from the light fixture in our building. The sweet little girl hunting for the ornament just could not figure out why everyone was singing so loudly when she was directly beneath the light, but not near anything else in the room. It was funny, finally a little Sunbeam couldn't take it anymore and shouted "It's up high!" in the middle of our song. The kids loved this and it was an easy activity that doesn't require tons of prep.

Thanksgiving, Turkey, and Singing

Like any creative person out there, I absolutely rely on other people for my creative inspiration. When I see a good idea I snag it - thus I must thank the blogger "Arizona Girl" for the following idea that I am planning for tomorrow. Anyone out there who happens upon my blog tonight can use it for yourself as well! After all, isn't that why we are here for each other? The following, including the pictures, is taken directly from this other sweet sister's blog:

The way the activity would work is the children would tell me something they are thankful for and then tell me a song that goes along with what they are thankful for.
Making the Turkey: The body of he turkey is 4 pieces of brown construction paper with just a one corner rounded off, all at the same time. Connect the four corners opposite from the rounded side, matching up the founded sides. Cut a long piece for the neck, and a large oval piece for the head (the more oval like the better it will look). You don’t want to make the beak a perfect triangle, make one side more wide for the bottom of the beak. And just a 2 inch piece with a rounded bottom for the hanging piece. I used a black marker for the eye and wing.The Feathers: I cut lots of feathers. I wish I had cut more of the orange and red, the children really liked to pick those two colors and I ran out during Jr primary. I used the paper length wise and cute them the length with one rounded side. I could get 5 out of each piece of construction paper. The activity: As the child said what they were grateful for, they picked the color of feather, and I wrote their name and what they were grateful for on the feather. Then it was placed on the turkey, so the more songs we sang the fuller the turkey’s tail became.
The concept of finding a song that related to what they were grateful for was harder for the JR primary- we sang “I am a Child of God” 3 times, and one child said he was grateful for his dog and choose “Popcorn Popping” for the song. On the other hand the SR primary really got the idea, they got it so well they started picking songs they wanted to sing and then trying to think of something that related to it to be grateful for. It was a good activity. We had fun and sang a lot of songsBecause this other fabulous chorister mentioned that JR PRIMARY struggled slightly to think of songs, my twist to this activity will be to print out some clipart images of things we can be thankful for - "House" "scriptures" "Food" "Family" "Church" "trees" "animals" etc. and think of a few songs to go with each image. I figure I will tape these images up on the board and let the children either think of their own thing that they are thankful for, or use one of the ideas from the board. If they pick an idea from the board I will give them a couple of song options and let them pick one.

Happy thanksgiving everyone...if I get to write on one of my feathers tomorrow it would say that I am grateful for the wonderful network of other sisters out there who share their great ideas and make my calling easier!

Week Four: Sharing & Singing Time - Listening and Wiggling Ideas

In my ward I am responsible for doing sharing time and singing time the third week of each month. This is a lot, and this was my first week covering the entire two hours, but I think it went well. The Sharing Time theme was "Heavenly Father Loves the Children All Over the World." For Sharing Time I did a couple of different reader theaters in each primary, if anyone wants those scripts or more details, leave your email address and I will send them to you.

For a big portion of singing time in both JR and SR primary we worked on learning the song "Children All Over The World" because the kids don't know this one yet. To teach them this song I had them first listen to the music. In JR Primary one of the things that works best to get the kids to focus on this is to do the following:

Say: "Ok - we are going to listen to the music first, so everybody pick one of your ears to listen really good with."

The kids will all follow your lead and grab one of their ears.

Say: "Stretch it out and get it ready to listen"

They will tug on their ears for a minute.

Say: "Make your ear big like an elephant's and lean towards the piano so you can hear really good."

Cup your hand around your ear and lean toward the piano. They eat this up. And it is so cute to see them sitting so still, focusing on getting their one ear to listen to the music.

(Since SR Primary is older I tell them to just focus on the music, and we do that by turning off the lights and closing our eyes, so all we can hear is the music)

To learn the different language ways of saying "Thank You" I printed off pictures of each countries flags and we posted them all up on the board. After we practiced saying all the different versions of thank-you I would randomly point at one flag and ask "How do you say thank you in German?" I would point more and more quickly and try to trick them by sometimes pointing at the same flag twice in a row. They did well. We then practiced singing the song. After singing it through once or twice I told the kids I would be listening for those singing really well to come and be my helpers.

I picked (older) kids from the Primary and brought them up front where I gave each of them a flag sign, We sang the song again. In JR Primary I had the child holding the Tongan Flag jump up when we came to his word. In SR Primary I had the child holding the flag be the only one who said the word when we got to his/her part.

We practiced this for most of singing time, until they stared to get wiggly, at which point I switched over to songs they knew. Before switching songs I told the kids our tongues had gotten all mixed up from speaking those different languages, and we needed to do some wiggling to loosen them back up. I had the pianist play "Ducks Quack in the Pond" and told the kids they could wiggle their bodies and tongues until the song was over.

We followed that up with folding our arms and singing "The Chapel Doors" to get calmed down again. Then we sang one or two more and dismissed.

Week Three: Stake Meeting...Whew

I have never enjoyed Stake Conference so much in my entire life. Is that awful? I do truly have a testimony that I am supposed to serve in this calling. But it still is giving me a lot of anxiety. I was happy for the week off. I keep repeating to myself a line from my patriarchal blessing that says: "As you master one talent others will be shown unto you."

I think that is where I am at right now. Heavenly Father has provided this opportunity to develop a talent. I may not love the calling yet. But I do love the kids, and I know that I will continue to get better as long as I trust in the spirit and do my best.

Still, it was nice to have a singing-time-stress-free week.

Singing Time Week Two: Board Games

For the second week in singing time we did:

JR PRIMARY:

I explained to the kids that since we sang their favorite songs last week we would sing mine this week. We played "memory" while we sang. On the board I had about twelve pairs of clip art pictures, two of each image. They were backed by thick card stock and stuck to the board with magnates. (You can also do this by placing the pieces of paper in sheet protectors and tying a string through the page protector and taping the other end of the string to the board if you don't have a magnetic board available). I gave the pianist a list of songs and we simply began singing. I would watch for a 'reverent-participating" child and tap them on the shoulder as we sang. They would then go up to the board and search for a match. We just kept singing from one song to another. If somebody found a match we paused and let the match-finder choose their favorite primary song to sing. This worked pretty well, and because we pretty much sang the entire time there wasn't much option to get distracted.

But SR PRIMARY this week was definitely my favorite:

We played Jeopardy. I created four different categories with 100-500 point questions in each. Each question corresponded with a song. I split the primary into two teams, Team Nephi and Team Lehi, then we just played jeopardy. After answering the question we sang the song that corresponded with the question. I will put the categories I used below, but this can be reworked for any theme. The kids loved it. I am planning to do this again when we have to begin practicing and reviewing the program songs for next year.

• Category: "I am a child of God" For these questions I just picked one line out of a song and asked them to say the line that follows. IE: In this Primary song what comes after these words: "We have been taught and we understand"
• Category: "I am Thankful" (because it is November): Question--Name 5 reasons you are thankful for your Mother. Song: Love is Spoken Here
• Category: "Articles of Faith" (I continue to be amazed that the kids can actually sing these un-singable songs) Question: Recite the 5th Article of Faith Song: 5th article of faith.
• Category: "Name that Tune" (This was absolutely my favorite) For this category the pianist would simply start playing the song and the kids would raise their hand to guess what tune it was. After they guessed correctly we would sing the entire song.

This was an absolute hit. We played right up to very last second of Primary, and even then the kids didn't want to leave and kept saying, "Let's just do one more question." The biggest thing with this lesson is to just have all the songs neatly prepared and listed for the pianist so she/he can follow along easily.

I just wrote out the categories on the chalkboard and used note cards to read the questions off of. Really fun.

First day in Singing Time...with Billy Bubble Gum

Today was my first day in singing time. I have been really nervous, because this is not my area of expertise and I feel entirely out of my element in Primary, not to mention music. I was also nervous because I wasn't really sure what songs the kids knew and what songs they did not. My plan, then, became to let the kids pick the songs that we would sing, now...I just needed an interesting, engaging and fun way to accomplish that.

Enter Billy Bubble Gum

Billy bubble gum is simply made by printing out a large picture of a child's face and pasting it onto a foam board. Then cutting a hole where the mouth is and threading a balloon through the opening. Billy Bubble gum essentially worked as a song meter in singing time today. BEFORE Primary began I taped music notes under one chair in each row (one music note chair per class). When we started singing time I explained to the kids that because I was a new teacher I needed to get to know each of them better, and one of the best ways to get to know someone is through the music they like. I had the kids look under their chairs class by class, whoever had the music note got to come to the front of the room, and tell me their name and their favorite Primary song. Then we sang that song while Billy Bubble Gum monitored our singing, to "see if it was really one of the Primary's favorite songs." You need to get someone to stand behind the board and be Billy Bubble Gum by blowing up the balloons. I had the second counselor in our bishopric do this, he is a really animated guy and the kids just love him. The kids had to sing loudly and well to get the balloon to blow up big, if they did an extra good job then Billy Bubble Gum would just let the balloon go at the end of the song and it would zip around the room. The JR. Primary loved this! It was so fun and they loved Billy Bubble gum. Sometimes I would have to remind them that they needed to remember to be reverent, that Billy Bubble Gum could only stay in Primary if they were reverent.

SR Primary, I learned today, is not so easily entertained. During sharing time, which precedes singing time in our ward, it became very clear to me that these guys were not going to be so easily impressed with Billy Bubblegum, so to change it up a bit and gear it more toward them I had one person from each class with the music note choose their favorite song, another reverent child actually be Billy Bubble Gum and serve as the song meter, and if I thought they had done a good job at the end of the song I would hand a push pin to another reverent child and let them pop the balloon. It went all right.

Overall, I was pretty pleased with the afternoon. The forty minutes of singing time still felt like an awful long time to me, but I know it will get better. And I know what I am doing is important. It made the entire afternoon worth it when I walked by the Bishop's office where a family was waiting for an interview and I heard one little boy say to his mom, "See that is the lady with Billy Bubble Gum." I guess I will be making an impact in these little lives, it just might take me balloons and a big smile to do it.

One Sunday down...a whole lot more to go.