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.