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.