'Lest you think...

I have gone inactive or quit the Primary. The holidays were crazy, the start of the new semester (I teach at the college here) was crazy and I am just now catching up. The following posts give a brief glimpse of our last few weeks - I will work harder to stay updated from here on out. I hope your new years and new songs are all coming along nicely!

Line by Line

This worked so well today for SR Primary! I will definitely have to do this again. We learned the second verse to "How Firm A Foundation" and practiced both the first and second verses together. I assigned each row a color and then held up posters with the words to each verse written out. S few words were written in each color and the concept was that whichever class was assigned that color would sing those words. After mastering that I then had the children stand and sing when the words were written in their color. I was so happy with how hard they concentrated and how well they sang!

Boys, Girls, Loud, Soft

Today in JR Primary we learned the second verse of "How Firm a Foundation" and practiced with the first verse some more. I brought these four little pictures and as we sang I would choose one child trying really hard to come up and cue the primary using the pictures as we sang. If the child held up the picture of the little girl -only the girls sang, the picture of the lion we sang loud, picture of mouse-we sang softly, picture of the boy - boys sing.

Song Bird Review

I have started carrying a little stuffed bird in my Primary bag each week. I have used him for several different activities, usually to review a song and give the kids some sort of game to focus on. Most recently we used our "singing songbird" in the following ways:

You Sing-I Sing: This works well for both SR & JR Primary. As we sing a song I toss one child the songbird. When a child has the songbird the primary has to sing without my help. When the child throws the song bird back to me I have to sing. We do this through the duration of the song.

Pass Along: While we are reviewing/learning a new song I hand the songbird to the first child on the first row - as we sing the child can hand the bird to their neighbor. They may only hand the bird off if they know the words and are singing. We see how far the bird gets by the end of the song.

My Body is a Temple

January focused on the premortal existence and the plan of salvation. For singing time I covered a picture of the temple with puzzle pieces that looked like a little girl (the lesson was 'my body is a temple'). During singing time I had kids come and pick a puzzle piece off the picture. On the back of each piece were various prompts to sing songs or answer questions.

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!