It's Almost Time!!!

Today I picked out a few fun songs, and a couple for the program that they are working on that needed a little review, like I'll Seek the Lord Early. I let the kids guest conduct so each song had a different conductor. They absolutely love to conduct the songs and it's fun for me to watch them lead the song.
I was looking at the schedule and realized it's almost time to pull out the chart and prep for the program. So the next few weeks will go quickly.

September 6 - Next Sunday is my birthday so we are going to sing birthday songs and learn a new birthday song "Have a Very Happy Birthday" pg 284. I know I probably shouldn't, but the kids know the songs really well and I don't want them to get too burned out singing those program songs too much.
September 13 - This is the week I pull out the motivational posters and we sing all of the songs to see how well they know them.
September 20 - review week
September 27 - review week
October 4 - General Conference
October 11 - This is the Sunday we don't go to class and spend the two hours rehearsing the program. We might do a few wiggle songs, but we'll only sing the program songs and they need to be perfect by then.
October 18 - PROGRAM

Motivational Charts for the Program

When it's almost time for the program its time to get out some kind of motivator to get the kids prepped for the program. I've seen many different motivators, usually a poster with ice cream cones and the scoops of ice cream are added to the cones as the children improve in their proficiency in a song. When they have added a certain number to each scoop, essentially learning all the songs they are awarded a prize, such as an ice cream party.
Personally, i'm not a huge fan of food as a motivator so the ice cream idea and other "food" related ideas were out for me (like earning toppings for pizza, or fruit toppings for fruit pizza).
This year I traveled over to the local teacher supply store (i'm at my parents this week so it was good old Utah Idaho Supply, but if I had been at home I would have gone to Learning is Fun). I picked up two different kinds of motivators, one for Jr. and one for Sr. I had the marble jar laminated so I can use it again. They only charged $2.00 to laminate a poster, I was really happy about that.

For the Jr. Primary each bird will represent a song, and when the bird lands in the nest they are ready to sing the song for the program so the object is: to get all the birds into the nest.
For Sr. Primary I got the marble jar, although part of me still wishes I had gotten keys and locks, and they had to move the key toward the lock to unlock it. At any rate, There are ten rows/columns which is perfect for the 10 songs we're doing so I'll put a song at the top of each column and as they get better at a song I'll add marbles to that column. Some columns they will fill up the first day and others will take a little longer.

Now for the motivator - what will they get if they get all the birds in the nest and all the marbles in the jar. I didn't want to do food. I thought about trinkets or something from Oriental Trading, I thought about stickers or pencils that say primary from Deseret Book, but I finally settled on a new song in a bag. They loved the last song in a bag so i'll have another one ready when they have completed their charts. We have 10 weeks until the program, one of them General Conference, so only 9 working Sundays. We should be ready.

Families Can Be Together Forever

While reviewing this song Sister Webb made papers listing family members such as:
hoarse uncle
great grandma
humming sister
cowboy cousin
grandpa (sing low)
whistling brother

Sister Carson, who played the piano also played in the style of these family members. It was wonderful, and the kids didn't notice singing the song over and over. They all enjoyed the cowboy cousin best. (And yes i'm visiting family again - aaaaah it's finally our summer).

Review Week

This week we reviewed reverence songs. For the Sr. Primary I put one word clues in the jar and they had to guess the song. For the Jr. Primary I put the songs on the back of the animals on Noah's Ark and we would sing the song that was on the back of each animal. Both of these activities came from the Super Singing Activities book and the Super Little Singers book (Covenant).

I put 10 songs on the list and one of them was If The Savior Stood Beside Me. It has been a while since we sang that song and I had forgotten how much the children like it, they really sang and I was impressed how well they remembered the words considering I messed up a whole bunch of times.

I noticed that the children struggled with the Baptism (100) song and I decided to make a chart that will show them their progress as they get ready for the program so that we can work on the songs that they are still struggling with.