3 Sundays Away

 I am visiting family and travelling during our short "summer" from school.  I prepared 3 weeks of materials even though we will only be gone two weeks.  (Two weeks = three Sundays, that's Church math).  It's not easy to put three weeks together all at once, I have to say it was a bit exhausting.  But now that it's done, I'm glad, being prepared is important and I'm grateful for my substitute for taking on 3 weeks in primary.  Thank you!

Week One 

I prepared the bag with songs inside.  That's a pretty easy review activitiy, you pull the songs out of the bag and sing them.  Most of them are program songs or wiggle songs, and two papers say "your choice".

Week Two (which is this week)

Teaching To Be A Pioneer #218
Sorry these are rotated, what a pain.
I have a great substitute, she will do an amazing job, I am having her teach the two parts separately and then we will put them together when I get back.  We are singing for the 24th of July.

Week 3, The 4th of July

How often is it really the 4th of July on Sunday?  Not often enough, it's super fun to sing patriotic songs!  This year I made new songbooks, because I foolishly gave them to the kids to keep last year.  This year I'm hanging onto them.  I have songbooks and flags for the little kids.

Fathers Day - Fathers, Grandfathers, Daddy's Homecoming

This year we are doing three songs.  Daddy's Homecoming is really popular so the kids wanted to do that one.  We are also doing Fathers which we did last year.  I added new pictures since we are in a new ward. The Grandfather one was a new one though and I decided to make it look kind of old fashioned.  I talked to the kids about black and white tv, and how all dads are old, and so I made the pictures black and white so they could remember their grandpa's watched black and white tv.  I got the photos out of the conference issues of the Ensign.

Wiggle Worms

I found at IKEA in Draper this week these little toys.  They are 50 cents each.  I bought ten of the snakes, to use as wiggle worms.  I have seen this idea before but with my  hands the way they are I haven't been making these things.  Each one will represent a wiggle song that the kids can pick when it's time.  I think I will even put one in the nursery song bucket.
We started Father's day songs today.  The kids remembered Fathers pretty well and Daddy's Homecoming they know well.  We will start the Grandfather song next week.

Army of Helaman

For one of our optional songs we are learning Army of Helaman by Janice Kapp Perry.  I made up visuals for the chorus and taught that first.  Because my hands have been suffering lately I looked online for visual aids for the verses and I found them at:
http://www.jollyjenn.com/flipcharts.html
Actually this site has tons of visual aids for many of the songs, all using pictures from the friend.  I borrowed a printer from a friend and printed these out.  The kids really took to the song, and after 3 weeks they finally have it!
We have combined our Jr. and Sr. primary now because we have so few children since the ward split.  It's really nice to have everyone together and teach just once a Sunday.  Also, this allows the nursery kids to come into the primary room for singing time.  It's a treat for them and a ten minute break for their leaders.  By the time they come into primary they will already be comfortable with the room, where they sit, the presidency and singing time.  Hooray!

Bowling

A fun way to review a song, with a plastic bowling set.  The child bowls, and depending on the number of pins knocked down that's the way they sing the song.

1. Stop/go
2. loud/soft
3. boys/girls
4. teachers only
5. change seats
6. turn around
7. hot/cold game
8. singing dice
9. characteristic dice
10. your choice

I saw this in California last week while we were visiting with family.  The kids loved it.  She used this to review the mothers day song they were learning and the kids hardly noticed they were repeating the same song, they wanted to try all the different ways to sing it.

Mothers Day

We were asked to sing 4 songs for mothers day.  We are singing A Happy Family, I often go walking, Grandmother, and Dearest Mother, I love you.  The kids knew three of them and they learned Dearest Mother very quickly.  We practiced for two weeks and had stake conference this last Sunday, so hopefully with the visual aids they will do just fine for mothers day.

Teaching Come Follow Me

This week I worked with the Primary President to put together a sharing time/singing time centered around the hymn "Come Follow Me".
She introduced the first verse by doing a little "Simon Says" game.  Teaching them about following Christ.  Then we learned the first verse.  I laminated the pictures with the words laminated separately.  This way I can take the words off as they get better at the song.

She introduced the second verse by talking about how following Christ is simple, it isn't difficult.  She had two identical pictures of Jesus and cut one into just a few pieces and the other into lots of pieces.  She invited children to come up and put them together.  It didn't take long for the kids to discover that the puzzle with fewer pieces got them the same result as the other puzzle but was simpler.

We sang the second verse several times and then went on to the last verse.  We are having two girls sing the 3rd, 4th and 5th verses in the program and having the primary hum in the background.  The entire group will come in on the last verse.  We talked about the rewards that come from living the gospel and following Jesus Christ.  We sang the third verse several times and then made crowns for each child that said "Come follow me".  We also had footprints to glue onto their crowns.

The younger children had help from their teachers but the older ones made some pretty creative crowns.  It was a really fun activity for the kids.  This song is meant for August but the timing just seemed right this close to Easter.