Christmas Songs Game

Made up a new game last Christmas! 😃 Yes, I'm posting it six months later. Lol!! I was given the whole time in Primary (music leader’s dream right??) I had completely planned on a “sing a song for each nativity character” activity but felt that I needed to let the children have more choice and control over which Christmas songs we would sing today.

So “Name a Tune/Pick a Tune” was born! I printed the names of all the songs from the Children’s Songbook and picked out the ones that I knew and added the one song from the Hymn book that they’d learned this year. (There were more than are in the picture, we had already sung some). I made “special effects bulbs” that went on some of the songs (bells, finger lights, scarves, sing as a round etc.,). If those songs were chosen, we did the special effect also. I prepped by putting all the names on the board and all our special effect tools on the table to be ready.

How to play: I drew a child’s name, they would choose to name a tune or pick a tune. If they chose pick a tune, they chose a song and we would just sing it. If they chose name tune, I chose a song from the board and whispered it to my pianist. She would then play it until they guessed it and then we would sing it.

With the Senior Primary, I took it up a notch. All the Christmas songs in the Hymn book were fair game too! So we passed out hymns books to all of them. They chose two of them and begged to sing all the verses! I was so surprised! Also, I had two guests come in that sat blindfolded on chairs up front and had to guess on the name a tune ones. The kids thought it was fun to try to stump them. All of us were sad to see our time come to an end. It was a very rewarding day! 🎄

Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?

My singing partner today likes warm hugs! 😄I needed to drill the Spanish verse that we learned for I Am A Child of God so I printed and laminated pieces of Olaf and then put magnet tape on the back of each piece. As they sang each time through (sections at first and then the whole verse) a member of the Presidency watched the children and chose someone who was paying attention and singing well to come pick a piece of him out of a ziplock baggie and put it on the chalkboard. They were very attentive and sounded great! I was so pleased! "Do You Want To Build A Snowman" for the win!! ☃️

You could also put the numbers of different songs on the back of each piece.

New Year Countdown!

This year we had New Year's Eve on Sunday so I really wanted to do a countdown of some kind. I first found this idea which looked really fun:

However I didn't feel good about having the noise of popping balloons as we have a child in our Primary very sensitive to loud noises. So when I found this one posted on Facebook by Jessie Guzman Lawson, ....

I knew that I had to make one! I polled many of our Primary families during the week to get their "Top Ten" favorite Primary songs. I then chose the top twelve responses and typed them up placing them along with some foil confetti in the plastic cups that I hot glued onto the foam board in the shape of a clock. I put them in order of favorites (12 least, 1 most) then covered each cup with a sequential numbered square of tissue paper held on with a rubber band. I would choose a child to come up and "punch out" a number, out would come the song and the confetti, and we'd sing the song. It was a big hit!!

Little tip: The Jr. Primary were first and so vigorous with their punching that we lost a couple of cups. I had to tape them on for Sr. Primary and asked them to poke the cup with their finger instead!

Picture A Christmas

I love this idea by Julie Hawkins! (I saw it on Facebook) I would like to make them large (each picture 8 1/2 x 11) so they can see them really well. These are her instructions: Picture a Christmas: I first asked the children what picture came to their mind when I said the word “Christmas.” The answers included Christmas tree, Santa, gifts, baby Jesus love etc. I then told them I wanted to create a beautiful Christmas picture in our minds and then put up the middle picture. We put the first bubbled picture up and sang that line. We then added the second and learned it and then added it to the first. We then added the third and learned it and then sang it with the first and second etc. After all the pictures were up, we started taking them down and I had the kids sing the pictures we took down without me. My juniors learned this song in one week! I have a magnetic white board in my primary room so I bought a roll of adhesive magnet strip and put magnets on the back of all my pictures. This made it so easy putting pictures up and taking them down quickly. I'm hoping to get this ready for this Christmas.