Sing The Rainbow (Skittles)

I saw a lot of people posting different variations of this online. Here's my version.

I introduced it by mentioning St. Patrick's Day and symbols of that holiday, including the rainbow (put up pot of gold and rainbow picture) and told them that we were going to "Sing the Rainbow" today (put up Super Singing Skittles sign and SKITTLES acronym picture) and read the acronym. As I put up the colored Skittle pieces, I explained that there was a song on the back of each one. Then the other leaders passed out a container (disposable condiments containers) to each child and teacher. Each container had in it one of each colored Skittle to make the colors of the rainbow. (To make these you have to purchase both the original and wild berry flavored Skittles.) I explained the rules of the Skittle containers: They could only open them when I told them to, only eat them when I told them to, could not shake them or they would be taken away. I then gave them permission to open the container and pull out one Skittle and hold it, then I started choosing children. For this particular activity, I wrote the names of each Primary child on a colored popsicle stick (so we had all the colors of the rainbow). I put them all in a can (there was a Jr. and Sr.) and drew from there. I called out the name of the child I drew and asked them what color they chose, that's the Skittle color we sang. Then the kids were allowed to quickly eat their one Skittle before we sang. With one group they all ate what they drew and it somehow worked out. With the other group they would put theirs back and eat the color chosen. We kept going until all the songs were sung. Yummy fun!

Songs for each color:

Red - Gethsemane (he bled for us)

Orange - Did Jesus Really Live Again (sunrise)

Yellow - The Primary Colors (red, YELLOW, and blue)

Green - Give Said the Little Stream (..."the grass grows greener still"...)

Blue - My Heavenly Father Loves Me (..."or look at the blue, blue sky"...)

Purple - Little Purple Pansies

Song Chooser Visitor

One thing that works really well in choosing songs (especially in Nursery) is to invite a "visitor" for singing time.  When I first started working in Nursery it was wintertime, so I invited a stuffed snowman similar to this one to choose our songs:

Sometimes I would do a voice for him and have him talk directly to the children, other times I have him whisper in my ear.  The little kids LOVED it!  I have penguin one for winter too.

You could adapt this for any season. I brought a Leprachaun for March and a bunny for spring.
I went to the local $ store and purchased a few puppets a ladybug, a bee, a frog etc. for summer (although I haven't used them yet because we have our Primary Chorister coming in now.)

You could easily find a scarecrow or pumkin or something for fall.  Really fun!

On A Golden Springtime

UPDATED! 3/7/2018

We are singing this song with the choir for Easter Sunday.  The children sing the 1st verse, the choir the 2nd verse in parts, and the children sing the third verse while the choir does ahhhs and oohs in harmony.

Last year I printed off a flipchart, but this year I found a fabulous idea that I'm using for the 1st verse.  It's a seed puppet and it's so cute!  Laurie McBride shares her idea on Sugardoodle explained in detail.  But where I first saw the idea was on the blog Singing Time Saver.  She has pictures on there of her puppet which I really liked, but I wanted to make a few changes.  So here's my version of the "Seed Puppet".

                                                                   Side 1 - Awake seed

Side 2 - Asleep eyes

When it's "sleeping" you fold your fingers over so that the sleepy eyes are over the awake ones like this:

(hint: make sure your marker is dry before you do the other side, or do flower first so that you don't get ugly marker stains on your felt like mine did!)

Then the seed "awakes" to side 1 by just opening your hand.

After the seed has seen "the day is bright", on the phrase "with all your might" I turn the puppet inside out on my hand and show "the flower" side for "push upward to the light".

It only takes a few times practicing to get the hang of it.  The Jr. Primary was crazy about it!  I was a little worried about the Sr. Primary but decided to try it because it's creator, Laurie said even her Sr. Primary liked it.  So I did, and while all I got from the older boys was some interest (that's something!), the girls were all saying, "again! again!". :)  Success!!!

After we'd done it several times with the puppet, I went back to the flipchart because that's what I plan to use in Sacrament Meeting, but they seemed to remember it a lot better! 

UPDATE:
I'm so excited that I ran into a FB Primary Music Leader friend Rachelle Taylor Jensen that shared with me her ideas for verses two and three of this song! I did my verse two puppets very similar to hers, adding a tombstone but ended up doing different ones for verse three. (I absolutely loved her cute verse three flags but I needed something more consolidated.)

So here are the puppets for verse two:

"On a golden springtime, Jesus Christ awoke and left the tomb where he had lain; the bands of death he broke".

"Awake, awake, O sleeping world! Look upward to the light. For now all men may live again.

"Look upward to the light". (Her sun was all felt and very cute, I didn't have any yellow felt so I improvised. Lol!)
Note: The sun puppet is also used in the other two verses for "to the light" and "glorious light".

Verse three:

"On a golden springtime, in a forest glade"

"The Father and the Son appeared as Joseph knelt and prayed"

"Awake, awake, O nations all! Receive the gospel light! The gospel true is here for you"

("Receive it's glorious light!' - see sun)

He Died That We Might Live Again

For our program song for April we will be learning "He Died That We Might Live Again".  Once again, I found some great ideas on Sugardoodle.  A lady named Bonnie shared the idea she read of a perfect introduction to the song.  She refers to this story, "Plane Crashes Into The Potomac"  and of the bravery shown by a couple of men to save other's lives.

I'm going to use the "Who, What, Where, When, Why, How" idea with wordstrips from Becky (same Sugardoodle link) for the Senior primary.  But for the Junior I think I'll do an Easter song introduction idea that I found on Teaching LDS Children.

Update 4/10/11 - I didn't end up having time yet to make the Easter song introduction box, hopefully I can for next week. The word strips worked so well though!  I've only done the first half of the song because we're also working on another song for Easter.  We'll finish it next week. To do the matching game, I printed the question words (who, what, where etc.,) on colored paper.  Then I printed the phrases on white sheets. I ended up doing a phrase on each sheet that I printed.  Before we began, I magneted the question words on the board.  For the Jr. Primary, I did them in order.  As we sang each phrase, we discussed which question it answered.  For the Sr. Primary, I mixed up the questions words all over the board.  Then as we sang each phrase, they had to figure out which question it answered and put it in order. As we learned it this week, I divided the phrases one way, but I'm going to change them for next week to this:

WHY: "He died that we might live again"
WHO: "Lord Jesus, our Redeemer true"
WHERE: "He died on Cal-v'ry's lonely hill"
HOW: "His life he gave for me and you"
WHEN: "He rose from the grave on Easter Morn"
WHO #2: "Our Savior and our King"
WHAT: "He showed his love for all man-kind"
WE CAN: "For his great love, give thanks and sing
                 "Re-joice! Re-joice! and sing, sing, sing."

For Junior Primary, after we learned each phrase, I picked a child to look for a plastic Easter Egg (I had hidden several around the room before we began) and we repeated and repeated until they found an egg -then we had to stop and go on to the next one.  They LOVED it!!!

Update 4/17/11 -  I forgot to take my list with me to church today.  (I hate it when I do that!) So when I got there I ended up rearranging all the question words because I couldn't remember what I had put down.  It still worked though.  Here is a picture of how it ended up at the end of today.

We continued our Easter egg hunt this week.  I went ahead and did an Easter egg hunt with the Sr. Primary too because they begged last week once they found out that the Jr. Primary had done one.  It's amazing how much more the children pay attention and sing well when they want to be picked for doing a good job. ;)  By the end of both singing times, they knew the song really well, and I had their attention most of the time! Yay!

Easter Ideas!

I really love this simple "Ways to Sing in an Egg Carton" that I found on Precious Primary.  As I find or come up with other Easter ideas I like, I'll add them to this post.

Here is a great Easter song introduction idea and really fun Easter egg song review at Teaching LDS Children.