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! 🎄

Hawaiian Song Review

We just got back from my daughter’s wedding in Hawai’i. The groom’s family live on Oahu so they were married in the La’ie Temple. It was our first time there and it was AMAZING! I wanted to share some of that experience with the Primary children so I showed them pictures of the temple and the wedding and we sang “I Love To See the Temple” and I shared how my daughter has sung that song since she was a little girl in Primary and know she finally had that dream come true! I told them that they can too one day.

Next we talked about “Paradise” in the scriptures, the Garden of Eden and when Christ spoke to the thieves when he was crucified from this week’s lesson. Then I shared this poster of some of my favorites things from the paradise I visited. They came up and chose items that had the songs written on the back BUT there was a twist! They had to come up three at a time and one would choose the item that had the song on it, then each of them had to do something during the song. One had to put on a Kukui Nut and shell lei and do the hula, one had to squat and make the ugly face and grunt like the tiki statues and one had to lightly strum the Ukelele. It was so fun!!!

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

Valentine's Songs

I'm used something that a previous music leader made. The small hearts all fit in the large heart pocket to be drawn. On the back of each heart is a song about love. On one she had a corny valentine joke, I decided to take it further and put one on the back of each one to read before we sing! 😄

Another variation is the laminated bookmark things. You have the kids and/or teachers, leaders fill it out with their name and their favorite Primary song, put them in the heart and draw from them what to sing. 😊

Mr. Potato Head

For one Sunday, the lesson was "I Have Been Sent To Earth To Gain a Body and Be Tested". I decided to do the Mr. Potato Head idea that I've seen on here and sing songs about the body. There is a song on the back of each piece (or set like ears, arms etc.).

Eyes - "Two Little Eyes"

Ears - "I Have Two Ears"

Mouth - "If You Chance To Meet a Frown"

Nose - "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" (last word 😉)

Hands - "I Have Two Little Hands"

Feet - "Two Happy Feet" or "If You're Happy and You Know it"

Body - "Hinges" or "Do As I'm Doing".

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.

UNO Review

Last fall when I was trying to find a fun way to review all our songs for the program, I ran across this UNO Review idea. Several people posted it so I don't know who actually came up with the idea (but it was not me). I originally used it for our program songs review and it worked out perfectly as we had eight songs and the kids loved it! I used a file that Whitney Bennett posted on Facebook:

Here are her directions for getting it printed: "I just put this together in Photoshop and wanted to share it with you all in case anyone was wanting it. I am printing it as a 20x30 at Costco for $8.99, laminating it, and mounting it to foam board (for long lasting durability). If you are interested in printing this off and using it, please download the high-resolution print file in the following link (copy and paste): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzsbI9PhThK0X1NuNUVnaDc5N3M/view Make sure you print it as a 20x30, otherwise it will NOT fit the print correctly and cropping will occur. Have fun everyone! *PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK AND CLICK THE DOWNLOAD ICON ON THE TOP OF THE WINDOW. IF YOU JUST SAVE THE ATTACHED FILE, IT WILL BE GRAINY WHEN PRINTED BECAUSE IT IS NOT THE HIGH-RESOLUTION GRAPHIC." So I printed it, laminated it and made song titles in each of the four colors. I did two in each color and I would swap in a new one once the first one was sung.

There are lots of ways to play. What I did was pull out of a deck of Uno cards one of each color of the skips, reverses, ones, twos and all the wilds. I would choose a child to come up and choose a card. The color on the card told us which song we were going to sing (on wilds they would pick a color) and the symbol would give further details. On "skips" I think we had them skip while they sang. You can also have them skip certain words. On "reverses" they had to turn around and sing to the back wall. This really helped me see how well they knew their songs! 1 or 2 was the first or second verse or one or two times depending on the song and how many verses it had (none of them had more than two). Again on "wilds", they got to choose. As I said, it was a big hit! Then in January of this year, someone suggested using it for reviewing the four verses of I Am A Child Of God. It worked pretty well. I ended up using these exact printouts for my verses, however, this is someone else's picture of theirs. I did end up pasting over a church produced picture of the Savior for the third verse.

I have seen several people post that they also used Uno for teaching a song, although I have not tried that yet!

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!

Stuffed Turkey

This is one I REALLY wanted to do this year, but I was super short on time to teach Christmas songs before the ward party, so I didn't. Next year though! I also found this online and have no idea who to credit, but it's a very fun idea. Basically, you make a turkey body out of a paper bag and the legs out of smaller paper bags. You "stuff" the inside with slips of paper of songs you want to sing (you could also put ways to sing them).

Pumpkin Patch

I did this activity for picking a song this past fall. It was super easy! I placed stickers with the numbers 1-5 on the bottom of some decorative pumpkins (you could use mini real one too, or hey large ones too! ha ha!) I placed them on a sprig of fake greenery and voila! Pumpkin Patch! Then as they picked one, I just looked on my list to see which song corresponded with the number. You could also write the actual song on the sticker or on some tape.

Bean Bag Toss

Here is a picture of a game that she made, she made it out of PVC pipes.  She just had the kids toss a bean bag into the pipes and each pipe is numbered, so you can assign the numbers to songs or whatever.  The kids love it!

My sister-in-law recently became Primary Chorister in her ward so her husband made this clever way for the Primary kids to choose songs.  It's based on a song that's very popular with kids right now called "What Does The Fox Say?".  This version is "What Do the Kids Sing?".   The idea is to put the fox and the speech bubbles up on a board, and have names of songs on the back.  The kids pick what the fox sings, and then turn the bubble over, and that is what the kids sing. :D





The best way to download a good image from the PDF images above is to right click the white rectangular box to the right of the "thumb image" you want and "save picture as" to your computer.

Who, What, How Review

As program time is quickly approaching, I know that many of you are looking for new ways to review the songs you've learned.  This was one of my favorites that I read somewhere, that you can use several times and the kids never get sick of it.

Choose cans or jars that have wide mouths so that you or the children can reach in to choose.  Cover with whatever you choose.  I just used wide strips of scrapbook paper and made labels with more paper.  I printed the words from the computer all on one page and then cut them out.  I chose to do the jars in the Primary colors (red, yellow and blue).  I cut out matching slips of paper to put the choices on.  You could type them and print them too, but I just wrote them out by hand. (I accidently switched the red and yellow paper when I took this photo, oops!  So just pretend).

The "Who" jar says who gets to sing the song or verse.  I put the following choices:  boys, girls, teachers, everyone, left handed, right handed, blonde/red hair, brown/black hair, blue/green eyes, brown/hazel eyes, birthday Jan.-Jun., birthday Jun.-Dec., first name A-M, last name A-M, first name N-Z, last name N-Z, favorite colors red,orange yellow or pink, favorite colors green, blue, purple or black, wearing anything white, wearing anything black, dog lovers, cat lovers, horse lovers, pizza lovers, and (my personal favorite) chocolate lovers.

The "What" jar has every song you're working on for the program.  Songs with more than one verse get split up so there is only one verse per paper.

The "How" jar has different fun ways you can sing a song to make it interesting.  (I tried to be careful not to let a somewhat rowdy "how" be chosen for a really quiet sacred song.)  Here are the choices I put in the "How" jar: Standing, turn right, turn left, with eyes closed, standing on left leg, standing on right leg, very fast, very slow, kneeling, marching, hands on head, turn around, very high, very low, laying down, happy, sad, whisper sing, hands folded, swaying, with no blinking, patting your head and rubbing your belly,  head hanging upside down, Tabernacle choir, popcorn popping (random popping up and down from standing position), with Frogs (see post about frogs on a stick), find spot (hot and cold game with a large circle), missing word (missing word game), with traffic signs (signs of slow, stop and go), slinky (I used a slinky to have them sing soft to loud - closed to completely open).  You could add in any games you have played with them.

As time allows, you have kids come up (or you can) and draw one paper out of each jar and lay it down in front (as pictured).  Read each of the three choices out loud to the whole group. (Sr. Primary or older Jr. Primary can read their own).  Then the people chosen sing the song chosen in the way chosen!  The more choices you can put in the Who and How jars, it makes each time different and something new. :D

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!

Pioneer Songs

Today we had a really fun day singing Pioneer songs.  I put the names of the songs on the back of Pioneer cutouts from the churches old figure sets, any Pioneer figures would do, I used the family members (dad, mom, older boy, older girl, young boy, young girl), a covered wagon (The Oxcart) and a scenic one (Westward, Ho!).  I told the children that I had brought some Pioneers with me that wanted to hear some songs about them.  For each song, I called a volunteer to come up and pick one, if it was a person, I pretended like the person "whispered" to me what song they wanted to hear and then we sang it. 

To help keep the songs fun we added some fun ways to sing them.

Little Pioneer Children - Jr. Primary - I had them gather berries, gather "chips", hear, see etc.,
Pioneer Children Sang As They Walked -  It's a given on this one, we "walked and walked and walked" through the rows of chairs.
Update: I have since copied this idea that someone made and I have a child hold each part of the song.

The Handcart - Jr. Primary - I had them stand and push or pull whenever they heard the words.
The Oxcart - We sang really slow and had the teachers do a fun idea I read on The Ordinary Adventures of a Primary Chorister, they were oxen and mooed while we sang, it was so funny!  The kids loved it.  It actually sounded pretty cool!
To Be A Pioneer -  It's such a fun song to split and sing against each other.  It's our favorite!
Westward, Ho! - I made two signs that say "Westward, Ho" on them.  I split the singers into two groups and have two volunteers hold the signs up when it's their groups turn.  It helps the song move along.

(We sang Pioneer Children Were Quick To Obey in Sacrament Meeting, so I didn't use it in Singing Time - See flipchart.  I haven't learned Covered Wagons yet, maybe next year.)

Update: Last year I tried something that I will be repeating this year. I wore a blouse, long skirt and a pioneer bonnet. We sat in a circle around a fake fire to do our singing. (see post on Campfire) The kids really enjoyed it!

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.

Songs for Spring!

      

Here is my list of favorites for Spring (which is also where I got the name for my blog, hee hee):

• Give Said The Little Stream:  We do kind of a fun variation on this song.  I got the idea from Peggy North on Sugardoodle.  "For every word that begins with a G, clap hands once (i.e. Give, Go, Grows, Greener, etc.) For every word that begins with an S, stand up and sit back down (i.e. Stream, Small, Still, Singing) Obviously, everyone sings this sitting down, so that they can stand and sit at the appropriate times--you'll need your own chair at the front.  The children LOVE this.  Start out slow when they're first learning, but as they get to know it better, the second time through they just love going FAST, and you get a workout on the chorus, especially!  I have done this every time I was a chorister, and it's always a hit.  I've since added snaps for words that begin with R (rain, raise). " We do head nods on the R words.  The kids really like it and it's a nice way to get some extra energy out!

• In The Leafy Tree Tops:  I brought a bird on a popsicle stick for a child to hold during the first verse and a flower for the second.  Of course we also all stand and do actions for the song as well.

• Little Purple Pansies:  I have a beautiful picture of a field of pansies (many purple ones) that I got out of an old calendar.  You could probably google one.

• Popcorn Popping: I also have a calendar page of an orchard of apricot trees in full bloom, so that the children can see why it looks like popcorn on the trees. (We of course do all the actions too.)

• Wind Is Blowing All Around (Rain Is Falling All Around):  Especially for the month of March!  I tell them about the days being "Lambs" or "Lions" and on the "Lion" days, how the wind roars!!!  I plan on next year having a lamb and lion prop or puppet to help me out. :)

Check out this fun Spring Singing Aide at Precious Primary!  It's really cute!

Valentine Ideas

I read some really cute Valentine ideas, but none of them fit what I was wanting to do.  So I just made a variation of the old "Choose A Song" idea.  First I made a list of songs that talked about love, then I chose five to choose from for the first week (we didn't get to all of them) and rotated in different songs each week as we sang them.  I just put the names of the songs on stickers on the back of some heart die cuts from the $ store and put them in a cute little Valentine bag I have for them to choose from.  By only having five at a time, I only had to bring half the visual aids each week.

 Here are the songs I used:

• I'll Walk With You
• I'm Trying To Be Like Jesus
• Jesus Said Love Everyone
• Love Is Spoken Here
• Love One Another
• We Are Different (3rd verse)
• I Love To See The Temple
• We Are A Happy Family
• Love At Home
• If I Listen With My Heart

I also moved my "helper popsicle sticks" from the soup can they are normally in, to a Valentine pail.  (The tape on the ends of the popsicle sticks helps me see right off who has been chosen and who hasn't and I can still leave them all together.)

One week, I had the Primary kids figure out how to make a heart with their hands and everytime we sang the word "LOVE" they made a heart.  :)  It was fun and kept the younger kids attention as they were listening for the right word.