Repeat Parakeet

(I think I got this idea from online somewhere--but it has been over a year ago--so if it is yours--feel free to take credit in the comments!!)

Supplies: Picture(s) of parakeets, dice (I made a large one that I use for all sorts of stuff)

Activity: I started out by showing a couple pictures of parakeets (I used my sons book, but you could get them easily off the internet) and a few fun facts about them.  I finished with the interesting tidbit that some parakeets can be taught to repeat what you say!  I then magically poof-ed them into parakeets so they would have to repeat what I said.  

A child would come up and roll the dice--what ever number they got was how many times the primary would have to repeat what I said.  I would then sing a line of the song, and we would sing it as many times as was on the dice.  Once they get lines, you could do this with two lines grouped together etc. Whatever your needs are.

Then entire time I was being goofy and really playing up the parakeet teacher part.  Have fun with it--be silly--they'll love you for it!

Basically, that was it. . . super simple and the primary LOVED it.  My sunbeam was so excited about it he insisted on wearing a green and yellow stripped polo shirt to church so he could look like a parakeet.  Funny kids!

music lesson and repeat activity

A sister from my previous ward did this once, and I was amazed at how it caught the attention of the kids, so I decided to try it this week.

We are learning Teach me to Walk in the Light this month, and since it is a fairly simple song, this was the perfect activity for it.

I was a music education major at BYU, so I had a conducting baton. I'm not sure where you can purchase one, probably at any music store...

I pulled out my baton and asked the kids what it was. Then we talked about the role of a conductor. A lot of them thought his/her job was to tell the group to play high or low notes. To give them a hint, I conducted "softly" with my left hand palm down as if to say "Shhh!" and my right hand conducted close to me with smaller movements. Then hands shot up everywhere and they realized that a conductor told the group HOW to play/sing.

We tried a few others, such as LOUD, quickly, slowly, staccato, and smoothly. I stopped there with it, but one Sunday, I plan on actually conducting them like a real choir and having them follow the way I conduct.

However, for this week, I brought out this little sign (8 1/2 x 11) on card stock. Then we had a quick lesson about the music symbols and what they meant.

okay, so I couldn't upload it, but it was basically this:
pp
p
mp
mf
f
ff
I put a mouse by the pp and a lion by the ff to help remind them which one was soft or loud.

Then I handed my baton to one of the children, and let them drag it up and down the chart to "conduct" us on HOW we should sing. I had to remind them not to move to quickly since it's hard to change your voice that quickly. We only did it a few times, but everyone wanted a try! I'll definitely be bringing this one back, and I'm glad I could get in a quick theory lesson!

overheard at our house...and your primary?

This is a personal post, but thought my fellow choristers might get a kick out of it.

I have a 3 year old sunbeam, boy. He loves to sing around the house, and usually, it's one of the primary songs. Usually, it's just a phrase of the song that he'll sing over and over.

Today, he was singing a new variation to My Eternal Family

It went like this

"I am a builder, YES WE CAN!"




If you have ever seen "Bob the Builder" you'll get this. :)

Visuals Matching Game

Well, this may be my last post. A new stake is being formed in our area and I've been moved into a new ward. So I have officially been released as our ward Primary chorister. Very sad.

Since I was sick last week, I just got started on "I'll Seek the Lord Early" today. For the setup, I hid my visuals (all pictures: "youth" - a picture of my daughter, "truth" - gavel, "scriptures", "prayer" - child praying, "living prophets" - recent Ensign picture of First Presidency, "commandments" - tablets, "love" - heart) behind numbered construction paper in random order. On the back of one piece of construction paper, I taped a picture of the Savior.

I set everything on the chalkboard ledge. I started out singing only what corresponded to my first visual then had everyone sing that part with me. ("I'll see the Lord early while in my youth") Then I drew a name and had someone pick a numbered paper. I showed them what was behind it. If it matched what we sang, I would put the visual up and move the construction paper up so the kids would know that the visual was gone from behind that one. If the visual didn't match, I covered it back up and we sang the line again, doing this until they found the match. Then we would all sing as far as we had visuals for and I would continue to sing the line for the next visual at the end, then have them sing it all with me, then draw another name and see if they could find the match for the next visual.

Once all of my visuals had been revealed and matched, we sang the entire song and I finished off "I will seek the Lord early and He will be found." Then I told them that all of my construction paper had already been chosen, however, there was one more visual - a picture of the Savior - that they would need to find. If they chose a number that didn't have the Savior behind it, I covered up visuals in order. (I.e. - the picture of the Savior was behind #4. Someone chose #3. I showed the children the back and then covered the first visual with #3 construction paper.) I figured I would cover the visuals in the order of the song, rather than corresponding to the number chosen, as we would have sung the song multiple times with the earlier visuals and didn't want to cover the newer visuals too soon.

This went over really well. We sang the song many, many times. This took us the entire 20 minutes and kept the kids' attention so they could try to remember where they had already seen some of the visuals.

Primary Putting

Yesterday was a little stressful trying to come up with another fun idea for today, it being the 5th Sunday. I had a random thought that utilizing more sports ideas would be a fun idea for teaching during the summer and the first one that popped into my head was making a golf course. After much thought, here's what I came up with:

I covered a Huggies box (one of the jumbo packs from Costco) with old wrapping paper turned inside out and cut 8 "holes" along the base. Then I printed out PRIMARY PUTTING in cute font on colored paper and taped it to the box. (But ran out of time to further decorate so if I ever do upload a picture, please don't judge me!)

Anyway, then I numbered each hole. Then I labeled 8 strips of construction paper with the number 1-8 on one side and put the name of one of the songs we've been working on on the other side. Since it's only May, I had 3 WILD cards, as I'm very much planning on using this as review in the future as well.

I had all the kids think of their favorite Primary song while I put my strips of paper on the board. (For some reason, very few can come up with a song on the spur of the moment.) Then I put a line of masking tape on the floor and drew a name for our first golfer. We sang the song corresponding to the number of the hole the ball went through. If a golfer hit the ball through a hole and we had already sung the song, we would just sing it again - review, right?

Lots of fun! And reusable!!! Please share any other sporty ideas!

Baptism; new song/review combo idea!

(I know it was the song for May, but this idea will work on other songs as well. My apologies for lack of pictures. My daughter dropped our digital camera in the pool and it is fried. I will see if I can work some miracle with my cell phone to add later.)

I printed out all the words, cut each out individually and backed with colored paper that was cut about 1/2" larger than the white sheet. (Yes, this took some time, but it also made it much easier to prep for the following weeks!)

I left some colored pages blank and utilized the Detective Clueless idea. I wrote scriptures in very small handwriting on the colored pages and told the kids which file to look in to fill in the blank. We would start singing at the beginning of a verse and stop when we came to a blank. That way, we ended up singing through each verse multiple times. We also got to use the scriptures and learn more about Jesus' baptism.

It took us a couple of weeks to get all the way through the song and fill in the blanks. Then for review, since I had all the words on seven different colors of construction paper, we used "exploding water", as my kids call it, and sang the whole thing through 7 times. They love watching the water bubble over and get so excited trying to guess what color will come up next.

Reverence

First - my apologies also for slacking in the posting department. This singing/sharing time took place about 2 months ago but things have been super busy for us.

We were having a little trouble with lack of reverence. Not just the children but teachers too! So our Primary president called and asked if I could teach the children "Reverence Is Love" during her sharing time. Which got me to thinking, "What is reverence? How can I teach this song and keep it fun and interesting while reverent at the same time?" Sign language! So I picked out the main words, looked them up on an online ASL site and memorized the song.

Our president began by assigning a "noise" to each class. For instance, the Sunbeams mooed the next class counted to 10 repeatedly, etc. Then she told them that when she raised her hand, they were all to make their assigned noises and stop when she lowered her hand. She then told of Jesus and the money changers in the temple, raising and lowering her hand at appropriate times. She also discussed the meaning of reverence and how we can show reverence and then turned the time over to me.

I told the children that I wanted to teach them a special song about reverence but that they would have to be reverent to learn it. I'm no soloist, but I did sing and sign at the same time (ask your pianist to slow down if you want to try this!). Then I invited them all to sing and sign with me anything they could remember but to particulary watch for the sign for "reverence". After 2 times through, I asked if anyone noticed what the sign was. Then we went through the first line, learning words and signs. Then added the second line, sang from the beginning. Then added the third line, sang from the beginning. Etc. To finish, I had them sing the song twice through, once with words, the second time only with signs.

The Spirit was so strong. And the kids love the song. We are going to sing it as a part of our program to help the reverence in our sacrament meeting as well.