BOB is fully armored!

Remember this guy that I presented at the first of the year? Go here for more info. on Bob.

Well, here we are at the end of August and Bob is sporting his full armor.  Yeah!  We've "learned" all of the songs for the Primary program so each piece of armor that corresponds with each song is on him BUT we definitely have many areas of different songs that still need work. 

I was trying to figure out how we could keep working on Bob even though he is already fully geared.  Then, the other day, I saw my little 5-year old playing with a rubber shield and a plastic sword and I had a light bulb moment.  YES, Bob has on all of his armor BUT some of his armor is not as strong as it needs to be...just like my son's rubber shield (a lot of good that's going to do him if he goes to battle). :)  I decided that we would review all of the songs we are doing for the program and determine the strength of each piece of armor. 

I chose three different armor strengths:
Rubber-meaning that the song is very weak and needs a lot of work to make it as strong as possible
Sterling Silver-We're getting there but we definitely could be stronger
Titanium-Couldn't possibly get any stronger.  Nailed it!

Last Sunday I presented this idea to the kids and showed them the little rubber shield.  They totally caught on to what we needed to do to help Bob and they worked hard to ensure we had him covered.  We definitely still need work on some of the second and third verses of songs (thus the Sterling Silver).

Here's how Bob looked after Sr. Primary this last week:

This week (tomorrow) we will focus on some of those weaker songs (especially the Rubber song-yikes!)  As a whole though, I am very happy with the kid's efforts and I think we will be just fine by the time the program rolls around.  

Spin the Singer

I saw this idea here and thought it would be a great way to make the repetitiveness of fine tuning our program songs more enjoyable for the kids.  While we've learned them all, there's still lots of problem spots that need some work.  Anybody else with me on that one?  We still have two month but the sooner we have them polished, the better.

Anyway,  the idea is to place papers in a circle on the floor with lots of different styles of singing a song.  In the center of the circle is a spinning chair (which my husband happens to have at the church as he's the ward clerk-so glad I don't have to haul a chair to church). :)

Then you pick 2 kids-a spinner and the person who will act as the spinee in the chair.  

After the spinner gives the spinee a whirl, wherever the spinee's feet are pointing when the chair stops, that's the way we will sing the song.  Should be simple and easy!

Here's the layout, minus the chair... 

 

Here are the actions I created.   If you want me to send you a copy of the PDF I created, just let me know.  I'd be happy to do it! 

UPDATE:  A big THANK YOU to Kerri who posted the actions on Scribd for me.  Looks like it's not as difficult as I was thinking it was going to be to get them into a PDF form on here.  I will try to go that route from now on.  Here's the link to them there:  Spin-the-Singer-Actions  Thanks Kerri!

"Getting the Bugs out" music time idea

Oh this sad neglected blog. We had such a busy summer (can't believe it's already over).  I'm trying to get back into the swing of things now.  All four of my kiddos are off to school this year so that should leave me a little more time.  First time in 13 1/2 years that I haven't had a little one in tow with me every day.  It's going to be strange...and sad...and way too quiet around this place. :)   

As the primary program nears, we have "learned" all of the songs, yet many of them leave much to be desired.  As a Child of God is definitely one of those.  I'm not sure why the kids didn't take to this song as well as it's such a beautiful song.

I decided that we needed to do some fine tuning.  One of the teachers suggested that her kids weren't singing it because they didn't remember the words.  Sometimes we learn the songs but then we move on and don't practice it again for awhile (my bad).  I decided that if that class was struggling with the words, maybe there were others as well.  I figured we might as well start back at square 1.  

I made a poster with all of the verses (we have the chorus polished so I didn't put that one on the poster).  I added a bunch of detachable bugs to the poster.  Tomorrow we will focus on "getting the bugs" out of this song, whether it be learning the words, or working on dynamics.  I am bringing a fly swatter (clean of course). :)  As we polish the different verses, I will let the kids come and swat one of the bugs.  The goal is to be "bug free" by the end of singing time.

Another fun idea I had for this as I have an adorable bee costume lying around...I will have one of the children wear the costume and buzz around the room as the children are singing.  If the bee spots a child singing "BEE-autifully" he/she will sting them.   Every person that gets a sting will get a little candy bug after sharing time.  I don't think I will need to do the candy bug with Jr. as they just LOVE to sing for me but Senior may need a little added incentive.

Should be an enjoyable day and hopefully we can finally master this song!  The program is sneaking up quickly.

***If anyone would like the poster, I have it saved as a pdf, and I'd be happy to email it to you. You would just have to take it into FedEx/kinkos to have it enlarged (or you can do what I did and just enlarge it at home on the printer and piece it all together-a trickier route but definitely cheaper).

I also created a pdf of the bug clipart if you would like that.  Just let me know.  

Good luck polishing up songs for the program everyone! :)

 

This is my cute little guy who "stung" the kids.  I failed to mention that the "sting" was just a dot sticker. That's how I knew who got the bug candy at the end of singing time.  Turns out the kids sang FANTASTIC in both Jr. and Sr. so they all got stung.  Love it when that happens. :)

Feeling the Savior's love through music

It was a very difficult summer for our Primary.  Senior primary in particular, as we lost two boys (brothers) from our ward who were killed in a horrible boating accident on the lake.  The sadness and the senselessness of this accident (caused by a drunk boater) left the children, and all of us leaders brokenhearted. One of the boys was in our Senior primary.  To put him into words, if there was ever such a thing as a living, breathing cartoon character, it would be him.  He was the life of primary.

The Sunday after the accident I didn't know what to do.  I didn't even want to do music time.  I didn't think I'd make it through even a verse, let alone a whole singing time without breaking down.  I kept praying trying to know what I should do.  My husband had bought me some flowers a few days earlier and they'd cheered me up on many occasion.  I woke up one morning and saw these flowers and felt prompted to make a bouquet of "love" for the kids.  Death is such a confusing thing for children to understand (sometimes for us adults as well) but I wanted them to understand that even though sad things happen sometimes, we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and is watching over us.  

To the bouquet my husband gave me, I added a bunch of hearts with songs that bore witness of that truth-Our Heavenly Father loves us. I had children come up and pull out a heart (that had the names of the songs on the back), we talked about how that song helped us to know that our Heavenly Father loves us, and then we sang the song.

One thing that I want the kids to understand as I serve in this calling is that good music can comfort, uplift, teach, and strengthen us.    The spirit was very strong and I think that it brought comfort to the children.  I know that it did to me at least.

Summer Olympics 2012

So I know that Olympics are almost over and I am a little late in posting this but it could still be done for a couple more weeks.

I have to give credit where it is due as most of the ideas on here came from here (love her site).  I just changed it up a bit to work for our primary. 

To kick off our olympics, the kids passed around the torch as we sang our first song.  Whoever was left holding the torch at the end of the song, was our first athlete.

On the board, I had listed all of the events that the kids could participate in that day.  The first athlete came up to choose their event.

 

Most of the events I did exactly as the above mentioned link so refer to her site for more in-depth descriptions, as I'm feeling a little lazy (or maybe just tired) tonight. :)

For the High Jump, I had several songs listed on post-it notes.  They were stacked one on top of the other, up the wall.  The athlete chosen for that event jumped as high as they could to grab a note.  That was the next song we sang.

 This was our diving event- Each of the little divers, had a name of a song listed on the back. The first diver to make it into the jar was the song we sang next. 

For the javelin, I did several strips of tape on the floor about 1 ft. above each other.  I wrote different ways/people to sing the song: girls only (boys were aiming for that one), :) boys only, whistle the song, snap the beat of the song, etc). 

For the javelin, we used a straw.  The kids just threw it as far as they could.  Wherever it landed was the way we did the next song.

For Volleyball, we tossed a balloon around as we sang the song. The person that had the "volleyball" when the music stopped was our next athlete. 

Our last event was Basketball.  I had some star baskets in Red, White, and Blue that were perfect for his as we were team USA (wish I would have gotten pics of this).  In the bottom of each basket, I had a song listed.  The athlete would throw a small ball towards the baskets.  Whichever basket they made the shot in, we sang that song.

In the end, our team took the gold (especially Junior).  I really enjoyed preparing this music time as there's such an energy buzzing all around with the Olympics. 

***If you want any of the signs or logos I made, just let me know and I will shoot them your way.