Long time, no see. . .

I know. I've been such a slacker when it comes to this blog. But, rest assured it's not just this blog. My family and digiscrap blogs have also been seriously neglected. At least I'm an equal-opportunity slacker, right? Hahaha! Anyway, the main reason for my slacking in the blogging area is we started homeschooling. My kiddos went to the first six weeks of the school year before we pulled them out. You can pretty much guess where my time is being spent nowadays. ;)

I am still the primary chorister in our ward and so I thought I'd post what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks with "Follow The Prophet."

First of all, I started off the month with finding out how many verses my kids already knew. Junior primary - zippo! (Having 25 sunbeams doesn't help matters much.) They did know the chorus but that's about it. Senior primary knew the Adam verse, Enoch verse and the last verse (Hallelujah!) So in Junior we learned Adam and Enoch using flipcharts off a CD I bought for singing time helps and then I taught them the sign language for the chorus. I learned the sign language from the church's website. It's a little tricky since the song is pretty fast and the motions are repetitive, which seems to make it even harder, but they have caught on really quickly and even the sunbeams can do most of it. In Senior we reviewed the three verses they knew and then learned the sign language too.

The second week we learned the last verse in Junior and Noah and Jonah in Senior. After learning the verse(s) we then played a fun little game. I made a big die and had fun ways to sing the verse: Cowboy, Opera Singer, Sing Backwards (facing the back of the room - not sing the words backwards), WILD (pick any style on the die) or pick a sign (one of my signs: stop/go, loud/soft, staccato/legato, etc.), Underwater, and Whisper Sing. The kids got to pick which verse to sing and then roll the die. We continued with the sign language on the chorus. They loved it!

For next week. . . I have no idea! Ack. I've been doing this for so long now I have completely run out of ideas. :) I don't think I'll teach any more verses though. I think I will probably mix up singing "Follow the Prophet" with some other fun songs and/or reviewing "I Know That My Savior Loves Me" and "He Sent His Son." I might just do the die again - they REALLY liked that one and so did the Presidency - they were laughing at me like crazy. I guess it was pretty funny!

My plan for "I'll Seek the Lord Early"

I don't have everything finalized yet but I know I'm going to have the whole singing/sharing time so I hope it works! I plan on doing all the opening exercises stuff and then sneaking out right before the do the spotlights so I can go get dressed. I'm going to come in wearing a trench coat, fedora, and carrying a magnifying glass. I'm hoping to really ham it up but I'm NOT an actress so I don't know if I'll be able to pull it off or not. Anyway, I'm going to come into the room looking through my magnifying glass and searching all over the room while telling the kids I'm looking for something really important. I'll have them guess a few things to see if they can figure out what it is I'm searching for. I'm going to have several clues hidden throughout the room. I'll get to the first one and act like I've just found something amazing. The first clue will have something to do with the first line of the song and lead us to the next clue. After I find the first one I'm going to have the kids help me find the rest of them. I might dress them up too or let them use the magnifying glass or something. After we've found all the clues and words to the song I'll sing it through for them and then we'll sing it together while I pitch lead. While I'm singing the song to them the first time I usually try to have something for them to listen for like, what word do I sing on the highest note, or what word do I say three times. Something along those lines so I know they are listening.

After we've sung it through a couple of times together if there's still time left we'll probably do some fun songs or sing the song some more using my Stop/Go; Forte/Piano; and Staccato/Legato signs. This is their FAVORITE thing to do!

I may change this up a little for SR primary. I don't know how well they'll take to me acting like a Private Detective. They may be too cool for this! :) Any help or suggestions are always welcome!

Aaack!

Where did May go?! Or April for that matter? Time seems to be speeding up the older I get. Anyway, the past two months have gone well in singing time. My kids learned "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" in April and we've been working on "Baptism" for May. I was sooooo terrified of this song but my kids have all three verses down pat and a lot of the sign language to go with it! They are amazing. They always learn the songs quickly when I have them doing some kind of action at the same time - especially Junior. I found a website that has tons of different sign language words with videos showing you how to sign them and just picked out the major words for the song. So it's very basic and a lot of the words are repeated throughout the song like "Jesus" and "baptized" or "baptism" so it was pretty easy for them to learn.

I don't have any great ideas for "I'll Seek the Lord Early" yet. I'm still trying to figure out what to do for tomorrow but hopefully my brain will work this week and I'll come up with something to share. ;)

Upcoming. . .

So how has your March been? Mine's been CRAZY! The kids have learned "My Eternal Family" so well and they really love it! I must admit that it's not my favorite song this year but it's definitely grown on me seeing the kids' enthusiasm about it.

Up next will be "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus." This is one that my senior kids know the first verse of really well already and since we get to pick this month's song I figured I might as well make it as easy on myself as possible! Plus, I think it's a great song with a wonderful message. We don't sing it enough anymore. So I'm trying to think of ideas for this one and haven't come up with much yet. If you have any please feel free to post them because I'd love to hear them! Hopefull I'll be back with an idea soon!

Some more My Eternal Family

I had a request for some a black and white (coloring page-type) version of my {My Eternal Family} visuals so here they are!

My Eternal Family black and white images

I'm actually starting this song on Sunday since we have Stake Conference on March 1 and then a Visiting Teaching Conference on March 8th and my hubby will be filling in for me then. I'll let you know how it goes. HFAF has been AWESOME and the kids are really loving it. I just taught them v.3 last week so I hope it stays with them and that we can get some more practice with it since we have to move on next week. We'll see. . .

Change of Plans!

Sooooo, my printer, computer, and Word are not playing nicely together (that always happens when there's 3 - right?! Or maybe that's just my kids. . .) so I can't use Rebecca's files for How Firm a Foundation. So I've ended up using Rebecca's main idea of building blocks with words and pictures to form a foundation and created all my own images. I found lots of great clip art HERE and made my own building blocks. I'll upload them to 4shared soon so I can share them with you, but I gotta go get the kids at school right now. Thanks again to Rebecca - I'm sad I can't use her originals but I never would have figured out what to put on mine without her!

K- I'm back! Here's the link:

HOW FIRM A FOUNDATION FILES

Don't have any pictures for you yet as I just got them printed out, but there are 16 pages of brick-like images with all the words and a picture to go with the words. Everything is in JPEG format and I just printed mine on white cardstock. I'm about to go laminate them and cut them out. FYI - I printed out 3 of the "Who unto the Savior" pages and 3 "Upheld by my righteous" pages. Hope your lesson goes well tomorrow (and mine!)

How Firm a Foundation

Well, I kept waiting and waiting for inspiration to hit me and it NEVER did!!!! I have been worried about this one for months. Seriously. But then, an angel (Rebecca) all the way in Australia emailed me with an idea she had. She found me through this blog and my post about it on Primusic. I LOVE PRIMUSIC. If you haven't already signed up for it . . . RUN to yahoo and do it NOW!!!!!!! The only idea I had for HFAF was to make some kind of foundation with the words and/or pictures for the words and build that as we learn and sing it but I couldn't ever come up with an idea or a picture in my head that would work. Rebecca's idea is pretty much the same but her's came to fruition and she's sharing it with all the members of Primusic (like I said before, RUN!) I think we'll also start out singing time with singing "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" and then talk about that a little and then I'm hoping I can figure out some kind of visual aid using a pan, sand and a rock, and a cardboard house. That may be pushing it though since I don't have that much time and I really need to get the kids singing it. It's such a hard song with huge words though that I really want to take some time to explain it to them. That's the whole point of these songs, right? To reinforce the things they learn at home and church and to help them learn more. That's the constant struggle I have with singing time though. I have too many things to talk about and explain and not enough time to sing them! Anyway. . . I'm hoping to get everything printed up and figured out today sometime so I'll post some pictures when I can.

Also, I'm going to tell my kids that the idea for this song came from Sister Jack and all the way from Australia - hopefully they'll get excited about that! Thanks again Rebecca!