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!

My Eternal Family

I'm still trying to come up with an idea for How Firm a Foundation next month but nothing's come to me yet. I do have My Eternal Family all planned out since I had to present this song to our Stake back in November. Here's my plan:

Attention Getter: I have several disposable cups that I have taped my images to. Have one child come up and put on my Bob the Builder (construction hat and vest) outfit to be our "builder." Talk about each image and what it means as the child builds the cups into a pyramid. Ask the child to take one cup away from the bottom row (reinforce foundation theme from How Firm a Foundation) and see what happens.

Hopefully the pyramid will collapse and then we can talk about how we need to work hard everyday doing all these things to keep our families strong.

Have the pianist play the verse (stopping at the chorus) and tell the kids to listen closely for the repeated rhythm pattern. (I do this a lot in our primary so my kids know exactly what I'm talking about - you may need to explain rhythm ahead of time to them.) After we've listened to the verse see if any knows what the rhythm is. Put up the rhythm strip so the rest of the kids can see it.

Briefly go over the long notes and short notes on the strip and clap the rhythm for the kids. Have them clap with you a few times until they get it. Then have everyone clap or pat their laps while the pianist plays.

Next sing the verse to the kids while putting up the pictures.

Sing through the verse together while pitch leading until they get it.

Have another child come up to be the builder for the chorus. For the chorus I'm just planning on doing some simple actions since we'll be singing it a lot and they can catch on quick.

My Heavenly Father sent me here (arms spread open wide)

And He knows I can be (point to head for "knows" and then point to self for "I")

Strong & righteous (arms lifted and flexed to show off our muscles)

as I build (hammering action to the beat of the music)

my eternal family (put arms out to the side like you're wrapping your arms around your family members' shoulder)

Go over entire song and if you have time take down a picture and see if they can remember it without them.

I'll do the same thing for the second verse the next week after reviewing the first verse. Here is the picture order for the second verse.

I've drew most of these pictures myself on the computer, printed them out on a piece of cardstock each (they're big so the kids can see them!), laminated the fronts, and stuck magnets to the back.

I can't give out the clipart I used for the praying girl, sister missionaries, house, Book of Mormon, and the family (don't want to be a pirate!), but here is a link to download the images I drew.

http://www.4shared.com/file/82159423/c7020052/myeternalfamily.html

This is the clipart CD I used for the other images if you want to check it out. I use it ALOT!!!!

http://deseretbook.com/store/product/4963235

I Lived In Heaven

First off, I chose to teach I Lived In Heaven this month instead of "The Family is of God" thinking that most of the kids already know this song and why make my job any harder than it has to be? Plus I think the story of this song is really something they all need to know. Boy, I don't know if that was the best idea now!! This song has been the hardest one EVER to teach to Junior Primary. I think there are just so many words that it's really hard for them. Plus it doesn't help that our Sacrament Meeting has been running over into Primary time every week and that I get like 5 minutes to teach them a whole verse! Yuck. We finally made it to the second verse last week, but they still don't know the first one very well. We may not even make it to the third verse next week. Hopefully singing this song over and over throughout the rest of the year will be enough for Junior Primary to pick it up. Senior Primary is a whole different story though. Sacrament Meeting doesn't eat into the time I have with them and they're all able to read so that ALWAYS helps. Plus they already knew the first verse really well so we've made it through all the verses already and hopefully on Sunday we can just review them. Here are my posters for I Lived In Heaven. I just cut off the hole-edge of some page protectors and taped them onto posterboard. I found some GAK pictures (except for the Plan of Salvation picture that I made - see previous post) that would go along with the words and made some separate words strips to stick on and take off when they've learned the songs a little better. There are 2 posters and 1 is front/back.

I started out teaching them this song by telling them it was a story song - a "Ballad." I had 4 word strips that said "Who, What, When,& Where" on them (one for each word.) Then I asked them to answer the questions. They all looked at me like I was crazy. And I said, "What? Why can't you answer the questions?" They all just looked at me in Junior Primary (like always!) but thankfully Senior Primary said, "Because we don't know the story yet!" I also had up on the board the word strips that go with the song (the ones on the pictures above.) So we went through and talked about the story of the song and then I sang the first verse for them and asked them to listen for where to put the word strips on the poster. This gets them to actually listen to the words you're saying. We went through each picture and put the words on the poster. Senior Primary got them without any help. With Junior Primary I had to repeat the whole line of the song and have them find the words to put up. Then we sang through the whole first verse. I asked them if they thought they knew the story yet and they did so I picked a child to come up and pick one of the question cards. Each of the question cards had a more detailed question like, " What did Heavenly Father present?" For Junior Primary to answer the question they could either give me the exact line of the song or point to the picture and give me their best effort at the exact line of the song. Senior Primary had to give me the exact line but they could get help from their friends if they needed it. It worked really well! Over the next two weeks we did the same thing with Senior Primary and know they know it all! Junior Primary needed some more work on the first verse so we did that one for two weeks and moved on to the second verse just last week.

This coming week I'm planning on reviewing all three verses with Senior Primary and hopefully reviewing 1&2 with Junior and at least introducing 3 to them. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do this yet. I think we may play hide the note and we can sing the song over and over and over. : )

I Will Follow God's Plan For Me

This song isn't on the schedule for this year but one of the counselor's wanted to use it as part of her sharing time so  here's what I came up with.  A lot of the older kids remember this song from the program 2-3 years ago but NONE of Junior Primary knew it.  The counselor talked about somethings that went with a few lines of the song then I would get up and tell them the words to the two lines and then we'd sing just those lines.  I tried to use lots of pictures for the little ones.  It worked out really well.  For the closing song we sang the entire song all the way through.

Most of the pictures are clipart I made or have on a CD.  I made the Plan of Salvation image and used it on I Lived In Heaven too.  If you'd like a copy of it you can find it here:

http://www.4shared.com/file/82140257/cbcb4804/planofsalvation.html

Optional verse for Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Here's a fun optional verse to mix it up in Primary!

Ankles, elbows, feet and seat,
Feet and seat,
Feet and seat,
Ankles, elbows, feet and seat,
Hair, hips, chin and cheeks.

My kids also love to do it in Japanese (my hubby went to Japan on his mission and taught me this!) FYI - I have no idea how to actually spell these words - this is just spelled out phonetically for you.

Ah-tah-mah, kah-tah, hee-zah, ah-shee,
hee-zah, ah-shee,
hee-zah, ah-shee,
Ah-tah-mah, kah-tah, hee-zah, ah-shee,
Meh, mee-mee, koo-chee, hah-nah

Hope that makes sense! It's fun and can be quite the tongue twister when you do it really fast.
Me, mimi, koochi, hanna.

The Beginning

I know I'm always on the look out for another place for ideas for singing time so I thought I would share what I do each month in case anyone out there wants them!