Teacher Appreciation Week In Primary

So this was a serious drag, but I never got to use my mother's day corsages because the presidency did this really cute sharing time and it basically took all the time.  So I have been racking my brain on a way to use them because I went to the work of putting them together.  And I thought about teacher appreciation week.  My kids' schools just had this event to honor their teachers, and so I thought it would fit nicely to do version of this in primary.  And boy do our primary teachers deserve ALOT of appreciation.  Now if you did use corsages, you could still do this and just prepare something else to give to the teachers...it could be a candy bar or a tissue paper flower or a note or whatever. 

So how I will do this:  I have a stack of cards to pick from.  I will pick a helper and they will chose a teacher in the room to spotlight.  Then they will pick a card from the stack.  The cards have song questions on them for the teacher to answer.  And depending on the answer, that is what song you will sing.  You should get a variety of songs here.  The child will then give the corsage or candy or flower to the teacher who was spotlighted. 

Questions:

What is your favorite primary song of all time?
What is your favorite hymn?
What is your favorite primary song about the Savior?
What is your favorite song about missionaries?
What is your favorite seasonal primary song?
What is your favorite wiggle song?

I made these cards on cardstock. I just googled free clip art and pasted it in with the text.  Pretty easy.  You could write any questions you want.  I will do this after we review the songs we have been learning in May.  I think it will be fun.  At the end we will sing Happy & You Know It using the lyrics!

We appreciate our teachers
Yes we Do
WE DO!!!!!!!!!!!!
We appreciate our teacher
Yes we DO
WE DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They are valiant, sweet and dear
So we'll give them a big cheer
We appreciate our teachers
Yes we do!
YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The Golden Plates

I am sort of behind because April was a weird month for me with General Conference and Stake Conference, giving me only two weeks to teach songs.  Those two weeks were dedicated to learning mothers day songs.  So I am playing catch up.

Last month's choose your own song for us was the GOLDEN PLATES.  I have seen on blogs that a lot of people are using this song for Aprils Choice.  It's so cute and short...it honestly reminds me of when I was in primary.  It's an oldie but goodie. I knew my primary kids would pick it up easily.  But I did a few props to help them learn it just the same. 

I printed out pictures that went with the lyrics of the song and taped them around the room.  We sang each stanza slowly, stopping at the end of each line and review, and depending on what they sang, they had to find the picture that coordinated.

The golden plates lay hidden (picture of the golden plates)
Deep in the mountain side (picture of the mountain pointing inside)
Until God found one faithful in whom he could confide (picture of Joseph Smith)
A record made by Nephi (picture of Nephi)
Written in days of Old (I didn't have a picture for this but you could find something maybe)
Now in the Book of Mormon, the story is retold (picture of Book of Mormon)

Now as they collected these pictures, they had to assemble them in order on the chalk board.  Once we slowly sang through the song once, stopping and collecting the pictures for each stanza, we sang it all the way through with no stops. 

Then I revealed the GOLDEN PLATES I made, which are pretty homely but I did my best.  I have seen blogs where they are much prettier than mine, but sometimes imperfect is okay. I made these by cutting up foam board, and attaching metal rings to it.  Then I just painted the whole thing gold with spray paint.  It was easy and cheap!

So when I brought out the gold plates, I asked how many of them had their own gold plates, and they all raised their scriptures, which is what I wanted them to do.  Then it was time to bear testimony of Joseph Smith and how indebted to him for finding the plates, translating them, and restoring the gospel.  Now with the plates, we hid them and as we sung the song playing the HOT AND COLD game, we practiced the song while the plates were hidden and found about 5 times...and in doing so, we pretty much memorized it on Sunday.  It was a fun Sunday. 

After church yesterday, I heard my kiddos upstairs singing that song to themselves subconsciously.  It's times like this that I know that as spastic and crazed as I feel on Sundays, they are getting it. 

We'll Bring The World His Truth

I do like to complicate things.  Mostly I like to find GOOD arrangements of songs that I know will invoke the spirit and all year I have been digging for versions of this and that.  Our program this year is going to include We'll Bring the World His Truth.  It follows the month that we talk about missionary work. 

In my ward we have over 100 primary children.  It's like having my own mini version of the Mo-Tab.  They love challenges as well.  I had this crazy idea of tweaking this song.  I own the book THE LDS SONGBOOK FOR ALL OCCASIONS...if you don't own this book, I highly recommend it. I found it at Seagull Book for like $12 and it's worth every penny.  It has some really fun songs in there, spiritual and silly.

In this book, there is a version of We'll Bring the World His Truth that is companioned with AS SISTERS IN ZION.  Many of you may know this EFY medley...very pretty.  The cool thing about THIS particular version is that it is simple.  It eliminates the portions talking about being daughters of God and marked generations.  It is simply a rendition of two church songs, put together like LOVE IS SPOKEN HERE.  I think my kiddos can do this.  Boys vs. Girls. 

Anyway, I thought I'd throw that out there to blog land.  It's so pretty. I think it will bring tears.  And it's not complicated...the trick will be getting the boys to sing ALONE.  But we have about 50 boys, I think we can do it.  :-)

Primary Idol

I know this idea has been posted a lot in blogland so forgive me if you are thinking...NOT AGAIN!  But as usual, I took someone else's vision and morphed it into something I feel will work for me.  Perhaps you can do the same!  I found the graphics from a computer savvy chorister on another blog and snatched them up.  I did a little spin on this idea to make it more simple for me.  Since American Idol is in full swing right now, I thought it would be fun to use this for the senior primary as a way to review the songs and verses we have learned so far.  So what I did is that I just copied the graphic twice and laminated it. I will just stick it to the back of two chairs that I will place in front of the audience in our primary room (judges panel chairs). I will then pick a helper from our stick can.  That person gets to come up as a judge (which is a spin on using teachers or outside guests to come in and judge- they will judge themselves instead).  The helper will pick another person to help judge and that person will come forward (could be a friend, classmate or teacher or leader).  So we will have TWO judges.  I have two cups.  One of the judges will draw from one, the other judge from the other cup.  One cup has the class names in it.  The other cup has the song and verse that class will sing. 

So ONE class ends up singing ONE verse of one of the songs we have learned so far.  The judges then will critique them.  I will warn them to be nice...constructive criticism is good but being just rude is not okay.  The goal is to sort of get a friendly competition between classes going so that each class tries to out do another while perfecting our program songs. 

This will just be a quick and fun way to review the songs we have learned so far.

here is the link to the graphics:http://www.overthebigmoon.com/primary-idol/

Mother I Love You

So mother's day is coming up soon. 

I found this Utube video of the sign language for this.  It's super sweet. I plan on using this.  Usually we do two songs so I only plan to sing the first verse of this song and then sing another song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqmCKoKHbfc

I love the ending of this where they just hold up the I LOVE YOU SIGN.  I think it will be really touching. 

Sing It Backwards

My senior kids love to be challenged.  I was scouring the primary song book for a song that you can truly sing backwards.  And well, DO AS I AM DOING works.  I did this with them on Sunday and they thought it was hilarious and they usually think wiggle songs are lame. 

I did write the lyrics on a poster for them because it's hard to think in your head how to sing this.

Me follow, follow, doing I'm as do....

Mother's Day Corsages

So I found these flowers at Dollar Tree.  They come with a little vase.  I had this notion, that this could be used two different ways and if you can't find these exact products, you can always make them with cardstock or other household supplies.

First:  The kids could arrange a bouquet of flowers by picking these flowers and putting them in the vase OR I bought another set and made them into corsages.  I just clipped the wire steam off and hot glued a piece of elastic to it.  How this would work is that the corsages will be in a basket.  The helper picks a corsage.  Each corsage has a card color coordinated to it that has a question on it.  So they answer the question which has a mom song to go with it.  Then the helper chooses a sister/mom teacher in the room to give the corsage to.  Our primary has predominately female teachers and so I know this will work in my midst.  I thought it would be kinda sweet to see how they picked, a teacher, the pianist...a member of the primary presidency?

Questions:
What is the yummiest thing your mom makes?  Sing MOTHER DEAR
What is your favorite story that your mom reads to you or used to read to you?  Sing MOTHER TELL ME A STORY
How do you show your Mom that you love her?  Sing LOVE IS SPOKEN HERE
What is your Mom really good at?  Sing MOTHER I LOVE YOU
How do you help your Mom?  Sing QUICKLY I'LL OBEY
Does you Mom have a nick-name she calls you?  Sing DEAREST NAMES
Do you know what your mom's favorite flower is?  SING I OFTEN GO WALKING