Month: July 2013

August Primary Singing Time Ideas. WWJD?

The kids are going BACK TO SCHOOL this week. And I always think it is a good reminder to them to be reminded of “What Would Jesus Do?” in any situation they are in where they have to make a choice how to act. It is so easy to just go along with the crowd. But remind them how Jesus would want them to set the example for others in their class of what a true follower of Jesus acts like.

Do What Jesus Would Do….

A good song to sing for this is “I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus”.  The flipchart for that beautiful song is HERE.  Another one that was in the FRIEND MAGAZINE a while back is one of my favorites; “If The Savior Stood Beside Me’.  The flipchart for that one is Here.  I found a goldmine of Flipcharts at Jolly Jenn. I LOVE all these flipcharts I found at the Jolly Jenn website. You can just choose which one you want. She has like a GAZILLION.

ROLE PLAYING

  • Find pictures or have kids “ACT OUT”  situations where people are hurt, lonely, calling names,  or NOT being kind to others. After each picture or acting  is shown, discuss how kids  would react and then ask WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
    What Would Jesus Do? 

    You could also sing “If The Savior Stood Beside Me?” Another great Song! Sheet music HERE.
    The flipchart can be found here for “If the Savior Stood Beside Me thanks JollyJenn.

    This is one of my alltime favorite Primary Songs; If the Savior Stood Beside Me…..
     For one scenario, you could show a homeless person on the street. This is something many people would ignore but Jesus would reach out to help. For another scenario, you could show two people fighting, a kid being bullied in the halls,  a student  who is new and sitting alone.


    Remind them as they start a new school year that people are always watching us to see how we will act. And we need to always be trying to be the best example of a Latter Day Saint, a missionary, and a Christlike person who tries to do what Jesus would do. 
    What Would Jesus Do? 

    I remember teaching my youngest that when he first went off to high school I wanted him to remember to smile and say “hello” to the child in the wheelchair or the overweight boy, be kind to the new person or , open doors for girls, and I generally gave him a lecture about kindness to others, even people who weren’t his friends. He was an outgoing popular kid who had tons of friends.

    Later, when he was killed in a car accident, many parents came privately to my house, telling me about specific instances where my son had been kind to their child, and had been a friend to them when nobody else was. Other kids wrote letters and mailed them telling me small kindnesses he showed to them. That made me feel so comforted as a mom. He tried to be like Jesus in small ways. It’s an important lesson for all of us to keep improving upon. I know I could do much better.

    I can’t believe this little girls, my first grandchild, is starting first grade this week! EEK! Where did the time go? 

    At this  Back to School Time, at beginning of a school year is a great time to set new goals. So try doing one of these wonderful songs this week. And remind your Primary kids  to Try to  BE LIKE HIM. 

Pattie 

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Homemade Playdough from Kool-Aide

It rained a ton last night and today it was muggy and hot outside so I wanted to think up something fun to do with my granddaughters while I was babysitting today.

Making Playdough out of Kool-Aid is so easy, I’ll never buy it again!

I had bought a pile of Kool-Aide packets to make playdough for my classroom kids last summer but I never got around to it. And that stuff was still up in the cupboard. So we pulled them all down, chose our colors (flavors!) and mixed up a batch in about 2 minutes! Seriously, I’m not Kidding! It was FAST!

There are only 5 ingredients in Kool-Aid Playdough besides the water……
My Granddaughters picked out their favorite Kool-Aid flavors for the Playdough.

It took me about 2 minutes to mix up the Kool-Aid Playdough! Super EASY PEASY!

It is soooooo super quick and easy. It calls for the playdough in the mix before adding the hot water, but I wanted to divide the one batch into 4 colors. So I experimented with it to see if we could add the Kool-Aide after it was all mixed up.

Kool-Aid makes great Playdough….it smells so good!
Here were the colors we chose today for our Kool-Aid Playdough.
Do you think they’re getting excited to start mixing them up? Oh yes they were!
This is the before picture….nobody has rainbow fingers yet. 😀

It worked fine except for one thing; all our fingers were rainbow colors! It dyes you fingers pretty good, but after a few washes you can’t even tell. I should’ve taken a pictures of our rainbow fingers!   What fun we had! And the playdough smells yummy too!

Meg chose Orange and Cherry-Red for her Kool-aid Playdough!
Marisa chose purple-grape and blue-raspberry Kool-Aid for her Playdough.

 KOOL-AID PLAY DOUGH RECIPE
                                 
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
2 pkg kool-aid (unsweetened)                           
2 tablespoons cream of tarter
Mix together then add in:
2 cups boiling water
3 tablespoons oil

Mix and knead for 4 minutes or until cool. We mixed it all in the Mixmaster for 4 minutes
then separated it into 4 bowls. Then we dumped the Kool-Aid into each bowl so we’d get 4 colors! The only bad thing is….we ended up with RAINBOW FINGERS! 

I was thinking this may be a fun thing to make ahead in little “snack baggies” ziplock bags and hand them out after the Primary Presentation to show your littles what a great job you think they did with all that singing. They sure would LOVE taking some home I bet!

Kool-aid playdough is so quick and easy and fun! 

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8 Songs for Pioneer Day Singing Time Fun

Pioneer Day Singing Time….teach one of the 8 songs for a fun time! 

8 FUN SONGS FOR PIONEER DAY SINGING TIME Songs…..

1. Pioneer Children Sang As They Walked  Children’s Songbook 214

2. Little Pioneer Children  Children’s Songbook 216

3. To Be a Pioneer  Children’s Songbook 218

4. The Oxcart  Children’s Songbook 219

5. The Handcart Song  Children’s Songbook 220

6. Fun to Do  Children’s Songbook 253 

7. When We’re Helping  Children’s Songbook 198

8. If You’re Happy and You Know it Children’s Songbook )

Some EASY and fun activities for Pioneer Day Singing Time Fun start with dressing up as a pioneer! Then you could have a few broom handles and have 2 kids use those as if they are pulling a handcart. The fun 8 songs I love are the ones above. I especially love to do The Hand Song and To Be a Pioneer. Both are easy to teach. The Handcart Song Flipchart is HERE. Check it out because it is cute and easy to learn. To Be a Pioneer is HERE. Both are from Sugardoodle.com. 
My favorite Pioneer Day Singing Time Song is……To Be a Pioneer....it’s so easy to learn too! 

Another cute thing to do is make a “PIE” spinner for your favorite PIE -O-NEER song. You could make the giant spinner out of cardboard, or just cut a piece of construction paper circle into 8 sections and put a different song underneath each one like I did. I cut halfway up between each pie piece so you could “lift” it up to see your song names. The kids LOVED it! 

Kids can spin to choose a pie, and Pioneer Day Songs are underneath. I actually used scrapbook paper. 
An easy way to make the spinner to spin is just place it on a table and use a pencil and a paper clip and use the point of the pencil on the inside of the paper clip and use your finger to flip the paper clip till it spins around the pie. Here’s a picture.

Spinners are so easy to make and do for Singing Time. Use one for Pioneer Day Fun! 
You could also do it with numbering the 8 songs onto 8  Pioneer Pinwheels for Pioneer Day Singing Time too! The link for learning how to make one is HERE at Cafe Mom. That would be bright and colorful done up in 8 different scrapbook papers! 
Instead of numbers on the top you could put pie names like I did, or just  numbers and use it again and again. Then underneath I put the song names on little yellow sticky papers. I would color each number in rainbow order if you do use numbers on top though. No sense having it LOOK plain! We like CUTSIE here!  And it would be nice to have it reusable. 😀
Bring a broom handle and have the kids “walk and walk” around the primary room like they are pulling a handcart. That would be fun to do with Pioneer Children Sang as they Walked.
They will LOVE IT!  
You could also come dressed with an apron and pioneer hat. The kids LOVE IT when you get into any kind of costume!  Or you could add a few suspenders or vests. That is a GREAT motivator for some good singing to happen!! 

Pass the hats around and have the teachers or some of the kids put them on. Then choose one to come up and lead with you…..or put the song numbers inside the hats and have them look for what song you will be singing next! “The RED pioneer hat is next, what song are we doing?” 

Or, you could get a few hats and pass them around on the teacher’s heads. I would have those teachers then watch for great singers in their classes to put the hat on for the next song sung. Boy’s hats could be straw hats,


A link to a PDF of a Pioneer hat pattern is HERE from a stake that did a pioneer trek. So nice of them to SHARE! I love when that happens!  

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