Pattie's Primary Place – Page 2 – Good Stuff for Primary Leaders

12 General Conference Ideas for Kids

General Conference Activities are a great way to keep kids interested in what’s going on. And General Conference is coming up soon. Do you remember how hard it is to keep kids interested in General Conference if you are lucky enough to get it on your T.V.? I still remember my youngest using a putter golf club and practicing his putting while watching conference, much to my chagrin! (He was a senior in high school at the time and had promised us he’d watch even the Saturday sessions….which he did).
12 General Conference Activities for Kids.

All kids, no matter what age, love to color some coloring pages with brand new crayons. Here is an easter basket with eggs, chicks and bunnies to cut out and glue inside. All kids love Bingo, wordsearches and crossword puzzles. So no matter what age you’ve got at home, it would be fun to give out activity booklets or sheets with ideas for your primary children. And your own kids would love these ideas too! If kids are engaged during General Conference, they may pay attention a little bit better. And isn’t that what every parent would like? Yes, it is. 😀

Berry Shortcake for General Conference morning Breakfast! Yummy and easy. I just use a yellow cake mix and cut that up into squares. But this is one fancy way to decorate the plates with raspberry puree. I would creme to the top.

One thing that will get everybody around the T.V. is food. If you wake up a little early, and make a nice breakfast buffet or brunch, they will come. Just like Field of Dreams; if you build it, they will come. Make some Berry Shortcake for Sunday morning Breakfast! That will get all the kids up and watching conference! I also do a sausage puff egg casserole that everybody loves. Check it out HERE at Weekday Chef, my cooking blog.

Another thing that my kids would love to do is eat a yummy buffet of their favorite foods. If I set it all up at the table, people will come and watch while they eat on T.V. trays and at little kiddie tables around the T.V. If you don’t get it on T.V. you will have a hard time doing this at the stake center. lol. Plus you’d have to make a ton of food. tee hee.

Here are some really great General Conference ideas for Kids that I’ve found
1. Get a new pack of crayons and do coloring Pages from LDS Clip .
2. Do a Word Search puzzle from LDS Resources
3. Activity Pages from The Idea Door
4. Latter-day Prophet Matching Game from Live Eat Craft E Art
5. Play a game of I Spy the Prophet from We Talk of Christ

6. General Conference Bingo from Oopsy Daisy

7. Activities found in The Friend
8. Conference Memory Game from Beehive Messages
9. Choose a Conference activity from Sugardoodle
10. Do some Dot-to-Dot Activities from My CTR Ring
11. Play Conference Bingo from The Friend
12. Or Play a General Conference Game from Lady Create-a-lot

French Vanilla Cream Puffs to make for General Conference Weekend.

Another fun idea is to make cream puffs and have the kids frost or decorate them during conference choir performances, as a kind of break from sitting and listening. My post on the most delicious French Vanilla cream puffs is HERE. Have fun during general conference coming up in a few weeks. In the meantime, copy off a few of these sheets for the kids in your primary tomorrow. The parents will thank you. 😀

Pattie

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Why Doesn’t Anybody Ever Comment?

I have been blogging for 5 years. I have done this blog pretty much because I love music and wanted to give back something because of all the time I’ve spent as a primary chorister. Probably about 8 years if not more, truth be told.

My Easter Decorations at home are starting today…..It is looking good here….but not on my blog. It is sad on my blog.

There’s just one thing. Nobody ever comments. It has been 5 months since anybody has made a comment. It is disheartening.

Daffodils are starting to come up!

I wish there were some who read my ideas who could leave a thought, a thanks, a comment…..just once in awhile.

First Day of Spring today. Tulips are just erupting around here.

I count the hundreds of people who look at my blog daily. I know you are visiting. Why the heck not leave a note? It is the bloggy way to be polite for heck’s sake! Don’t just be a taker. Be a person. Leave a comment! Geez!

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March Singing Time Ideas St. Patrick’s Day

March Singing Time….St. Patrick’s Day is coming up SOON!

This is one my favorite months of the year. My family were all IRISH! And my mom was an Irish Catholic. We REALLY celebrated St. Patrick’s Day every year. I remember dinners where she would actually give us kids a bit of wine with 7 up to toast to some of her favorite SAINTS.

Those are happy memories of sitting in the formal dining room with my 5 siblings cracking jokes and eating yummy food. I love St. Patrick’s DAY!

March Singing Time Ideas

I don’t have very many decorations for it but I always do at least my entry table and my dining room table in honor of my mother and her love of St. Patrick’s Day. I also decorate my classroom in Shamrocks, leprechauns and GREEN, glittery stuff and of course GOLD wrapped chocolates!

So in honor of the Saints all over the world who are do gooders for others I’d cut out a bunch of Shamrocks in Green and add some ROLO candies or Golden Hersheys’s Kisses and write all the songs behind shamrocks.

Use a few St. Patrick’s Day decorations to have a LUCKY singing time.

March Singing Time Ideas….. St. Patrick’s Day Fun!

Then come up with some fun questions to ask and the correct answers get a piece of “gold” from your POT OF GOLD (a black container with gold wrapped candy inside). The kids will love it!

Use something like this or a black bowl with gold candy, or a black, plastic pot from the dollar store.

Another idea is to decorate a hat green and have the kids come up and pick a song title out of the green leprechaun’s hat. That is always fun too. Here is a tutorial on making your own leprechaun hats from some tupperware type bowls from the dollar store. Check it out at Canadian Living.com. I might try these in my classroom! What fun they would be!

March Singing Time Ideas- We made these little leprechauns one year out of empty lamination tape rolls which are pretty heavy. They stood up nicely on our tables for a few days till we took them home.

My Irish Catholic mom used to call me Patrick for fun as a nickname. It was kinda weird because I had chopped off all my own hair and she had to take me to the barber to get a butch haircut to even it all out. So I wore dresses, had a mom calling me Patrick in the stores, and I had a boy haircut. Now enjoy that mental picture. haha. (I will NOT share a picture of how weird I looked either! No! )

But to you I wish the LUCK of the IRISH this March Singing Time! Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all!
Patrick

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Valentines Day Singing Time Ideas

For Valentines, You could just get a bunch of Valentine balloons and roll up a small piece of paper inside each one with song titles/page numbers on each.

Then blow up the balloons and tape them to a board or wall. Kids could come up and choose a balloon to pop. That is always a fun one.

This little “Love” lamp stays lit all through the month of February at my house. And I have lot sof candy all over the place for my grandkiddos. They love it! (Their parents don’t tho….snicker). Happy Valentines Day everybody! Hope everybody gave their kids a big hug and a peck on the cheek!

We ate out at Cafe Rio pork burritos for Valentines. We did it the day before so we wouldn’t have so many crowds. I love that place.

I added glittery red hearts to all of my flower arrangments and potted plants too of course.

I got done decorating up my house for Valentines a few days ago. I love how it looks. It makes everybody smile when they walk in too! I love that part. I’m freaky that way! I used to take 6 or 7 valentine decorations to church and just put a song title on a little yellow sticky paper and put it on the back of all my decorations. If you are short on time, that is always a cute one to do. The kids can come up and pick something and sing the song that is listed on the back.
Easy peasy!

I thought this was also a funny idea for a February/Valetines idea. They kids come up and “pull” a tooth out. You could use this chart later to add teeth and take out teeth as kids are singing badly or singing well; or singing loudly or softly; or however you want to use it. I’d have lots of fun with it. This idea was found on Pinterest.

And decorated the kitchen table and counters and the buffet with hearts and bears and valentines doo dads.

I love how it looks. I love Valentines DAY too. I’m a sap for sentimental lovey dovey stuff.

Jingley heart wreath on the front door. My hubs is so sick of this thing. It shakes and jingles in the wind outside and drives him crazy. haha.

And of course we had our little kiddie party in my kindergarten classroom. I got lots of cheesy valentine cards from the kiddos. But this one here is for all you girls out there. It is cheesy too but nice to look at, don’t you agree? ummm….hmmmm…

And my good friend Kim (fellow kinder teacher) brought us over some of this stuff called cookie butter. It is from Trader Joes. It is to die for good on pretzels, crackers, apples…….or even on spoons. You’ve got to try some of this stuff. It comes in cookies too, and they are better than Oreos! I promise! Bad me. I finished the whole package with a little help from the hubs.

Happy Valentines Day Ya’ll. Give your loved ones a big hug and a kiss!

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February Singing Time Penguin Fun

This February I found a cute bunch of clip art that you could use to make a fun Penguin Singing Time Game. It is from Teacher Pay Teacher.

Some cute penguins we did in my classroom this week. Honk!

They turned out so cute too.

It is a cute Penguin match game. But you could just cut out and use the penguins that have the numbers on them. Then on the back have a song title on each penguin with a page number. The link for the Penguin Number matching is HERE at TPT. I would just print out the numbered penguins. They are super cute!

February Singing Time Penguin Fun. Penguin are always a cute activity. Especially this Penguin Tear Art we did last year. Don’t you just love the snowboard? It says “Head” on the end. Somebody goes snowboarding in my class. lol.

The kids could take turns “waddling” around the room as a class. And you pick the funniest “waddler” to come up and pick a penguin. Then have them stand up and direct the singing using a big black sock on each arm “penguin wings”. It would be funny to watch and the kids would enjoy it.

Penguin February Singing Time Fun. Use long men’s socks on arms to have kids “direct” the singing with their “Penguin flippers”. It will be fun for all.

Have fun with the dark black daddy socks. Having kids direct with those on their arms makes it so fun for everybody!

Have fun with Penguins this February. We’ve been having an early spring-like weather here in Utah. I hope all you that are getting pounded by snow can make it through! Yuk!

Then pick the next class and have them waddle around the room once and then back to their seats. Tell them if it gets too unruly you will skip their class and move to the next one. That way you can keep them sort of in line. It will be a little bit of chaos though, just be prepared for lots of laughs!

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January Singing Time – Pin the Nose on Olaf

Play Pin the Nose on Olaf while you do some January Singing Time Songs in Primary.

I was just in Walmart the other day picking up some New Year’s Eve snacks and I saw another sign that “Frozen” is still all the rage even a year after it came out. Now they have FROZEN cold cereal! Can you even believe that? Yeah. That’s what I was saying to myself. What the heck. And it isn’t the healthy stuff of course. It is some yummy, sugary concoction of course!

“Frozen” is now in cereal! What next!

Well it got me thinking of some fun things you could do with Frozen. That Olaf Snowman is very easy to draw and cut out. I did the one above when we had a little “Frozen” party for all my grandkids a few weeks ago when everyone was in town. Check it out HERE at My Classroom Website.

My little granddaughter and the Frozen princesses last winter at the Ice Castles in Midway, Utah.

You could put a bunch of carrots on the board with song numbers written on the backs of the orange paper carrots. Then have kids come up and choose a “nose”, sing the song, then while they are singing, have the child put on a ski mask (so as not to see) and “pin the nose on Olaf”. Just using a piece of tape is fine.

The kids would be so entertained they wouldn’t even know they were singing songs. You would have to do familiar ones for the most part. Then maybe at the end do a new one using a flip chart. This would be a blast to watch and see.

Some People are Worth Melting For, aren’t they? January Singing Time could be a lot of fun!

Have fun with Olaf. He’s got such a sweet message too. There’s always somebody worth melting for isn’t there? Yeah. There is. Happy January!

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Amazon Echo, James Blunt and Superman are COOL

We’ve been having a lot of fun with this VERY NEW and VERY COOL musical toy my hubs got me for Christmas. It just came in the mail on Friday. It is called the Amazon Echo. We can talk to it just like the iphone’s Siri. It answers your questions in a fun way. It can save your grocery list and help your kids spell their spelling words. But the best part is that it will play you your favorite music.

It can be left on your kitchen counter or your desk. It will play anything you feel like listening to. It will start and stop when you tell it to. It is amazing! Check it out!

Dylan in his Little Superman outfit. He’s the apple of my eye.

Superman taking off as he is rather camera shy…..snicker….

I am in wonder of modern technology. I am living the life of the Jetsons (a childhood cartoon…lots of robots and spaceships). Marty McFly was right in Back to the Future! It is not out yet in general distribution. We won an invitation lottery and were invited to purchase it for half off the $199 price. What a great gift. I love my new Amazon Echo. It’s the bomb.

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Happy New Year 2015 Y’all!

I really don’t like it when I have to take down the Christmas decorations. It is so pretty in the house during the holidays. It takes me a solid week to get all 15 of my bins spread out around the entire house. And it takes a day to put it all away. That doesn’t seem right somehow.

The coffee table in the den is cute little snowmen.

My kitchen table is all snowmen decor too. They make me giggle.

My kitchen is red and white for the holidays. Mrs. Claus and her cupcakes and the Nutcracker music playing just make me smile.

I hated putting away all this darlingness.

Dessert buffet. I forgot to take pictures after we had all the brownies, cookies, cream puffs and cupcakes on these platters. bad me.

Drink station at the holiday parties. We have sodas and lemonade sparkling cider and all kinds of yummy things.

My light up snowman wall hanging I keep up all January. My little grandson loves looking at it.

I love this little snowman above on the left. He changes colors from green, to red, to blue. It’s fun to watch him when it is dark in the entry hall. He gets to stay all January.

I luckily have a few bins full of January decor. Otherwise the place would look really depressing and sparse. I have lots of snowflakes, snowmen and some blue and white glittery ornaments I save to put in glass jars for January. And I have my light up snowman from Christmas I leave up all month long too. He is cute.

I have pictures in cute holiday frames I only put out for one month a year. I hate putting this one away, it is so cute of my oldest son and his little family.

Some more guest tables I had set up. I had cute Santa chairbacks for this card table. The little kids all wanted to sit here in the Santa chairs, even though I had 2 little kiddie tables! lol.

Advent Tree filled with gingerbread man lollypops for each day of the month leading up to Christmas.

I set up lots of tables when I had a family dinner party recently. This was the little kiddie table. I had two of them. I brought some projects and crayons from my classroom so the kids could color gingerbread houses.

Here’s the gingerbread houses and the cute, kid’s table.

The only nativity I put out anymore is the unbreakable one. If I put out any of my others, somebody loses a head or a leg. This year it was a wise man. Too bad I wasn’t the wise woman who left him back in one of the Christmas bins.

Stairs going up to my bedroom. I will miss these cute, long-legged mice smiling at me on the way up to bed.

It is so easy for me to forget the reason for the season. Here is another unbreakable nativity my son Devin brought me back from Armenia, where he served a mission.

I have tried hosting parties for family and friends always hoping that everybody has a good time; but I’ve learned that some people won’t have a good time no matter what you do, and that isn’t your fault. You just try to enjoy yourself and hope that everybody else does the same. But it is kind of out of your control.

Another one of the adult tables set up for dinner. I loved the glittery runner and holly berry placemats and simple Christmas colors and decor here.

And I have good memories of My daughter playing Christmas carols and us all singing along with her.

I have learned not to have huge and high expectations for Christmas gifts and all the drama it can cause. If people like what I gave them good, but if not, I just leave the receipt at the bottom of the box and they can return it and buy something else. And I don’t mind at all. I used to do that when my mom bought me clothes I didn’t like. And it was fun to go shopping after Christmas was over.

Another dinner party table set up. This one has Santa placemats and gingerbread-men salt shakers and candleburner.

Some of these snowmen decorations I will leave up through January. I have 2 light blue bins to house my January decorations. I got them out today and started the taking down Christmas process.

Stockings hung on the mantle. I will miss these pretty ones my daughter made herself for her family. They are staying with us this month waiting for their house to finish getting built. It has been a wonderful time to be able to see and play with my grandkiddos daily.

All these end tables will go back to being just blah looking after taking down Christmas is done. Sniff.

My cute kitchen counter. I will miss the bright and happy Santa stuff.

And I will think back fondly on having The extended family doing the nativity and Christmas caroling together with them.

I have tried to appreciate the little things this year. I have loved seeing little messages my 7 year old granddaughter leaves on my office whiteboard every time she is in there. It has gotten to be such a funny interchange. I look forward to seeing any new thing she has written. Sometimes they are generic funny thoughts. Sometimes they are messages to grandpa. Sometimes they are notices of things coming up in her classroom, like the time she was worried about a fire drill and the screeching alarm that made her nervous. (snicker) And sometimes they are all for me. Lucky me. I love her so. This particular one her little sister wrote to her, sharing the love. So sweet.

So even though Taking Down Christmas makes me kind of sad, I have little gems like this to brighten up my day. And the little things I’ve seen and experienced remind me of how good it is to celebrate the holidays. I know if I only lean in a little more often, I will see the little gems that are happening all around me. Things that make me smile like these things do.

Great Grandpa and great grandson enjoying a photo op (NOT) … and there are TWO WHOLE generations in between! Someday this photo will be even more precious to me than it already is.

Cousins enjoying their matching bigwheel trikes. There was a third cousin missing this day. But someday they’ll all be together again riding them.

And these little gems, these little moments in time just make the little letdown of putting away Christmas, a little bit better to me. Things just look a little brighter after all. Here is all 6 of my grandkids blowing bubbles on the deck outside one day during the holidays.

And I won’t soon forget the Monday night we all went to Hogle Zoo for Zoolights with the entire family. It will be one of my favorite memories this holiday season. And those are the things I will think on, as I am taking down Christmas.

Putting up January….snowflakes and snowmen.

Not quite as cute as all the Christmas pizzaz……

But winter is here….with all that snow and so I will embrace it I guess. Snowmen make it more bearable….:D

Now the front entry doesn’t look AS CUTE as it did previously….but it’s filled with January finds…..snowflakes, snowmen and cute little grandbaby pictures in January frames.

Changing out all the red and green for blue and white……

And January placemats, snowmen, and snowflakes……

I wish you all a very happy New Year celebration. Think about all the fun you had this week and month. We are so lucky and blessed now, aren’t we? Use an idea from former posts to use this Sunday if you’d like. HERE (I Hope They Call Me On a Mission) is a good one. And HERE (hula hoops) is another one. Happy New Year!

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Christmas Program From Luke 2 With Songs

Every year our family does the Nativity with all the animals, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the shepherds and wise men, and readings from Luke 2. We have had so many neat Christmases doing this with cousins, aunts and uncles.

Christmas Program from Luke 2

I decided to type up all the readings and then add the songs that I liked in between each of the readings. I thought maybe other families might like a copy of it. I just copied the 6 songs on the back of 2 sheets of paper (2 songs on each side) and had this on the front of one side of them and stapled it all together 2 sheets total. Everybody was singing in 4 part harmony! It was so neat. We have some good singers in our family too!

My granddaughters as the shepherds in our Christmas Program from Luke 2. This year it was all little kids that did the program because they are getting bigger now. We had age 4 to about 7 and about 7 or 8 grandkids doing it together. Sweetness overload I can tell you!!

Here is the link to our Christmas Program from Luke 2. Christmas Program Luke 2 and Songs. Merry Christmas everybody!

Here is our family Christmas Program. We are singing Carols and doing the Readings from Luke 2.

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Winter Singing Time Fun Ideas

Well, it’s about time we had a snowstorm in Utah. So let’s get prepared to sing some fun songs about Winter. It is HERE! I had to clear snow off my windshield this morning on the way to choir!

Here’s a Link for Ping Pong Balls. These would make fine snowballs…..

My sister-in-law also gave me a fun idea to do after the primary presentation when the pressure is kind of off to do the required songs, and you have more freedom to do some new tunes. Let’s do some snowball games!

You could also use styrofoam balls for snowballs…..

Give each of the kids a piece of white scratch paper. It could have stuff on the back, nothing fancy. Then tell them to write their favorite primary song on it and crumple it up. Then tell them it’s their once a year time when they can pelt you with snowballs! Yipee! They will love that.

Juggle your snowballs using old white socks tied in a knot or white marshmallows…giant sized!

One class at a time can go and throw the snowballs at you. Then you reach down and pick one up! Whoever’s snowball it is you will then sing their favorite song however you want to. Maybe they could try to “juggle” 3 snowballs while you get everyone to sing. (these could be white beanbags made with old white socks filled with rice or dried beans or popcorn, then tied in a fat knot and cut off. OR they could be some of those giant marshmallows they sell for a dollar at the market! Or you could use ping pong balls. They are only a few buck at Walmart or Target in the sporting goods section. That is always fun! Or white whiffle balls would work great too. I’ve bought sets of 4 of those for a dollar at the Dollar store.

Whiffle balls could also be white snowballs!

I thought you could be prepared with a fun little song taken from Primary-to-Go. Let’s do a fun rendition of Popcorn Popping called “Snowflakes Falling”

Popcorn Popping with a little WINTER TWIST!

Snowflakes Falling on the Evergreen Trees…..

I LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW AND WHAT DID I SEE?
(Put your hands in round circles like binoculars around your eyes)

SNOWFLAKES FALLING ON THE EVERGREEN TREE.
(wiggle fingers from high to down low like snow falling)

WINTER’S BROUGHT ME SUCH A NICE SURPRISE,
(close both fists, then flick them open on surprise)

SNOWFLAKES FALLING RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES.
(wiggle your fingers above your head and pass in front of your face)

I CAN MAKE A SNOWBALL, I KNOW I CAN,
(motions of making a snowball with both cupped hands)

THREE SNOWBALLS MAKE A BIG SNOWMAN.
(motion your arms to make the outline of a 3 circled snowman)

I KNOW IT’S REALLY SO, AND I’M GLAD TO SEE,
(nod yes, at the same time you point to your smiling face)

SNOWFLAKES FALLING ON THE EVERGREEN TREES.
(wiggle your fingers from high to down low like snow falling).

Once There Was a Snowman…

Here are the guitar or autoharp chords if you want to play them instead of piano.

Another good song is Once There Was a Once There was a Snowman. Link to my post with pictures I did last winter. Snowman Link. I made this above last winter. It’s made from an old sheet. I choose a child to come up and scrunch down really little with it in their hands. Then when we sing tall, tall, tall, they make it grow. When it melts then the opposite of course. They let the snowman shrink back to a puddle again.

First Big snow of the season up on our East Bench.

Utah Snow is here! Happy Winter!

Have some fun when as the winter weather shows up! In the meantime I’m gettin my new winter coat ready! Brrrrr!

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