Pattie's Primary Place – Page 3 – Good Stuff for Primary Leaders

Funny Story and Ugly Sweater Parties

Friday in my class we were doing turkeys for art. I was listening to the chit chat at one of the all-boy tables. It was quite hysterical. I just HAD to share the funny banter. This is what it is like being a teacher. It will tickle your funny bone!

Downtown at Abravenal Hall to see the genius comic “Jim Gaffigan, Dad is FAT” show.

“Hey Mrs. Moss did you know my mom is pregnant?” another child rebuts with “Hey MY dad is the President!!” another child “YOUR dad is American?” another child “My dad is the judge!” My dad works at McDonalds, I saw him there when I was a little kid!”

Funny Monkey stocking I saw yesterday at Hobby Lobby. It just cracked me up!

. I just HAD to stop and write it all down. 1 minute of kinder kid discussion. Unbelievable. These kids could be doing stand up comedy! They all stopped in awe of the lucky McDonald’s kid. Tee Hee. Oh this made me chuckle today! And #McDonalds, take note.

And these ugly sweater party invitations and decorations were cute. I want to have an Ugly Sweater Par-tay! I have plenty of them to decide between, that’s FOR SHORE!

Ugly Sweaters are the BOMB! I Agree!

Cute Snowman in his ugly sweater holding your cookies for your Ugly Sweater Party… tee hee. Gotta Love it!

Me and the hubs enjoyin’ life and laughing our guts out. Happy Holidays!! And Happy Ugly Sweater Parties one and all!

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Make a Primary Singing Time Scarecrow

Primary Singing Time SCARECROW for November Singing Time! You just PICK a PIECE each time you sing a song. Put that Scarecrow together a piece at a time as the kids sing songs!

A fun FALL GAME is to MAKE A Singing Time SCARECROW! Just make up a large brown paper bag circle face and a BIG hat out of colored paper or scrapbook paper. Then bring in a bag and inside the bag you will have the cutouts of the Scarecrow pieces.

Bring a bag full of these cutouts. 2 large EYES, Yellow rectangles of HAIR, a SHIRT, Triangle NOSE, FUNNYstitched MOUTH, BOW for shirt.

If you want more you could add a Sunflower or black crow on the hat. Use these items for a pick something out of the bag game and add to the scarecrow face each time kids pick. Then sing the song number on the back of that item while the child puts the piece on the scarecrow. They will really enjoy this game and it is easy. You could do the same thing in December putting together an angel with wings or a Christmas Tree with bulbs and lights and stars and tinsel. Have fun with it!

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Primary Singing Time Fun Tips

One way to be sure you are letting lots of different kids help you is to pull sticks out of the can with all the kids’ names on them, to be sure each child has a chance to come up and participate in the singing time games….

I use lots of these kinds of singing signs on fat craft sticks so I can call on kids to come up and help me lead the primary singing time in different and fun ways….(boys sing, girls sing, whistle, hum, louder, softer, stop, go, etc.)

We hold about 8 of these up around the room while singing “I am Like a Star Shining Brightly” as everybody does the hand motions opening and closing their fingers like blinking stars.

I teach school and my motto has always been; if I’m bored, the kids are going to be bored too. Don’t be boring. Do fun activities along with teaching the songs. I hope I never get stale, as a teacher. I always wanted to do fresh, fun things to get the kids involved.

Try a game of Going Fishing using each fish as a song (list songs in washable marker on the back) or you could use them to write small questions and tape them to the backs of the laminated fish. The pole is just a dowel with string and magnet.

The other thing is to always bring the spirit into the singing time. The songs most often do it themselves. But I always taught lessons along with the songs. I would bear my testimony about my work in the temple. I would tell the kids about how important it is to include others and be nice at school with stories of things I had seen at school, such as fighting or bullying or unkindness, that made me sad.

I have made dozens of these kinds of things where you pull a string on the back and the thing grows, or goes up as they do a great job singing…..they are always delightful fun. Try a rocket blasting off, a thermometer going up in red, etc.

I encouraged them all the time that they could make a difference in their own families by instigating kindness or exhibiting helpfulness to their siblings and parents.

You can’t tell from this picture but the red tongue goes up as the kids sing louder or better. It is a funny one with the furry red head of hair on Lester.

I would try to repeat things that were spoken about in the sharing time lessons when I had inspirations. The singing time is primarily a teaching time. So make it so.

Use lots of pictures and visual aids to go with all the primary songs. Here I am showing my favorite method to teach a new song; finding a flip book from Sugardoodle with words to go with pictures.

If you’d like to start out the new year with a few cute conducting ideas to keep the kids learning and interested, check out these posts by some music experts in the trenches of Primary Music. Teaching kids how to conduct is always fun too. And if you don’t know how, just read some expert blogs and copy them!

Here are a few ideas on leading Primary Singing Time from some experts in the field…

Leading Sticks by Brooke Wakefield on Sugardoodle
It’s All in the Hands by Ali Katherman on Sugardoodle
A Conducting Wand on Sugardoodle
Conducting Elephant by Tifany Hoecherl on Sugardoodle

Getting Ready for a Wonderful Thanksgiving in a few weeks! My son and his family are coming from Chicago to stay for a week. It’ll be So FUN to see my little grandbaby girl who is turning 2 soon! Woopie!

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Primary Singing Time BINGO GAMES!

I have done PRIMARY BINGO GAMES in singing time for lots of the seasons. A cute one for Christmas is below. Woo Hoo! I love me a freebie!

For Christmas I do J-E-S-U-S along the top, and for Thanksgiving we do T-H-A-N-K-S. Just make up some clip art pictures of 16 (4 x 4 grid) OR 9 (3 x 3 grid of pictures) that have to do with the season. Then I cover each of the pictures with just colored paper squares or wrapping or scrapbook paper squares. Then put a number on each square that covers each picture. When the kids pick just put a sticker dot in their class’ color to distinguish one class from another. Or you could just play till the end of your time and whichever class has the most dots wins a prize.

Christmas Bingo Game – Make your own BIG ONE!

A FREE downloadable bingo card from DTK for Kids is fun and easy to do. The link is HERE. It will give you ideas for every holiday under the sun. And if you have a color printer it will be CUTE TOO! That’s always high on my list. hehe.

Get a copy of these 8 Bingo Cards for your family party or to use in a small class in Primary.

At Crazy Little Projects is a FREE Thanksgiving Bingo I made up for my family and grandkids to play at Thanksgiving. It is super cute pictures for even little kids to be able to play. There are 8 bingo cards. Another one with words under the pictures is HERE at Instant Bingo Card.com.

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If you do small bingo cards I’d give each class a few cards to share and as we call out a few of the items and somebody gets a bingo, they come up to get a bag of licorice or Smartees or lollypops for their class and then you sing a new song.

Another idea is to do MAKE A Singing Time SCARECROW!Just make a large circle face and a hat out of colored paper or scrapbook paper and then bring a bag full of these cutouts. 2 large EYES, Yellow HAIR, SHIRT, NOSE, FUNNY MOUTH, BOW for shirt. If you want more you could add a Sunflower or black crow on the hat. Use these items for a pick something out of the bag game and add to the scarecrow face each time kids pick from the bag. Then sing the song number on the back of that item.

DTK for Kids also have a Bible Bingo that might work too. I copied the calling cards printables and the link is HERE. Just peruse their topics, decide if you want pictures or words (vocabulary option) and then PRINT! I use them a lot in my classroom for theme days too.

I have pocket charts from my classroom so that is an easy way to put the pictures up. Another is to put a little piece of magnet on them. Our primary chalkboard is magnetized.

This package is $5.00 from Walmart. You would seriously NEVER run out!

You can get small circular magnets from Roberts or Michaels for a few dollars. They will last you a long time too and are very convenient for putting posters and stuff up on the board.

Fun Spring Bingo Games – choose 9, 16 or 25 spots

You can also just choose a child to come up and ask them to tell something they are thankful for. They could come up and put a marker on the Bingo Board. You could make it easier and just do 3 in a row and have 15 pictures or phrases covered up. They have cute holiday and seasons bingo pictures that would be cute to make up for holidays. Happy Holidays by the way!

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Primary Singing Time Temples

Wasn’t Conference Great? You could do a neat singing time next week on all the primary songs about temples and then do a little quiz about how many temples were announced and where they are being built!

Temples Singing Time

New temples announced for Provo, Barranquilla, Durban, Kinshasa, and Star Valley.Paris made official” taken from chuch website.

Link HERE to a great lesson with a temple mobile on the importance of temples by Robert D. Hales. It is short and easy to see how you could use it as a little lesson to do with singing time and temples.

Temples Singing Time

I’d use temple pictures from the library each with a song on the back having to do with temples.

The Lord Gave Me a Temple #153
Families Can Be Together Forever #188
I Love to See The Temple #95
The Hearts of the Children #92, 93
This is God’s House #30
Truth from Elijah #90, 91

Temples singing Time

A cute coloring page for the song is HERE. You could pass this out at the end of singing time for kids to take home and color.

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Primary Singing Time October- If You’re Happy and You Know It

I heard a really pretty 3 verse song about being thankful for the beauty in the world. The music and lyrics are by Thomas Croft. It is called:
“Life is O’erflowing with Beautiful Things…

The link to hear the music and singing is HERE at LDS.org. Just click on the song about 3/4 of the page down.

Life is O’erflowing With Beautiful Things Primary Song…..here’s a beauty from the bird world.

The lyrics to the song are HERE. It sounds very easy to teach and to learn. I would start by letting
the kids hear the song. Then I would have pianist play it again and hold up pictures while singing the items the song talks about (blue skies, mountain, rainbows, fountains). You could just find pictures on the internet or in magazines and some you could just draw and color like the rainbow.

Some beautiful blown glass we saw recently at the Thanksgiving Point glass blowing shop and art museum. It is loverly.

Or if you are lazy like me then HERE is a flipchart from Primary Singing Time Ideas for Leaders. It is really cute! This would be a great song to prepare to sing in sacrament meeting for Thanksgiving. The 2nd verse could be sung by some of the older kids or a class of kids. That way you only have to teach the first and last verse and you could actually have the 4 sets of things listed on some poster paper and hold up as you sing the verses for the ward. It would be love-er-ly!

We also saw lots of llamas and other animals at the Thanksgiving Point Farm with our grandkids. It was a loverly day.

It reminds me of “I Know Heavenly Father Loves Me” which is also a great song for Thanksgiving. They sang it in 4 part harmony at my baptism, a group of 4 friends of mine from my high school years. They all helped to convert me back in the days of high school in California. I still feel gratitude to all of them. You know who you are guys!

If you want to do that one instead for Thanksgiving the flipchart for it is HERE at Primarily Singing’s blog. It is pretty cute too.

Another idea is to play NAME THAT TUNE. Give each group a small, paperback, Primary hymnbook. Then each group will pick a song that they know. They will go up and show the song to the pianist (bless her heart – this will be a tough week!). She’ll play it through and the rest of the Primary will flip through their books to see if they can find it. If they can’t guess the song, the group that picked the song will come up and hum the song. If the song still can’t be guessed, then that group will sing the song.

Or you could play a fun play on words to the tune: IF YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT. Change to Halloween words by writing them on the chalkboard or a poster board.

We made these pumpkins in my classroom this week. You could hold up a picture of a Ghost, Cat, Skeleton, Monster and Witch as you go through the verses. This would be fun to do as a fun song for the next 2 weeks until Halloween!

If you’re a ghost and you know it just say BOO.
If you’re a ghost and you know it and you really want to show it
If you’re a ghost and you know it just say BOO.

If you’re a black cat and you know it say Me-ow

If you’re a skeleton and you know it wiggle your bones (shake body)

If you’re a monster and you know it say ROAR!

If you’re a witch and you know it say hee hee hee
Kids would LOVE this!

I also found a Witch’s Hat party game you could play having a class of kids come up while you sing words to a song. The pianist stops the music as one of the kids is walking over the hat. They are out. Whomever is last wins in that class and gets a tootsie roll or sticker. Check it out HERE at Blackdog.net. They also have a printable witch hat. Or just bring one from home.
Happy Halloween!

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PRIMARY MUSIC November “Life is O’erflowing With Beautiful Things

I heard a really pretty 3 verse song about being thankful for the beauty in the world. The music and lyrics are by Thomas Croft. It is called:
“Life is O’erflowing with Beautiful Things. The link to hear the music and singing is HERE at LDS.org. Just click on the song about 3/4 of the page down.

Primary Song “Life is O’erflowing With Beautiful Things….a good example is this beauty from the bird world!

Beautiful glass blow art from the Glass Blower’s Gallery at Thanksgiving Point in Utah. I love that place!

We also visited the farm at Thanksgiving Point and saw lots of animals in the petting area. My grandkids loved it.

If you want to do that one instead for Thanksgiving the flipchart for it is HERE at Primarily Singing’s blog. It is pretty cute too.

Primary Children’s Songbooks in paperback style.

Or you could play a fun play on words to the tune: IF YOU’RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT. Change to Halloween words by writing them on the chalkboard or a poster board.

I also found a Witch’s Hat party game you could play having a class of kids come up while you sing words to a song. The pianist stops the music as one of the kids is walking over the hat. They are out. Whomever is last wins in that class and gets a tootsie roll or sticker. Check it out HERE at Blackdog.net. They also have a printable witch hat. Or just bring one from home.
Happy Halloween!

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October Conference Activities

This week is not only my birthday on October 1st, but it is General Conference. I’m going to put all kinds of resources on this blog post that you could download and copy to give the kids to help them watch conference and enjoy it at the same time.

It’s CONFERENCE TIME AGAIN!

You could show them a conference Bingo card and maybe do a few of the squares linking them to a song with that word in it as you sing a range of songs. Have 2 colors of bingo chips (red for girls, blue for boys) and have a little competition throughout the 20 minutes of singing time to see how many words kids can hear and raise their hand to go cover with the “chips” which could just be colored circles of paper.

Here is Conference Bingo

Another song by Steven Perry and words by Brad Wilcox and it’s HERE copied from The Friend Magazine. Here is the first verse….

1. Of all the Sundays of the year,

the ones I love the best

are conf’rence Sundays twice a year,

so diff’rent from the rest.

I gather with my family

and feel the Spirit near

as I prepare to understand

the messages I hear.

High Fiving Thomas S. on Temple Square

Sing President Monson’s favorite Primary Song, “Give Said the Little Stream”.

One bunch is from the church website. The link is HERE at LDS.org. There is a Bingo game for words that you hear in talks, a bunch of coloring pages, and some journaling pages to write in and color.
You could also sing one of President Monson’s favorite Primary songs! In his autobiography he said that he enjoyed singing “Give Said the Little Stream”. That’s one even the sunbeams can sing!
Here is some additional verses to the song that were written by Kimball Brown.

Give Said the Little Stream
Additional lyrics: Kimball Brown
Lead: Ben Haacke
Give said the little stream
Give, oh give
Give, oh give
Give said the little stream
As it hurried down the hill
I’m small I know but wherever I go
The grass grows greener still
Give said the little rain
Give, oh give
Give, oh give
Give said the little rain
As it fell upon the flowers
I’ll raise their weary heads again
As it fell upon the flowers
Singing, singing all the day
Give away, oh give away
Singing, singing all the day
Give, oh give away

The Sunday before General Conference is a great time to do President Monson’s favorite Primary song!

Give what is in your heart
Give away, Give away
Give what is in your heart
And your heart will ever live
Laugh when you’re filled with joy
Laugh away, laugh away
Laugh when you’re filled with joy
For laughing’s giving too
Snap!
Tap!
Clap!
Give all you’ve got to give
Give away, give away
Give all you’ve got to give
Sing when your heart is full
Sing away, sing away
Sing when your heart is full
For singing’s giving too

Another packet can be printed out from Sugardoodle. The link is HERE at Sugardoodle.

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Lots of activities can be found at Sugardoodle website for General Conference.

Fall Pumpkin General Conference Activity….just color each section of pumpkin that you hear that word in one of the talks! Very fun and educational too!

A cute activity for elementary age kids would be this one. They listen to the talks with you, then color the sections of the fall pumpkins that have that word written that they just heard in a talk. It helps them to get something from conference by listening to the speakers with a little more attention! What an excellent idea from A Little Tipsy’s website

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Love these dudes! And I’m looking forward to General Conference!

One thing they can do is try to copy down all the new temples that are announced to be built and where they will be built. Then you could do a neat singing time next week on the 14th of October on all the primary songs about temples and then do a little quiz about how many temples were announced and where they are being built! That would be a GREAT AND FUN CHALLENGE FOR KIDS!

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October Primary Singing Time Fall Leaves

Autumn is starting to show around us. We live up in the mountains and the red maples are turning, the aspens are yellow leafed, and then we have the evergreen trees everywhere and wildflowers on the hills. It is a perfect time to do something with changing leaves!

Find some other fun Fall Songs and add them to leaves….

Get some construction paper and make up some red, yellow, orange, green and brown leaves. A great leaf pattern can be found HERE at Enchanted Learning. Then put songs on the back and tape the songs all around your blackboard, counter and on the piano. Kids can come up and choose a leaf. If it has a song behind it sing that song. If not, then the child (or the child’s teacher) can pick a favorite song. (You can also find silk colorful leaves at hobby shops right now, that might even be easier!)

Fall Primary Singing Time for October

Most of you have had your presentation by now. So the next few weeks can be doing some fun songs.

We’ll have to go see the Witches at Gardner Village again this year. That’s a fun Fall outing.

All these grandkids are a lot bigger now. But it’s fun to see how much they’ve grown by now!

Another idea is singing the tune of “Oh What do You Do in the Summertime” on Page 245 of Children’s Songbook, but change the words to these words, written by Kristy Brinkman

Oh what do you do in the Autumn time
When all the world has changed?
Do you jump in some leaves,
Or swing in the breeze,
And watch all the birds go by?
Is that what you do?
So do I.

Oh what do you do in the Autumn time
When all the world has changed?
Do you sip hot cocoa,
And wish for some snow
As you watch all the clouds go by?
Is that what you do?
So do I.

Here’s another one….by me, Pattie Moss! Sing to the tune of
Once There Was a Snowman, Page 249 in the Children’s Songbook.

Once There Was a Leafman, leafman, leafman,
Once there was a leafman, blow, blow blow!
Swaying in the windstorm, windstorm, windstorm,
Swaying in the windstorm, FALL, FALL, FALL

(all fall down slowly till all on the floor) This would be good for the Jr. Primary. Older kids might like to do it but they may get silly with it. 😀

Fall is my FAVORITE SEASON! And HERE IS WHY! Have a fantastic FALL!

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BYU Football is ON

We got tickets to the BYU Football season opener game on September 11th. We got to be a part of this cool “card section” that wrote out the words “WE WILL NEVER FORGET”. Can you see us in the upper left corner? No?

These military men and women were holding a giant American flag they walked out on the field and unfurled. It was quite impressive. They were totally at attention holding it before the game.

They snaked around the building the flag was so big!

They made a lot of touchdowns in the first quarter. We sang the fight song over and over!!!

I think this is my first selfie ever. It sucked. But I liked Johnny in his hat.

This was my brother-in-law Jack’s son’s band Westward the Tide. They did an awesome job of singing the national anthem.

Jack and Julie’s son Cam is on the far right. He does keyboards in the band.

#BYUfootball is fun to go see once in awhile. John said he’d rather watch it on T.V. with all the people and traffic it is quite an ordeal just to get there and get home.

But these experiences are what make life worth living, dontcha know? Well I think so anyway. Gotta live it up while the sun shines. Cuz you just never know.

I thought the #BYUcheer team were all so darling. I loved their out uniforms and pom poms. And of course their BYU tatoos on their cheeks. I gotta get some of those.

This cute girl sat in front of us. She had light and dark blue nail polish and some decals on her thumbs that had the Y from BYU. She bought them at Walmart! SO cute!

Then she shared her Cougar Tail donut all around. We sat all amongst the BYU students. Yeah we are cool like that. Can you see how far up we are? Yeah. Nose bleed seats. Oh well.

Taped to our seats was a card stunt. It was fun to do with everybody. It made out the words “We Will Never Forget. The peek hole is funny I thought. 😀 snicker……

The halftime show was fun to watch. I used to do a drill team in high school. I was a “Warriorette” for West Torrance High. We did the Rose Parade one year. We rocked as a band and drill team, winning lots of awards.

As we walked out in the 4th quarter….(yes BYU won the game…and it was clear early on) we walked past the Houston team’s trucks and buses. And we got on T.V. that night! Woot. It was a fun experience for 2 former BYU alumni. Woot! Go Fight Win!

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