Hide-n-Seek Snowman

We did another snow theme today. We are finishing up the final verse on the song "As A Child of God" and needed a game that would allow us to repeat the song over and over again (anything to drill it in, right?).

I created a snowman out of white poster board (3 circles, increasing in size).  I then created 6 snowman items for the kids to hide (one at a time).  The items I made were a hat, eyes, nose, scarf, buttons and mouth.

This game is similar to "Hot and Cold" where children say hot/hotter/cold/colder depending on how close the seeker is to the hidden "treasure". However, with singing time, we have the kids sing quiet when the seeker is far away and gradually get louder as the seeker gets closer.  This is a great game to sing a song in a repetitive nature while keeping the kids interested. I select one kid to be the hider and another to be the seeker. The seeker steps out in to the hall (with a leader) and waits for us to hide the treasure.  Once they come back in the room, we begin singing.

Remember to make sure the kids are still singing! I had to stop a few times and make the kids re-focus on the song and words when they were just mumbling or messing up the words.

Other options for this game are:

• On each item to be hidden, have a song choice on the back (to mix up the monotony)
• Have one object to hide and have the child that is hiding the object pick their favorite song
• Hide letters to build a word (rather than snowman pieces)

This is also an easy game to pass on to a substitute. I would suggest the sub lets the children pick the song, or provide a list of well-known songs for them to use.