July: Pioneer Month - Diving for Crickets

I am using July as an opportunity to revive the fun pioneer songs from the Children's Songbook.  There is a story in this month's friend called 'Saving the Wheat'.  I took this story and created a different version of "fishing" that allowed us to pick a variety of songs.

I printed out little crickets and a seagull picture.  I then placed the cricket cut-outs in a bin of rice (you could also use wheat berries if you have them and are willing to use them).  I then attached paper clips to each cricket.  For the pole I used a piece of wood (skewer) and yarn to make a pole for the seagulls.  I attached my seagull picture to the yarn that had a magnet attached to the bottom.  (Hopefully that all made sense).  I began by telling the kids the story from the friend and then we went diving for crickets! Each cricket had a song written on the back. I enjoyed the simple way of bringing a real adaption to the game and I think the kids will remember the bugs! They had lots of fun!

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.

Snowball Fight

January we find ourselves (in some places) covered in snow and shivering in the cold temperatures.  So...why not have an indoor snowball fight?  We did this last week and the kids had a blast. I should have allotted more time, as this went over better than I thought.

For the needs of our primary, I pre-selected 5-7 wiggle/play/review songs and printed them on pieces of paper (just the page number).  Then, I handed a piece to each child in our primary.  I had a rather large red bucket with me in the front of the room and told the kids we were going to have a snowball fight.  But!! You can't forget to share the following rules:

• Snowballs can ONLY be thrown at me (the chorister)
• Snowballs cannot be thrown directly at the face

I had the back rows come around to the front and tried to align everyone so the poor sunbeams/front rows weren't getting hit in the head.  The kids then crumbled up their snowballs and threw them at me (as I held the bucket). I would choose a song to sing from the snowballs that made it in to the bucket.  For the senior primary, I held the bucket and slowly spun around to make the game more difficult.

Depending on the size and needs of your ward, here are a few alternatives to this game you could use:

• Hand out blank papers and let the children write their favorite song.
• Hand out papers with the page number already written, but have the children write their name. If their snowball is selected they can pick a silly way to sing the song (humming, stop/go, or use the cards mentioned here.)

(Thank you to my sister-in-law for sharing this idea with me.)

Do you have ideas? Post your comments below!