Focused Activity: He Sent His Son

Idea 1: Match Game

I am going to play the Match Game at least one Sunday this month. Mount the pictures onto all the same color of construction paper. Have a picture with a line all on one side. One for each line, separate the question from the answer. Put them up face away from the children. Have a child come up and pick two, do they match? If so, sing that question and answer set. If they don't know, have them sing the whole song, then identify if they went together. If you put the question set that has 2 questions (What does he ask? What do the scriptures say?) up twice, there are 6 (12 squares), also to get 6 you could have a "you pick a song" to match to another "you pick a song" to get 6 squares. Since Sunday is Valentines day, I decided to mount my pictures and lines on hearts.

Idea 2: Sing the Answer
Or it could be called 'sing the question'. This idea came from singing "A Child's Prayer". The older children love singing songs where they do an echo, or sing a different times (favorite is boys separate from girls). By doing an activity where we split who is singing each part will get them more involved waiting for their part. Here are some ideas of ways to split it up. Each example can be flipped- answer/question also.

• You sing the question, then have them sing the answer. You'll be silent during that part- listening to them only.
• All adults sing the question, then the children sing the answer.
• Pick one class to sing the question, everyone else sings the answer.
• Boys sing the question, girls sing the answer.
• Left side of the room sings the questions, Right side sings the answer.
• Give them the answer and have them tell you the question.
• Anyone over a certain age sing the question, all under sing the answer.
• Pick a select group of children to stand at their seat to sing the question, everyone still sitting sings the answer.
• Anyone waring _______ sing the question, everyone else sings the answer.

I'm sure you can think of many more.

Idea 3: Fill in the blank
I know this one is other there a lot. I normally don't like to do it with the JR primary because I think all the words are too hard for them, but I think this song really lends itself to it. Write on it only write words that are the SAME for other lines, leave a blank for each different word. Write the missing words on stripes of paper that are cut to fit perfectly on the blank lines. Fill in the blanks, if the word is unknown where it goes sing the part of the song it belongs to and see if the children can remember where it went after they were done singing.

The other way this could be done is to only put the unique phrases and words on the board. Then have the common phrases on the strips. Have the strips color codes to what type of phrase it is ie: "How could the Father" could be red, while "He sent his Son" could be written in blue, and I did the small words (tell, show, ask, us, we, with, and) in purple. Go through the song and have the children match which lines goes in that blank. Make the blanks the color (marker or I used construction paper) of the strip.

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Teaching: He Sent His Son (February Song)

The chorister before me had been in this calling for 7 years. When she was released, I inherited dozen of song helps that are already made. Many of her helps I have not used because I don't really like what she chose to do. At the start of this year I went through the whole box to find what was already made for this year's songs. Again some I don't want to use, but I really like the simplicity of this one. She printed the questions and answers separate. Then there are questions for each one. Each phrase that has the word "world" in it has a world. For each world there is a key word phrase above it ie: "tell" and "Show". I made the question marks for each phrase to note there is a question here. The phrase that has two questions right after each other has two questions marks next to their card. Each sign and pictures has their own magnate for putting up on the board.
If I was to do it myself here are some pictures I would suggest using from the church's web site. The color ones are from the new Gospel Art spiral book and the coloring pages are from the Friend site. If you are one of those people who feel uncomfortable even drawing an earth, this link takes you to a world in the coloring pages, use any Nativity picture for the second line. Just a side note, I like coloring so I choose the coloring pages. Also I could use them to have the children color. I'm sorry these are out of order of the song, but I am having issues with Blogger. It is the picture with the line it would go with below it.

He sent his song to walk with men, on earth that we may know (above)

How could the Father show the world the pathway we should go (above-sorry out of order I'm having issues with blogger)

How could the Father tell the world of love and tenderness (above-1st line, I would use a pic of the earth, a heart, and a question mark with it).

What does he ask? Live like His Song (above)

What does the Father ask of us? What do the scriptures say?

Have faith, have hope, live like His Son, help others on their way.

He sent His Song to die for us and rise with living breath.

How could the Father tell the world of sacrifice of death?

Along with the lines and pictures (I like that they are all separate, so that while I am teaching them I can take things away and see how well they can do it without) I am going to use ASL to note the question and the answer. For phrases that begin with "how" we will sign "How". The questions that begin "what" we will sign "What". With the start of each answer, we will sign the "Answer". They are just one word signs. We are not planing to do it with the program, it is just a sign to help the younger kids, after all I have a lot of sunbeams. I always struggle helping them learn the songs. My JR primary is so large and almost none of them can ready yet. Everyone says teach to the most advanced children in the class and the other's will follow. I think, lots of pictures, and multiple ways to connect with the song.

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PETA-go eat meat

February 2, 2010

An animal rights group is calling on keepers of the country's most famous groundhog to replace Punxsutawney Phil with a robot. PETA says it's unfair to subject the creature to the bright lights and huge crowds that mark this Feb. 2 tradition. Organizers of the festival say Phil is fine — living better than other groundhogs in his climate-controlled environment.

I try to ignore PETA, I think that 90% of what they do is stupid and extremist. Mostly I thing their brains aren't getting enough protein because they don't eat meat that they are trying too hard to think. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't care. When I heard this I had to laugh something hard. That groundhog is treated better than a spoiled child, should we be allowing our children to send a robot to school because it is cruel to make them have to learn. Whatever, I liked Punzsutawney Penn's response. I'm going to go back to ignoring PETA. I just couldn't pass up this laugh.

WW-Week 4

Week 4- My husband lost 3 lbs this past week. Technically I gained 1/2 lb. But I'm not thinking about that because the day before my official weigh in I had lost 2 lbs and the day after I showed a loss of 2 lbs. I don't know what was with my official weigh but it was weird. Anyway, this is going good for us. I am really encouraged. For me this is do able. Not to mention I am seeing results- they may seem small, but for me this is huge, nothing has ever given me any results.

Pick-Up-Sticks

I found these wood Pick-Up Sticks at Target over a year ago. I've been trying to decide HOW to use them during a singing time. Although I am not entirely thrilled with my concept- in all this time I haven't thought of anything else. Anyone out there- What would you do for a Singing Time with Pick-Up Sticks?

Here is what I am planing on doing tomorrow with SR primary. (I don't plan on doing with with JR primary because there are way too many sunbeams who do not have the coordination to play Pick-Up Sticks.) I might later do it with JR primary and just have them draw the sticks blindly, instead of actually playing pick-up sticks with them.

I took out the green and the black, only leaving the pick, orange (looks like yellow), and blue sticks. Various boxes come with different colors but they should all contain the same number of sticks (10 of each except black there is only one). That way there are 30 sticks that we are playing with, after all there is noway we are going to go through 30 songs.

• Pink- They get to pick a song to sing of their choice
• Yellow- Draw a song from the song jar, since there are 30 yellow sticks we need 30 songs slips in the song jar, I plan on putting multiples of "I Know That My Savior Loves Me", since that is the song we need to practice singing right now.
• Blue- There will be a second jar to draw from, this is a mystery jar. They won't know what they are getting. It could be any of the following: a gospel trivia question, a name that tune, a pianist's choice, their teacher's choice, Primary President's choice (or Presidency's choice), they get to choose another child to pick their favorite song, anything can go here think about your primary and see what you come up with.

As state previously, I am going to have the SR primary actually play Pick-Up Sticks. For any of you out there that haven't played or don't remember how to play here is a brief description: First you will place the sticks on the table (I know for the kids in the back it will be really hard to see, but that is the nature of the sticks), a child will come forward, they get to choose a stick and try to pick it up without making any of the other sticks move. If a stick moves then they have to put the stick back and return to their seat. If the successfully pull the stick out of the pile, then they get to do whatever the color they pulled out allows.

This could be done with the Jenga/Tumbling Tower blocks (or a wannabe). Instead of the color code you could just have a mystery jar, and if the child pulls it out successfully then they would get to draw from the jar. I'm sure there are lots of other games out there that could use this concept ( a basketball hoop, ring toss, Operation). So we'll see how well SR primary does this activity tomorrow.

The SR primary got really into playing this game. But I was (and I think the children were too) surprised just how hard it actually was. In some ways this made them get more into it because it was even more of a challenge, but it also made it a little less reverent. We then ended up singing less songs than normal because it took about 4 children to come forward before one of them successfully pulled out a stick. If I was to do this again I would put the sticks down with more outlying and easier to pull off.

Check Out My Artical on Another Blog

I submitted a person story to The Cloth Diaper Whisper, and they published it. Check out my story, "He Was the One..."

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