Preparing for the Program

It is that time of year again. Time to polish this years songs, get them perfect as possible, and to mentally prepare the children to preform.

Basic ideas that I'm working on and most likely will do:

1. Cooking up a Program== Have a bunch of bottles or containers (one for each element you want to work on for the performance, ie: smiling, watching the conductor, standing together, diction, saying the actually words, pitch, holding still/standing still, proper dress...ect) make a label for each container naming an element to focus on. Have a large mixing bowl and a spoon for mixing. Possible label the bowel "A perfect performance". Talk about how good ingredients make good _blank_ (cookies, cake, pudding, ect), and that just like _blank_ we need certain things to make a good performance. Sing each song focusing on an element, and add it to the bowel. I am going to have drawn cookies that say "My Eternal Family 2009 Primary Program-practice makes perfect", I may make one and put it on the board, or enough small one to give to each child. You could actually make cookies or whatever for the children, however we have many diabetic children in our primary and we are not suppose to provide treats unless all the children can eat them.
2. The Race== ****REMINDER**** check out old blog posts on this blog and on other blogs especially those who have been released, they were in for a while and have posted years worth of great ideas. This one came from the site singing time stuff 10K race. I do not plan to do it in the exact same way that this sister did, but I really like the idea. There are many good ideas on her site, but you have to look through her past blogs, the same with other sites. I think I might use pieces of a race track (instead of K's), and put the race together as we practice the songs.
3. Get out the Bugs==My predecessor always had a trash bag full of very large plastic bugs. She would have the children pull one out at a time, each bug had a name of a song that had bugs in it. If they could do the song perfect the bug got put into a bug box and they were done "practicing" it till the program. If they were messing up on it still, the bug went back into the bag to be pulled out again.
4. Dice==I will probably use my Dice at least one more time before the program.
5. Perfect 10==Last year to prepare for the program I did an activity called Perfect 10, basically have judges come and tell the children what they need to work on and what they are doing well. It's good because the children need someone besides you telling them those things. Try to pick people they have respect for and will have more of a desire to please them.
6. Run through it== Something we are planning to do this year is use Sharing and Singing Time to run through the program with just JR or SR primary in the primary room. Have the children practice their parts/lines, their songs in order, and the special musical numbers in they are in the room. Then (specially in SR primary) talk about what each of us can do better on and what do we need to work on.

What are some of the things ya'll are planning to do? Please let us know. And if some of these ideas come inspired from other blogs please link the comment to that blog so we can all see the details too.