A Happy Family

Sunday is our program. I am going to be sooooo HAPPY when its over. After the program I want to do something that is completely different. Sing songs that we haven't all year long. I'm going to teach them "A Happy Family" song. As I teach it I'm going to show pictures of my family. Instead of just learning the song as it is written we are also going to learn how to say mother/daddy, sister/brother, and grandma/grandpa in other languages and substitute them in. I've been asking our ward for help.

Example of what we are doing:

English: I love Mother, She loves me. We love Daddy yes sir-ree. He loves us and so you see, we are a happy family.

Any other language: I love ______, She loves me. We love ______ yes sir-ree. He loves us and so you see, we are a happy family.

• Spanish: Mother- Madre, Daddy- Padre,
• Hawaiian: Mother- Makuahine (-hene), Daddy- Makuakane (-koni)
• Filipino: Mother- Nanay (Nani), Daddy- Tatay (Tati)
• Arabic: Mother- Ommie, Daddy- Ebbie
• Finnish: Mother- Emo (Amo), Daddy-Taatto
• German: Mother-Mutter, Daddy-Fatter

Ask around in your own wards to find out what languages people know. Originally I wanted to learn the whole song in various languages, however when translating a languages they don't always fit into the rythm of the song anymore and I didn't want to mess with that.

Other idea

• have the children draw pictures of them mom and dad and hold them up when they sing mom or dad
• contact some of the children's parents and ask them to bring a picture of their ____, then use that for the person in the song.
• do it in ASL, learn it on the church site.
• Use children's names, this can be really good if you only love two kids to sing the welcome song to. "I love Kalie she loves me, we love Caleb, yes sir-ree....." You could go around the whole room and eventually sing everyone's name. It would be a way to get to know all the children's names.

Good luck. I hope this works out and the children find it fun.