Cooking Up a Program

Here is what I'm doing......

1. First find baking containers and bottles. (Flour, sugar, vanilla, baking soda, powder, spices). You will need to find at least one container for each thing you want to work on. These could be songs you want to work on, or do as I am and have them be elements of singing that need to be worked on. Your elements may be different than mine due to your primary's needs.
2. Label you containers: I like to use construction paper and markers, you could also print them off the computer. I taped them onto the container. The following are the elements I chose=Pitch, Smile, Correct Words, Sign Language, Sit and Stand Together, Diction, Holding Still, and Watch Chorister.
3. Place labels on each container, I just taped them so I could easily take them back if I choose.
4. During primary, talk about why we need all the ingredients to make a good ____ (cookie, cake, whatever you want to use as an example), then discuse what do you need to make that thing. After that liken baking/cooking unto a good program. You need everything to make a good ____ and you need everything to make a good primary program. Talk about each thing and why its needed.
5. Sing through songs from your program and while singing them practice each thing. I am going to have the children pick one of our ingredients for us to work on. As we perfect that thing we get to add it to our mixing bowel.
6. Supposidly once everything is mixed in the children should be experts performers and ready for the program.
7. Can have a visual or a treat for the children like paper cookies or something.

I will do this the week before we have the "judges" come in to give the children feed back.

Baby's First "Real" Food

Last Thursday the 3rd of Sept. we fed Baby Al some homemade rice cereal. He is now 4 months and we decided to slowly try a few foods. So I found how to make rice cereal from a few websites (I never trust just one site for almost anything) and we got him all situated for his first food. We were so unprepared. We did have a baby bowel. Not that that was one of my concerns. But we didn't have a baby spoon and I had to give up on that idea.

As always baby's reactions are so cute, he did take it very well.

Nursery is Finally Done

Al is now 4 months old, his nursery was mostly done a few days after he was born. However, there is one thing that has been unfinished for a while- our changing station. I saw this changing station on a room-makeover show on HGTV (I don't remember which one, but the link is to where you can find it on their website).

On the left side of the picture, this is the one the show made.

It was really different, not like anything you can get in the store. I thought it was great because 1-It looks cool, 2-It has storage and organization space, and 3- when Al gets older we can use it for a shelve.My husband built it, I asked him, and he built it. I think he really did it because it was an opportunity to be handy. He did such a great job. It looks so good. I am so happy with how it turned out.Here is how he made it.....

1. We made an plan of what we wanted it to look like.
2. We purchase the wood; we purchased everything pre-cut. The long pieces are 48 inches long (purple), the middle size are 36 inches (green), and 12 inches for the short (orange).
3. My husband used some wood cutting saw and cut a slit for the other boards to meet at perfect 90 degree angles.
4. My husband painted all the pieces then connected the pieces with gorilla glue.
5. Let everything dry.
6. Placed Velcro on the back of the changing pad and on the top of the shelves.

Again I am SOOOO happy with how great they turned out. I have an awesome husband!

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.

Outline of the Program

This is subject to changes

1. My Eternal Family-- all children, all verses
2. I lived in Heaven--all children, all verses
3. I Will Follow God's Plan for Me-- special musical number by two children
4. Seek the Lord Early--all children, all verses, have a few selected children to do the Sign Language.
5. My Redeemer Lives (Hymn book pg 135)--all children, all verses
6. How Firm a Foundation--all children on vrs 1 and 3, 2nd verse is teachers only, vrs 7 is congregation.
7. Baptism-- All children, 1st verse only
8. Jesus Said Love Everyone-- sing the song 3 times through, 1st time children just sing, 2nd time is a piano and instrument duet, 3rd time sing, instrument, piano, and sign language.
9. Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam-- just the sunbeams (we only have 6 if they are all there and it is so hard to get the sunbeams to do anything, but I think they love this song so much they will be happy to sing it). I want to learn what the sign is for 'sunbeam, sun, or beam' for them to do so that they won't be tempted to JUMP, since that is never good for a song about Jesus or for the chapel.
10. The Family is of God--1st verse all children (chorus all children every time), 2nd verse done by a selected number of girls from SR primary, 3rd verse by selected SR primary boys, 4th verse is all of SR primary.
11. Families Can be Together Forever-- all children sing through both verses, repeat second verse for a second time with the congregation.

Tab Blankets

Also called: Ribbon Blankets, Soothing Blankets, Feelie Blankets, Teether Tab Blankets, and I'm sure they have many more names.They are just simple blankets that are about a foot squared, with ribbonI saw some of these online at Boutique Baby Stores and they were really expensive. My baby is getting to the point the he wants to hold everything, but some things are just too big for him. I remembered these blankets and wondered if he'd be happy with one. I didn't want to spend all that money and it got me thinking, I have a ton of fabric and ribbon and such, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard. So I went though my fabric. I was looking for fabric and ribbons of various colors and textures. I found some flat cottons, knits, sear sucker, fleece, spandex, and others. I sewed tab sizes and sewed them first to the fleece side (tabs face inside), then I sewed the back I chose inside out to the fleece (tabs still inside), leaving just a small section open to turn outside out. I did it super sloppy, I didn't care if it looked fantastic or anything. You can use any fabric or ribbon. I didn't coordinate anything. When I've seen a professional one they are all coordinated and done super cute, my goal was functional, cheap, and to get it done. Often the are made with minky fabrics, don't have any so I didn't use it, but its fine. I did use some satin that I had from past formals I've made. This web site has instructions to make it, I didn't use her directions, but they look okay. Already Baby Al has taking a liking to holding and playing with it. tabs sticking out for the baby to play with and suck on.

Trying New Things

My husband likes short hair, I have never been one for short hair. Mostly because I have a seriously hard time figuring out how to do my hair when its short. I give up and grow it out. And I have never had the guts to go very short. Well my hair needed a good trim. I got up Saturday morning and went down to the salon and was able to get in as a walk-in. I told the girl how short I wanted to go and asked what she thought should be done about the back. She suggest an A-line. Well the front looks cute, but it feels like it is way to short in the back and I am aware of it all the time wondering if the contrast looks odd. I'm going to give it a bit and see how I feel.