Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Get out the Bugs- Reveiw

One of the ladies who was the chorister before me in this area always did this activity for the end of the year- program reviews. She had large plastic bugs she had bought at the dollar store and would either put them in a large garbage bag or would put them on the board and use the garbage bag like a sheet. I got back from visiting my sister late Saturday and was trying to think of something to do the next morning. I even debated running to Walmart (being the only place open) and seeing if I could find large plastic bugs. My husband assured me that construction paper laminated would work just as well. They did. I found bug silhouettes on the internet. Enlarged them and printed them as large as I could and traced the outline onto the construction paper and cut it out. I then laminated them so that I can write the titles of the songs. 
I grabbed a sheet to use to cover the bugs. Then the children have to search under the sheet to find a bug  (song). Since it was a sheet (and this came to me while I was standing in front of children), we were "getting the bugs out of our bed" because we don't want bugs in our bed.
The children were all about this. I had my Junior primary singing better than they have in months and singing songs that I wasn't even sure if they knew at all because they wouldn't sing it for be before. They were also so worried about the bugs still in the bed when our time was up. I promised them that we would finish getting the bugs out next week. I made a note of which songs were left (we got 4 of the 8 out). Senior primary were less enthusiastic about actually getting the bugs out. But they sang well to pass off the song, they all wanted to be picked to find a bug, and they enjoyed identifying the various types of bugs pulled out. The completed 6 of 8 songs.
I would call this one a success. If it works this well every time then no wonder my friend used this activity for her review EVERY year (and she was the chorister for 7 years in her ward). 

instructions: have enough bugs for each song. if you have more or smaller bugs make some of them specific verses of the songs.
Tell the children we are getting the bugs out of their songs so that the songs are Program ready. Warn them that if they don't sing the song well enough then the bug is going to go back into our bed and will have to be found again. I gave them singing the song twice through before I placed the bug back under the sheet. If it was *just* one verse they were having problems with I would give them the chance to redeem themselves by re-singing that one verse before the bug went back. 
I placed the bugs into my primary folder when they were passed off, but you could put them in a jar, a box, display them, or put them away.

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