The Coolest New Thing I've Learned

On the church's website, in the music section. They have video displays of various songs in ASL (There are some in the Hymn book section, the link goes to the primary one). This made me so happy to learn so now I don't have to tract down the many ASL interpretors I know and fun out how to say everything. I have enjoyed so much sitting and watching them. It is already giving me some ideas for next year's songs.

Fun little sign language thing I do with nursery already and will do with the children come next year, is for singing the chorus to "Follow the Prophet". For the chorus have both hands in fists with your thumbs up (like little people), have your left one slightly in front of the right hand. Start with them close to your body and slowly push them away (as though the right hand is 'following' the left hand). Its really simple and gives the children a motion to do and occupy themselves while singing- they love it.

MeMere

My husband's grandmother, or MeMere, passed away September 30th. It's part of the reason that I haven't made many posts lately. I was trying to put some of my thoughts together and I also was hoping to get some pictures from my mother-in-law from the family gatherings. MeMere had lived a full life. She was from Massachusetts, and although she had lived in Arizona since 1969, her accent was still noticeable. I met my husband's family for the first time, while we were dating, when I went with my husband to his cousin's wedding. It was Christmas time. The whole family was very welcoming of me but MeMere took the cake and inviting me to the family Christmas gathering in a week's time. And she would not take a no or a maybe as an answer. My attendance was a must. Over the last two years I had become to know her better. She was always smiling. It was the essential to her personal fashion statement. She was also very devote in her faith. Raised a Catholic and raised all her children to be active Catholics, she was a regular attendee at mass. I admired this in her. I also wanted so much to share with her the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. The night after her passing during family prayer my husband prayed for his MeMere who was in the spirit world to hear and accept the fullness of the Gospel. I was very touched by this. It had never occurred to me to pray for them. I pray for friends and family members all the time that the day will come that they will want to learn and be prepared to learned about why my religion is more then just a social organization for me. I don't know why it had never occurred to me that praying they will will accept the Truth is something that I could do to help them.

Last year my Grandpa passed away. It was a different experience for my husband to attend a LDS viewing and funeral, since he was raised Catholic. Being raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) I had only ever know LDS funerals and going to a catholic funeral was very different. Both the viewing and the funeral for a member of the LDS church is an time to celebrate and remember the passed on loved one's life, and to be reminded of the beauty of the Plan of Salvation, and that families are forever. In contrast, the viewing was much the same, but the funeral was not much of her life. It was just a mass, that the scriptures were a bit more appropriate for a funeral. For me, this is not offer closure. MeMere met Pepere while they were both serving in the Navy during WWII. Because of her years of service (which I totally think is awesome), there was a gun solute and she was buried in the National Memorial Cemetery. The few moments at the cemetery offered some closure. But all in all I think that the reason I didn't feel that closure was the lack of being spiritually fed that I am use to at funerals. All of my in laws are wonderful, righteous people, who are a sure faith in Jesus Christ. Sometimes I have to remind myself that they are not already members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I know their faith is a big part of who they are, but I desire so much to share with them that there is more. That the fullness of the blessings and truth of Christ's gospel were lost over the ages, and that they were restored through Joseph Smith. That the Book of Mormon does not replace the Bible and its truths, instead it is a companion to the Bible reinforcing the truths therein and clarifying doctrines that have been misunderstood due to lost information. My faith in Jesus Christ and His plan for us, is the most important thing to me in my life. It is what makes me love my family more. I love my in-laws, as I said before they are such wonderful people. I love them so much that I want them to be with me for eternity just as I will be with my family. I pray for the day that I can share these truths with them and hopefully they will recognize the truths. MeMere was a true example of charity in her life. I hope that when I pass away the same can be said of me. I too pray that she will be given the opportunity to hear and understand also.

Primary Program ALL Over

Yippy!!! I am so happy its all over. The program is the bane of my calling. But the children did wonderful. There is something to be said for the fact that children sing and behave so much better when they have an audience. They will be so rowdy for every practice and then be almost perfect while their parents are watching. The songs all went well. I had to laugh over the Sunbeams special musical number, "Jesus Wants me for a Sunbeam." They did wonderful, didn't jump and were all such good little singers. But what was funny was all the other children were so jealous that the Sunbeams got to sing that song and they didn't.

After the program I did my "Happy Family" lesson. Both primaries loved it, they got into it for different reasons. JR had more fun actually saying the new words and singing them. While SR primary had the most fun trying to guess what language the words belonged to. They had were really getting into singing the fun tune. For a primary activity day coming up we are do a theme of "Children Around the World". It should prove to be really fun and cute. After today's lesson the primary president asked me to keep my visuals so that I can use them again for the activity day.

Again I am so happy we are done with the program. Now I have to decide all what we are doing for the rest of the year and for next year.

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.

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.