OH, WHAT DO YOU DO IN THE SUMMERTIME?

Three of my most wonderful grandchildren

Oh, what do YOU do in the summertime,
when all the world is green? 

Well . . . not as much as I would like to.

But I did have a fun weekend with my grandkids!

We had a Nana and grand daddy sleepover with our grandkids this weekend. Can I just say that grandchildren are the BIG REWARD

after surviving raising your own kids.

{{{{{GIGGLE}}}}}} 

SHHHHHHH! Don't let my kids know I said that.

Now with it being well into summertime,

you need to pull this song out for Primary if you already haven't.
It's a good ol' classic. 

"Oh, What Do You Do in the Summertime?"

is a song that

<<<<<SCREAMS>>>>>

out for using props to help teach it and of course, let the children follow along doing the obvious actions. Here are my grandkids being great sports hamming it up with my spur of the moment idea for them to help me out with demonstrating the song
with the props I use. . . .just before we did some slip 'n sliding.

OH, WHAT DO YOU DO IN THE SUMMERTIME

ACTION: "What?" 

WHEN ALL THE WORLD IS GREEN

ACTION: Make a world

DO YOU FISH IN A STREAM?
PROPS: Little hat and fishing pole
ACTION: Pretend to cast a fishing pole and reel a fish in

OR LAZILY DREAM ON THE BANKS AS THE CLOUDS GO BY?
PROPS: Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, cloud
ACTION: With fingers interlocked together, place them behind your head
like you are laying back and sway head side-to-side while looking up at the "clouds"

IS THAT WHAT YOU DO?

ACTION: Point to others

SO DO I!

ACTION: Point to self

DO YOU SWIM IN A POOL, TO KEEP YOURSELF COOL
PROPS:Swim arm bands and/or towel
ACTION: Make swimming actions with arms

OR SWING IN A TREE UP HIGH?
PROPS: With a marker, draw a tree shape on green poster board or
4 pieces of green card stock that have been taped together.
Cut the tree shape out along with a hole in the center for the face.
Laminate for durability if you want.
ACTION: Swing hips and arms side-to-side

DO YOU MARCH IN PARADES
PROPS: Flag and or parade type hat
Could make a paper hat—here is a link on how to make one
ACTION: March

OR DRINK LEMONADES
PROPS: Drink cup with straw. Could add some plastic or real lemons in the cup.
(In Primary the child would be standing up holding the cup)
ACTION: Pretend to drink lemonade.

OR COUNT ALL THE STARS IN THE SKY?
PROPS: A fun foam visor with fun foam stars cut out and glued to it
and/or could make a wand with a star on it to count with (make it
from a dowel, a star cut out of thick paper or card board and glitter—
or you could probably pick a star wand up from the $ store or if you have
a little princess in the house, I'm sure you have one floating around.)
ACTION: Pretend to count the stars in the sky

Close up of the cloud.
Cut a cloud shape out of card stock, poster board or cardboard.
Glue cotton balls or batting all over the front and back of it.
Punch a hole in the top of the cloud and tie a string to it.
Tie the other end of the string to a dowel.

 Hope you are having a great summer!!!!!

 

PIONEER CHILDREN SANG AS THEY WALKED

Here is a flip chart for

"pioneer children sang as they walked"

If you prefer to post the flip chart on the board, you could cut the feet out so you can make the feet "walk" to the next page whenever the "walked and walked" parts come up spreading the flip chart and feet out in a flowing zig-zagging pattern on the board as if it is a trail to follow as you sing. Depending on the size of your board, you may not be able to spread the feet too far apart. I've included a set of feet that go in the opposite direction if you decide to post the song on the board. Hope that all makes sense.
There are also some blank feet in case you want to use those for something like putting them around the room for the children to walk on. If you are strictly going to use the feet as is in a flip chart, there is a half page at the end for the last "and walked". You cut that page in half and tape it to the end of the set of four feet, so when you flip the page to the last page, the half sheet will flip down at the bottom of the page and you'll have all five of your "walked" footsteps.


MUSICAL WALKING GAME
As the children are learning the song, you could do a musical chairs type thing.

• Write one number on each piece of paper starting with number 1 up to number 6. Repeat numbering 1-6 on your papers until you have a piece of paper for each child in your primary. 
• Randomly place the papers around the room in a circle. It doesn't matter if the same numbers are sometimes next to each other. 
• Have the children walk around the circle as they sing the song. For SR you can have them only walk on the words "walked". JR will have a more difficult time with this since it can be a little much for them to concentrate on when to walk and stop, walk and stop, walk and stop.
• When the song is finished, they should be standing on a number.
• Roll a big die or have the numbers 1-6 on pieces of paper in a container to draw from. Roll or pick a couple of numbers. The children standing on those numbers get to sit down in the middle of the circle if you have moved your chairs out of the way, which I sometimes do for Pioneer singing time, or they can sit back in their chairs.
• Instead of numbers, you could draw simple shapes on the pieces of papers like squares, circles, crescents, triangles, Xs, half circles, etc. so it is easier for the really young kids that can't read numbers yet. Of course, you won't probably have a die with those shapes, so you will need to do the drawing from a container thing.
• Repeat this as many times as you want. 
• Let a child or two that sat down on a previous turn help roll the die or draw the numbers.
• Do not play until there is only 1 child left. Stop when there are about 4-5 children left so it doesn't get into a competitive thing especially for the JRs.
• If you are just learning the song, you could stop after each phrase and do the numbers/shapes or even if you want to speed it up after singing it a few times. 

ACTIONS, PROPS AND MOVEMENT

Another activity is to have them walk in a circle around the room on the words "walked" and when they are not walking, you do the obvious actions in the song or use sign language or just have them walk in place.

This song also lends itself to props as well in teaching the song.

Here is a list of actions and props you could use. Of course, you do the walking action on the "walked" parts. The first under each phrase is the action and the second are props:

• They washed at streams: 
• wash hands
• towel/wash cloth, soap and or bucket.
• And worked:
• digging with a shovel, chopping wood or mixing something in a bowl
• small shovel, hammer, mallet or mixing bowl and spoon
• And played:
• bounce a ball, jump rope or patty cakes
• ball, bag of marbles or jump rope
• Sundays they camped:
• make a tent shape with your arms and hands above your head
• a little lantern/flashlight, small blanket or some other small camping equipment
• And read:
• make a book with your hands together and palms open
• book
• And prayed:
• fold your arms or clasp hands together in a praying fashion
• a picture of a child praying

CHAIR HOPPING GAME

This song is also great to do Chair Hopping with since there is the word "walked" in it several times. This is more for SR, but I have used it for JR. You may not get as much singing out of JR though. Again, it may be too much concentration for them to sing and chair hop, but it is still fun to do it at least once with the JRs unless most of them are really young. 

In case you don't know what Chair Hopping is, the children must move over one chair each time the special word is sung. In this instance, the special word would be "walked". You need to make sure everyone knows in what direction they need to go. Starting in the back and moving forward, the back row moves to the right, the next row moves to the left, the next row moves to the right and so forth. The person at the end of each row will move to the row in front and the person at the end of the first row moves to the back row. Basically, they are zig-zagging in the chairs. If you have an aisle down the middle, you can either bring the chairs together to get rid of the aisle (that could be time consuming to do) or they just need to make sure they know to move to the chairs across the aisle.

Another variation of Chair Hopping is to have enough empty chairs to one side for how many times they will need to move over for each phrase. For example, in this song "walked" at the end is sung 5 times, so make sure there are at least 5 empty chairs at the end of each row on the same side. When the first phrase is sung, they will move over 4 chairs to the left. On the next phrase, they will move back over to the right 4 times and on the last phrase they will move over 5 chairs to the left. This version may be easier to do if you only have a couple of long rows or for JR.

Hope this gives you some fun ideas to use with this song.

Pioneer Children Sang as They Walked

THE HANDCART SONG

PIONEER DAY

is coming up.

Guess it's time to start posting

some of the Pioneer song visuals.

The Handcart Song

is an easy one to do with actions.

Here are the actions I've come up with.

• When pioneers moved to the West: With thumb extended, pivot the arm back and forth as if you were thumbing for a ride. If possible, make sure your thumb is pointing to the west.
• With courage strong they met the test: Flex your arm muscles.
• They pushed their handcarts all day long: With hands in a fist, make a pushing and pulling motion with both hands in front of you.
• And as they pushed they sang this song: ASL for sing. With one hand positioned like you are holding a book in front of you, lead with the other hand back and forth in front of you.
• For some must push and some must pull: With both hands in front of you, make a pushing motion on "push" and a pulling motion on "pull".
• As we go marching up the hill: March in place.
• So merrily on our way we go: With both pointer fingers, point to a big smile on your face while you nod your head side-to-side to the beat.
• Until we reach the Valley-O: With both arms above your head, make a big "V" on "valley" (and besides, it's shaped like a valley) and then an "O", obviously on "O".

The Handcart Song—Nalani

THE WISE MAN AND THE FOOLISH MAN IDEAS

This picture of the Sermon on the Mount
is in the Gospel Art Book

This month's song, "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" has a very important message in it. I can see why it was chosen for the program. However, I have always associated this song as a wiggle-type song instead of a Sacrament Meeting type song and I have personally never cared for the melody much. Mind you, this is my own personal likes and opinions. However, because the ST Outline also gave the option to choose a song, I was inclined to select another song. Although I had selected another song, in the back of my mind I kept thinking about this parable and THE important message it had about building your foundation upon Christ and I felt very strongly that I needed to share this message with the children but wasn't sure how I would do that if I wasn't going to highlight this song for the month. I prayed for guidance in what I should do and last month I received an answer to my prayers. I received an email from a friend of Terri Hutchings about Terri's musical arrangement of this song. See here for that post. After listening to it and praying about it, I felt this was the answer to my prayers to help me feel more comfortable with the song. Mind you, I really don't have any issues with any Primary songs; in fact, this is the first time I have used something other than the songbook's version for any song. I just seemed to really feel uncomfortable, for whatever reason, with singing this song as is in Sacrament Meeting, so my experience was Heavenly Father's way to help me. Of course, I did get approval to use this arrangement of the song. I am just sharing this tidbit with you as to why I have chosen to use Terri's arrangement instead of the songbook's version. You may choose to sing the song as is from the songbook and that's great. In this calling, we all must pray for guidance in what to do to best help and teach these children; everyone should receive their own inspiration. With that said, these ideas can be used no matter what arrangement you use—if you feel so inspired to use them in teaching the song.
I plan to do the obvious object lesson that goes along with this parable. Because I really want to help the children understand the concept in this song/parable, this singing time will have a little more talking than I normally like to do for singing time mainly because it will take a little more time to explain the parable and relate it to building your foundation upon Christ. Such a simple song, yet a pretty deep parable for little minds to comprehend. Although I usually write out my lesson plans, they are mainly for reference for posting on this blog and to get it in my head what I want to do. I always prefer to tell and describe things as I teach so that I can always have eye contact with the children.

MOVEMENT ACTIVITY
Since my Primary already knows this song, we will start off by singing the original "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" with actions. This will give them a movement activity before we go into the next part that is more cerebral. 


I've added some additional actions I do for the song than what are described in the songbook. You may already do similar ones. Here are the actions and I've listed the additional ones in red:

ACTIONS

Wise Man: ASL link for "Know" Tap fingers on the side of the head by the temple. I use this sign since the children are already familiar with it from other songs and of course, a wise man knows.

House: With both hands, make a house shape.

Rock: Plant right fist solidly in the palm of the hand.

Rains: Let hands descend from high in the air while wiggling the fingers to represent rain.

Floods: Raise hands with palms up. Also at the same time have the children bend down low at the knees and rise up as the hands rise up.

Foolish Man: ASL link for "Foolish" With only the three middle fingers in a fist and the thumb and pinky extended, at the wrist twist your hand back-and-forth with the thumb in front of your nose.

Sand: Wiggle fingers and move arms back and forth in front of body.

Washed away: Wiggle fingers and move arms out away from the body.

Of course, mirror the actions for the children.

ITEMS & PREPARATIONS NEEDED FOR SINGING OBJECT LESSON

• Picture of the Sermon on the Mount
• 2 Cake dishes—glass preferred but plastic tubs will do (the glass will help the children see better)
• Flat topped rock placed in one of the glass dishes
• Sand (if you don't have any, you could check with a neighbor that may have a sand box—you don't need much and you can return it when you are done.) Make a mound of sand with a flat top in the other glass dish.
• You can use a small bowl as a mold to help make the mound.
• 2 Houses (if you don't have any toy house figures, you could use blocks, Legos or print the houses (the medium sized ones) from the story board figures I posted previously—here is the link—and laminate and mount on tongue depressor sticks; one will be stuck in the sand and the other taped to the rock or you could adhere the houses to a squarish rock or block—heavier would be best—to set upon the sand and rock.)
• Duct tape if using the stick house to tape it to the rock.
• Watering can or container filled with enough water for demonstration.
• A piece of fabric or towel to cover your display until presentation time.
• Towels for any spillovers.
• Make sure you test this out before your demonstration.

SINGING OBJECT LESSON

Click here to take you to the LDS Image Library
for the picture to download.

Show a picture of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:24-27) and explain to the children that this is a picture of the Sermon on the Mount. This was a time when Jesus was in Galilee and he saw a really big group of people who wanted to follow and be like Jesus, so Jesus went up a mountain so all could see and hear him as he taught them many things. 

• He taught them to learn to love one another and not hate anyone. 
• He taught them that they shouldn't be angry or fight with each other but to be kind.
• He taught them that they should do good things and serve others.
• He taught them to learn, live and share the gospel.
• He taught them to pray.
• He taught them about repentance and forgiveness.
• He taught them that they should choose the right.

Jesus taught the people many, many things. And when he was done teaching, he told them a parable. A parable is a little story that Jesus told to help teach people. This parable that Jesus taught is about the Wise Man and the Foolish Man in the song we just sang. (Demonstrate the object lesson as you tell the parable.)

• Show the containers with the rock and the sand.
• Where did the Wise Man build his house? [Upon the rock.] 
• Place the house on the rock or tape the stick house to the rock with duct tape or a strong tape that will hold up to water.)
• Then the rains came down and the floods came up. 
• Start singing the first verse and then on the second verse, start pouring water over the rock.
• What happened with the house that was built upon the rock? [The house on the rock stood still.]
• Where did the Foolish Man build his house? [Upon the sand.] 
• Place the house on the sand or insert the stick house into the top of the sand mound.
• Then the rains came down and the floods came up. 
• Start singing the third verse and then on the fourth verse, start pouring water over the sand.
• What happened with the house that was built upon the sand? [The house on the sand washed away.]
• Which man do you think was happy with where he built his house? [The Wise Man]

This house is attached to a heavy block.

TESTIMONY
Jesus told this parable to the people to help them understand how important it is to follow his teachings. The rains and the floods in this parable represent the trials in our lives. Those times when we are tempted to choose the wrong way. I testify to you that if we show we have faith and live the gospel by believing in and following Jesus and choosing the right each day, then we will be like the Wise Man—we will be happy because we are building our lives upon a good, solid foundation of Christ; of his gospel, and we will be preparing ourselves to be able to live with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ again.


TEACHING THE MELODY 
Since I will be teaching the song using a different melody, I will be using my Directional Singing Bird signs I posted here. I will hold up the different how to sing singing bird signs at various intervals to have the children hum, la-la, oooo, etc. as the pianist just plays the melody. I will do this 1-2 times depending on time. I will then sing the words while they still hum, la-la, etc. per the sign I hold up. This will give them the opportunity to hear the words in the melody. 


I will next have them sing it with me. I will then use the boy & girl birds per the singing parts in Terri's arrangement having the girls sing when the girl bird is held up and the boys sing when the boy bird is held up and everyone sing when both birds are held up. Although the primary already knows the words to the song, for SR, I made a color-coded words only FC to post on the board to help them visually see how the parts for girls, boys and all should sing. I will use chalk to write the times they will sing the words over again for under the appropriate page. See example below. You could print out the duplicate or triplicate of those pages that are sung more than once if you just want to display them in exact order without the numbers. The FC is color-coded for who sings what part: pink for girls, blue for boys and black for everyone.

Example of how I am posting the FC so the SR Primary
can see when they are supposed to sing their parts.

SCRIPTURES


Hear are a couple of additional scriptures you could use to close singing time with or use on another day for review.


Helaman 5:12

"And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall."

3 Nephi 14:24–27 

“Therefore, whoso heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, who built his house upon a rock—

“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.

“And every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand—

“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

REVIEW IDEA
This review idea I got from an old issue of a Friend magazine and a Primary lesson manual that I mashed together with a little added musical twist. 

• Cut out some pieces of paper in block shapes and write some wise actions and some foolish actions on each slip of paper such as, obey your parents, be reverent in Primary, fight with your brother, tell lies, etc. If you have some toy building blocks, it might be fun to use those and tape small pieces of paper with the written actions to the building blocks.
• Put the action blocks in a container. If you use toy blocks, you could scatter them around the room for the children to select from.
• Dividing the board or table in half, display the Wise Man and rock figures on one side of the board or table and the Foolish Man and sand figures on the other side of the board or table. See the previous post for the figures. Or you could use the rock and sand from your object lesson.
• Have a child pick one of the building blocks from the container.
• Read or have the child read what is on the building block.
• Then have the child determine whether that action is a wise or foolish action.
• If it is a wise action,
• place the "block" next to the wise man figure or on top of the rock figure on the board or on the table if you are using actual blocks. You will start building a wall with the blocks with each wise action block.
• Sing the wise man part of the song.
• If it is a foolish action, 
• place it next to the foolish man figure or on top of the sand figure on the board or on the table if you are using actual blocks. You will just have these blocks displayed randomly like a pile of rubble.
• Sing the foolish man part of the song.
• Repeat the picking, deciding where the action should go, building/rubble and singing process. 
• If your kids really know the song well, after you have sung the song a few times you could sing other songs that relate to building upon the foundation of Christ.

I plan on doing this review next week. I'll try and post the scenarios for the blocks next week in case you are interested.

WHEW! This is a loooooong post. Sure hope this gives you some ideas for the song.

The Wise Man and the Foolish Man Word Chart-Nalani

DADDY'S HOMECOMING

Is it really

Father's Day

in a couple of weeks?

So many things always going on each month it seems. Well, here is a flip chart for
"Daddy's Homecoming".

As an FYI, a few of these pictures are not from church publications since I couldn't find enough pictures to fit the wording, so considering the type of song, I took the liberty to use other pictures that seemed appropriate for the song.

Actually, this is a fun one to do actions with the little ones.

This wiggle song version can give you a bit of a workout though.

Here are the actions I've come up with to use:

• I'm so glad when daddy comes home
• With your pointer fingers on both hands, point to the corners of your smile on your face rocking your head side-to-side to the rhythm.

• Glad as I can be
• Raise hands above head to one side and then lower until your elbows are about shoulder height while flashing your hands wide open on the up and very loosely closed on the down, then repeat raising your hands again above your head to the other side. Do this in an excited fashion alternating on each side for a total of 2 times on each side.
• Sometimes you can change it out by swaying both arms back and forth above head letting your upper torso sway too. 

• Clap my hands
• Clap hands 2 times

• And shout for joy
• Jump up throwing your arms up with joy.
• A more subdued method would be to place both hands by the mouth as if to shout.

• Then climb upon his knee
• Pretend to climb (kind of looks more like jogging in place I guess) then point to knee.

• Put my arms around his neck
• Bring arms to a circle in front of you

• Hug him tight like this
• Bring arms in from circle to hug self

• Pat his cheeks 
• Pat both of your cheeks on each word

• and give him what?
• Palms up and hands out to the side, but slightly forward, with arms at about a 90 degree angle to the body and then on the word "what?" tilt head to the side while shrugging your shoulders. Basically, this is like doing an exaggerated "W-h-a-t?" action. 

• A great big kiss!
• Blow a kiss like they did on the Dating Game Show in the 60's but don't turn to the back so far as they did. If you are one of those young'uns that wasn't even born yet, although I think they did bring it back in the 80's or 90's, you do the Dating Game kiss by putting the palm of your hand over your mouth, twisting/turning your body slightly to the back and then after you sing the word "kiss" you make a big "KISSING SMACK" sound while swinging/turning your body forward throwing your hand and kiss out.

Now go get practicing on those hugs and kisses for your daddy!

Daddy's Homecoming FC Nalani