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

THE WISE MAN AND THE FOOLISH MAN STORY FIGURES

In case you are looking for a fun

visual to use in teaching or reviewing

"The Wise Man and the Foolish Man",

here are some story figures

that can be used as flannel or

magnetic board figures or stick puppets.

These are from the

July 1999 Friend magazine found here. 

Because the magazine's version is sooooooo small and in a jpg format that won't enlarge without becoming very pixilated and because I didn't feel like coloring them by hand, I wanted the lines redrawn and the images colored in a vector format. BIG THANKS goes to my eldest son for helping me out since I didn't have time to do it myself, besides, he has a better design program on his computer than I do that is easier and quicker at redrawing the lines, and of course, he is better at it than I am. I will be using some of these figures in my object lesson for this song. See this post for the object lesson. I have sized these figures into large, medium and small sizes. Included in the file are also black and white versions of each size in case you feel like being a little artistic and want to colorize them yourself. 



The Wise Man and the Foolish Man Figures-Nalani

DIRECTIONAL SINGING BIRDS

I like to use different aids to help direct the children in WHO will be singing and/or HOW we will be singing. I call these my Directional Singing Aids. Of course, with birds known for their singing and my last name being BIRD, I would be amiss if I didn't have some directional singing aid that wasn't bird related. So, one such aid I have created is my Directional Singing Birds. I have different bird signs that either show WHO can sing as well as HOW we should "sing".  


These are fun & easy to use whenever you need to help teach the melody of the song or sing a song over and over and over again. I've made two sizes that I use in different ways and have included the files below, but the smaller size might just be fine if you have a smaller Primary and only want to do one size.


The full, paper-sized sheets are laminated and then each mounted on a paint stirring stick. You could mount each individually on a stick or if you want, do two per stick, back-to-back keeping the "Who" birds grouped together and the "How" birds grouped together. That is what I did, but with the "Sing" and the "Hum" on their own sticks since I didn't have another one to group with each of those and besides, if I come up with another "Who" or "How" bird, I can add it to the back of those; but you could even put the hum and sing together on one stick. You may want to separate the girls and boys signs in case you want to hold up both for both to sing or you could just hold up the sing for both boys and girls. Instead of laminating, you could just put them in sheet protectors and hold them up. You only need to print one set of these larger birds

I will switch between two or more birds while we sing only using the WHO and other times only using the HOW. But then sometimes I may hold up a WHO and a HOW at the same time and switch them out while they are singing to make it a little trickier. This is a little easier to do if you only use one in each hand. It can be a little more trickier if you try to switch between several. To use more birds, an easier way is with the smaller size and posting them on the board as I'll explain below.

For the smaller size (2-per page file), print one or two sets of the birds except the Sing Bird. Print several of the Sing Birds so you have more opportunities to sing all together and maybe even a couple of extra of the "girls" and "boys" cards.  Cut around each leaving about a 1/4" border, laminate them and then adhere magnetic tape on the back side at the top and bottom. 

To use, post the flip chart to the song you will be teaching/reviewing (I use my magnetic page protectors on the board. See here for the post on how I make my magnetic page protectors for flip charts.) Have some children each pick a bird card that you have face down and fanned out like cards in your hands or in a stack on the table or displayed on the chalkboard rail. Then have each child place the one they picked under one of the flip chart pages and then sing the phrase, phrases, verse or the whole song in the order of the "Birds." After singing it through, continue to repeat the process until the time is up for that activity. 

Example of using just "WHO" sings birds

Example of using a mix of "WHO" & "HOW" birds.

You could also remove all the "Sing" birds from the draw pile keeping them separate and then only have a few children, depending on how many flip chart pages you have up, each pick a card and put up on the board under any flip chart page and then you fill in the rest with the "Sing" bird cards.

Another way to use these are like flash cards. Hold the "shuffled" stack in your hands face out to the children with the "Sing" card first, start singing and as you sing the song, every now and then, move the front card to the back and the next card up is who or how they will continue to sing the song. This keeps it fun and they have to concentrate a little since they don't know what will come up next and if they are "Ahhhhhing" and then a "Sing" card comes up, they will need to pick up singing the words from that point on. 

I will be using some of the birds in helping the children learn the new melody I will be teaching for the song

"The Wise Man and the Foolish Man". 

I will be posting my ideas for that song next if you are interested.


Have fun singing like birds!!!

Bird Directional Singing Signs-Large-Nalani
Bird Directional Singing Signs-2-Per Pg-Nalani

4th OF JULY FIREWORKS & U SING AWESOME!

What would the 4th OF JULY be without parades, bands and especially fireworks? I shudder to think!!!


I can bring the parade and band to Primary, but how do you bring the Fireworks? That was a toughie. Here is what I came up with from supplies I already had on hand. I'm sure if you don't have some of these things, you can come up with a hybrid of your own.

FIREWORKS
Items Needed

• 6-8 Balloons per JR and SR group depending on how many songs you plan to sing
• Red, white and blue curling ribbon or silver if you don't have white
• Star tinsel wire garland in red, silver and blue or a mixed red, white/silver and blue patriotic version 
• Slips of paper with your song titles to be inserted inside the balloon or if each balloon is a different color, just assign a song to each color on your key sheet and that way you don't have to stick anything inside the balloon.
• Streamers to insert inside the balloons (optional) 
• You could cut lengths of curling ribbon and curl the ribbon and insert into the balloons to make some streamers for the balloons. This may be a little time consuming to do.
• T-pins or thumb tacks.

How to Make

• For the shooting tail of the firework (or whatever you call it) cut 3 to 5, 15"-18" lengths of the star garland and wrap it around a 1" diameter dowel or something similar in shape and size and then remove the dowel. Slightly straighten your curled garland out to lengthen it into a soft spiral. Group the star garland together at one end and twist those ends together so they are connected at one end. 

• Cut 1 yard each of the red, white and blue curling ribbon. If you want to add more ribbon, cut another set of each color. Align the ribbons together and at the center of the ribbons, tie them together in a double knot around the twisted end of the star garland. Fold a little of the twisted end of the garland over the knotted ribbon to help secure the ribbon and garland together. 
• Repeat the above steps and make a shooting tail for each balloon firework you plan on using. If you have separate JR and SR Primaries, you only need to do one set of the shooting tails since you can reuse them for the next group.
• Insert into the balloon your piece of paper with your song written on it and streamers if you choose. I would not suggest to use confetti. That would be a bit of a mess to clean up. A few streamers would give a little added fun with the "firework explosion" without causing much clean up.
• Blow up your balloons and knot the opening. You could wait to blow up the balloons until just before Primary if you don't want to haul a big bag of blown up balloons to church.
• When you get to church, pin up your set of balloon fireworks randomly on the bulletin board using the T-pins or thumb tacks. The balloon will flop downward.
• Pin up the shooting tail about 6" or so below the knot of the balloon depending on how big your balloon is. The Balloon should hide the top of the shooting tail.
• The picture shows that I taped this to a white board because I took the pictures at work, but I will use our rolling bulletin board at church to pin the fireworks up on. I will try to remember to take a picture of all the fireworks pinned up together on the board and post it later. 
• There you have it. Pretty easy and quick to make and they look so festive and fun.

How to Play and Sing

• For JR, have a child come up and "explode" one of the fireworks by using a pin to pop the balloon. I like to use this pointer stick that has a pointer finger on the end of it that I tape a pin to. This allows the child to reach a balloon that is up high as well as for the more timid children, they don't have to put their hand right next to the balloon to explode it.  
• Sing the song that is written on the piece of paper from the balloon firework that exploded. Sometimes I like to sing songs in a certain order instead of randomly, which is what I plan on doing for this activity in JR. In this case, I would just put slips of numbered papers inside the balloons (which really don't refer to anything) and after they pop the balloon and hand the paper to me, I would "look" at my key sheet and we would sing the next song.
• For SR, I have the children take turns throwing a dart to see if they can explode the fireworks. They only get one try at it before the next child gets a turn, this way, more kids will have a chance. Throwing a dart makes it a little more challenging and fun for the older kids and seems more manly for those many boys I have. Make sure you use the steel tipped darts and not the rubber tipped darts that are used with those special holed dart boards. I did not know that there was such a thing as soft tipped darts until after I bought some once and when the kids tried to use them, they kept bouncing off of the balloons. A bit hilarious seeing them bounce off the balloons but puzzling. After several tries, I finally took a close look at the tips and realized they were rubber and bendable tips. Who'd a thunk!!! 
• WARNING! Children can get a little funny and do little screams sometimes when the balloons pop, so make sure you remind the children ahead of time to not get wild and to cover their mouths if they think they might be tempted to scream. A gentle reminder that we like to have fun but shouldn't get wild in Primary usually does the trick. Also, if you put streamers in the balloons, remind them not to run up to grab them. They need to stay in their seats.

Now for the parade and band part.

For JR, the first song I will play is "You're a Grand Old Flag" on my iPhone with my mini, portable speakers while the teachers help me sing it using my little Patriotic Booklets and we will march around the room waving our little flags. I'll wear my little cardboard red, white and blue patriotic top hat and beat on my sunshine drum (the one with the smiling sun on it in the picture—I love that drum and so do the kids—it has a great "boom" sound and is great for keeping the beat when teaching a song) and I'll also have a couple of children hold some bigger flags I have at the front of the parade. I think marching outside would be fun to do, but it always seems to be way too hot to do that. I already get hot and sweaty half the time doing all the actions and activities we do in the somewhat air conditioned room. Here is an MP3 link to the U.S. Air Force Band playing "You're a Grand Old Flag" that you can download for free and play when marching. This has a great marching beat to it just like in a parade.


Next, we will sing "My Flag, My Flag" a couple of times raising our flags on the word "flag" and waving it when we sing the word "wave". The second time we sing it I'll have them wave the flag back-and-forth to the rhythm of the song. I'll have a firework to pop for each time we sing it.

Oh yes, we can't forget the band part. I'll have a few children come up on other songs like "Nephi's Courage" and play rhythm instruments to the beat of the songs. I may just do one verse at a time with each balloon firework explosion. If you don't have any rhythm instruments, you could make some quite easily with found things around the house. Just look up on the internet for some "How To's". Or you could even just use some pots and pans and spoons or anything else that you can bang around and voilà!, you now have a kitchen band. 

Some rhythm instruments I've collected over time.

Other songs we will sing are "Oh, What Do You Do in the Summertime?" and "Our Primary Colors". Not sure if we will have much more time after these songs except maybe one of the balloon fireworks may be that they get to pick their favorite song to sing or their teacher gets to pick their favorite song.


For SR, it is pretty simple, each balloon will have a patriotic song written on a piece of paper inserted into the balloon that are from the Patriotic Song booklet and one balloon will be a choice to pick their favorite patriotic song from the booklet; they can even pick a song we have already sung if they wish. We will not be singing these songs in a controlled order like I plan to for JR. The songs will be selected randomly by whatever balloon is exploded. Of course, I'll have the children take turns coming up and playing the rhythm instruments.


I also made some U.S.A. U Are Awesome! Super Singer Badges. I've included the files if you feel like making some. One page has the text in color while the other one has the text in black and white.  I ended up using the colored text version for the ones I made.


HOW TO MAKE THE U.S.A—U ARE AWESOME! SUPER SINGER BADGE NECKLACE OR STICKER

• I printed the ones for JR onto card stock and punched them out with a 2 1/8" circle punch (you probably could use a slightly smaller punch since the file shrunk slightly when converted to a pdf format) or you could cut them out with scissors. Punch two small holes, one on either side of "U.S.A." and thread a 24"-26" (depending on the size and age of the children in your Primary) of 1/4" satin red, white or blue ribbon down through a front hole in the circle disk and then back up the other hole from the backside of the circle disk (tip: cut the ribbon at a pointed angle to help in threading the ribbon through the holes) and then with both ends of the ribbon matched up together, make a knot  as close to the ends of the ribbon as possible. See the picture to see this knot. This is a little easier knot to make for these necklaces than taking both ends separately and putting the right over left then left over right double knot thingy. You could use yarn or string if you don't have ribbon. I usually pick up these small bolts of satin ribbon from the craft store now and again to keep on hand. They are usually about 50 cents for about 10 yards and sometimes they are even on sale for 3 for a $1. Pretty cheap.

• For SR, I just printed the badges out onto a full label-sized Avery sheet. Although the label sheet is a crack and peel type, the cut lines on the liner won't pass through the back side of each of your stickers. So, with a cutting blade and straight-edge ruler, carefully cut down the back side of the labels down the center of each row of stickers ONLY cutting through the liner and not the sticker part. You only need to make three cuts per page if you align your ruler on the backside over each row of the stickers. Cutting the liner for a crack-and-peel effect will help make it a bit easier to separate the sticker from the liner. Make sure to use a cutting mat or something to help protect your surface in case you have a heavy hand and cut too deeply. Cut or punch out the circles and voilà!, you have yourself some stickers.

If you want, you could also discuss here and there through singing time gospel principles and tying the principles in with having freedom, choosing the right, etc., but do be careful to keep it short and sweet. After all, this is singing time not talking time. (I'm always having to work on this.)

U Sing Awesome Badges