How do you Roll on the 5th Sunday

Well, we are going to roll with ROLOS!

Yep, I am going to try the Rolos for Solos that has been filtering around the internet these days, but FIRST!!!!!! I am going to do the Back to School Review thanks to Camille's Primary Ideas

Because I do have the entire time on the Fifth Sunday:
This is how we'll roll

First we will do the Back to school review and you can find my list HERE (Completely forged from Camille with my songs replacing her pick your own songs and since I have opted [yet again] to not sign this year - I replaced the pencil idea with a highlighter idea).

This way, we sing through all the songs, so when I am ready to switch to the solos part - we have already gone over them. What I am going to do for the solos part is just ask the kids who would like to sing, that child gets to pick what they sing and I will have them sing a few lines or a verse (depending on the child) and then we as a primary will either finish the song or sing it again. I have starbursts as an alternative. And as I saw on the Facebook page, everyone gets a rolo at the end for being a good audience

HERE is my image-pilfered-from-google sign that I will post when we are done with the Back to School review

"In His Holy Name" building mountains activity

I am posting this post-singing time, but there are a few weeks in August left, so I thought I would post anyway.

So on the Chorister's Facebook page, someone posted an idea about building the song from the bottom up (which you could basically do with any song, really), so I made some mountains!

I took a piece of posterboard folded it in half, drew a line from the top middle down to about an inch from the bottom to make my mountain. (And I could have gone to Hobby Lobby and bought the gray poster board, but I am super cheap and just used a gray crayon to color the mountain except for the snow capped "top").

I thought that working from the bottom up would be a good thing and for the verses it was okay, but when I tried that for the chorus, it was disastrous and I ended up erasing quite a lot

If you look closely, you can see how much I wrote and re-wrote beneath the the letters written in marker.

Then, I cut up the verses and for junior, we built from the bottom up and put the pieces on the board, and then attached a flag at the top.
For senior, I threw all the cut up pieces from both verses on the floor and had the kids arrange the words back into their proper place. Then we played guess the words of the piece that we just took away

Thank you Facebook!

In His Holy Name Melody Map

Ho.

Ly.

Cow.

I think this took me about 4 hours. But it is so WORTH IT. Well, at least I think it is.

So, this time, I made a map with just the boxes of color (like I did for the Fourth Article of Faith) and THEN I put the words on the map in the appropriate boxes. Which I think looks really cool (because I used teeny tiny versions of the pictures that I used last week to replace the corresponding words).

HERE is my plain, wordless, picture-less melody map. (One verse, one chorus and 9a is the first verse chorus ending, 9b is the scond verse chorus ending and 10 is last part of the chorus that is tacked on the end {I don't know the technical term - please accept my apologies})

HERE is the first verse, with the chorus

HERE is the second verse, also with the chorus (even though I will probably only print up one chorus, but I just didn't feel like deleting it)

And FYI, I starred the Fermata in the chorus on the word "dead" (and included a picture of a fermata) basically so I would remember to talk about fermatas and what they are and how to deal with them {and I toyed with the idea of not including the picture, but as I stated earlier it is my FAVORITE and I could not do that}

And I just noticed some formatting problems when viewing the second verse document, but hopefully it will order itself out when you open it in non-protected view. Or at the very least, maybe you can edit the text boxes and stretch them out so that the words don't wrap around like they are doing right now.

I just don't think I can edit right now. My brain is fried - as well as dinner - it is a total fail and I sent my oldest out for pizza and bagged salad

**Last minute note: At least for my printer, both blue colored boxes (there is a light and a darker blue color) and the purple do not have enough contrast with the black words. I changed the words to yellow and they look much better**

First Week of "In His Holy Name"

If you haven't heard, I LOVE THIS SONG!! And I can't WAIT  to teach it. But, I'll be flying solo, so I'll have to make this all up on my own.
For my introduction, I will be using pictures from the library!!!!!! And it so helps that we are already learning about Jesus and they have already seen these pictures and have heard these stories. This curriculum is truly inspired! Half the work is already done (by someone else! So genius!)

HERE is where you can find the text of the song on lds.org

1. When Jesus lived upon the earth,
He showed His love for all mankind.

(at this point, you could show a picture of Jesus being born, but I am going to skip straight to his adult years starting with the picture of Him and Mary and Martha - you know, because it is cool)

                                                       (this image can be found HERE)
 

He blessed the faithful through His pow’r
and made them whole again.

for this, I chose the woman at the well picture which I will have to print unless I buy another gospel art picture book (my original disappeared into thin air) and I wanted a picture that seemed to fit the healing aspect of the verse a little bit more, but I really use all of those for the chorus

                                                          (this picture can be found HERE)

Chorus: Jesus cleansed the leper  

this picture was used in a sharing time and I had never seen it before. But it came from the library, so I am really excited to use it (especially since the first counselor already went over the story associated with it - see half the work done already!) However, I can't seem to find it on lds.org, so hopefully you can locate it in your library without a problem

                                             (hopefully this link will work: click HERE)

and helped the blind to see.

this classic was used in the same aforementioned sharing time

                                                  (this picture can be found HERE)

Jesus healed the sick in Galilee.

Yes, I am totally going to rip from google images and just print a cute map. Sorry. I know I have disappointed someone (I might actually head back to the library and see if I can pull up a map of Galilee from there, but that does require effort, so I may just click "print" instead)

                                        (this picture can be found HERE)
He laid His hands upon each head; Yes, yes, I know this is a picture of Him ordaining the apostles rather than blessing sick people, but I still think it totally works. However, I couldn't find it in the library today which means I'll have to print it - or rifle through the manual pictures (Isn't it super awesome how the lds.org site tells you ALL the places you can find each picture?! More genius!)

                                                     (this picture can be found HERE)
He blessed the deaf I found this picture on google image search and didn't know that it was LDS until I clicked the link. Do you remember those books that told of bible and book of Mormon stories that were illustrated and had captions for each picture (you know, obviously meant for children)? I think that this comes from those. The link takes you to a page with three pictures, but I like the first one best and will use that one. This one will definitely need to be printed

                                                        (you can find this picture HERE)

and raised the dead;The only thing I can say about this one is that it is my favorite picture of Jesus EVER

                                                        (this picture can be found HERE)
He blessed the lame to walk again in His holy name.

2. It comforts me that I’ll be blessed
as hands are laid upon my head I found this picture in the library and it obviously came from manual kit, but I could not find it on lds.org

                                                         (this picture can be found HERE) 

               (There is another picture of priesthood blessing the sick on lds.org found HERE)
by worthy men with heavn’ly pow’r
to make me whole again. For this, I wanted a distinct picture of the men giving the blessing, rather than just their hands. This could totally be represented by the priesthood blessing the sick picture that I just mentioned which can be found in the Sunbeam manual picture packet, or a various number of other pictures, but I particularly liked this one (even though it is not linked to lds.org)

                                                       (this picture can be found HERE)
And the best thing about this song is that it is one of those
"This is what Jesus Did
Chorus
This is how it relates to me
Chorus"
songs!  I love it!!!

August Planning

So, I am writing this in the beginning of July - because crazily enough, I have time - so I am going to use it.
But that does mean that this will be bare bones. Once August does arrive, because I will be working activities for "In His Holy Name" from the February 1996 friend and probably will not have time to post a planning post.

So, as stated I will work on "In His Holy Name" which can be really hard to find, but it is beautiful, so I just can't give it up.
I finally, finally found a youtube video of it HERE
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FxTxauVPWw0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
And I am really excited about this song. But I do realize that I will be making all the activities myself since I am probably the only one in the world doing this song for August

You can find my schedule HERE

You can find a partial document of the songs I will be posting (I already have some of these songs for posting and I am super lazy and did not find and format the other songs that I had printed previously)
HERE

July 2015

Pardon the new layout, I was done with the winter one, but I am just too lazy to make the new one look decent. How do I maintain transparency when editing an image anyway?

Oh well, on to July!

How did introducing "Come Follow Me" go for you today? We had a great time! I used two different things from the Come Follow Me page on sugar doodle. I used the second file listed by Maria Johnson. Then I scrolled down to the bottom and clicked on the file that had the footprints.

I sang through the song with the flip chart then had a few kids gather around one the footprints and everyone would sing when we got to their footprint (I have a small primary, so I can do that sort of thing) and it worked SO WELL!

I am really at a loss as to what to do for the next two weeks, but that is why I look forward to each and every post from Camille's Primary Ideas.

The last week, we will be doing the pioneer activity that I have been doing for a couple of years. I will not be here, so it's a nice sub activity to just hand to someone


My plan for July can be found HERE

Fourth Article of Faith Melody Map

So, these Melody Maps are HARD to make. But I like them. I think they help me. But I am not sure if I am the only one that they help. However, I decided to make one for my May song anyway.

For May, I just felt that The Fourth Article of Faith was the best choice. However, if you have ever sung this song (or any of these odd Article of Faith songs), you will most likely agree that the timing is WEIRD. So for that reason, I decided that a melody map would be essential.

And because of the funky timing, I decided to color code the types of notes (e.g. quarter notes are green, half notes are purple, etc) I did also put on the side of the paper a key to guide me where to place the different notes (you will notice that b and c, for example are closer to each other than c or d, and that is because I tried to space the notes as they are spaced on the piano [b natural and c natural are only a half note apart whereas c natural and d natural are a full note apart] - now I may have gotten this incorrect, so please accept my apologies and please please please correct me (as I will probably never know better enough to correct myself)). 

A very nice thing about this particular song is that it is in the key of C major (I think) and there are no accidentals included in the song. Which makes it easier to map.

HERE is my melody map for the fourth article of Faith. Enjoy!