Magic Potions - So Much Fun!

The kids earned their Fun Fourth Sunday pretty easily this month because they already knew "He Sent His Son" fairly well to start with, and its a favorite for many of the kids anyway, including mine.  I went to pinterest to find something fun, and came across this Magic Potion idea that I tweaked a bit to work for us.  It was so much fun!  I think I got more excited than some of the kids and it worked perfectly.

This definitely took some prep before, between, and some cleanup after, but so worth it.

First I took three review songs and wrote out the words to each on a dry-erase board.  Key words in each song were written in different colors, two colors for each song.  One song had a mix of green and orange key words, the next one had red and blue, and the third had key words written in purple and pink.

I had 6 clear plastic cups filled about 1/3 with vinegar.  I had 6 metal spoons, and had put drops of food coloring on each, to make the 3 different colors.  I then used a separate spoon to cover each of the colored spoons with a big pile of baking soda.  You want to make sure the food coloring is completely covered up.  I was worried that it would leak through but it didn't.  I had all this on a big cookie sheet with towels on hand to clean up any extra mess.

Each kid I picked would come up and pick a spoon and start stirring it into one of the cups.  The BEST part about this is that because there is so much baking soda and the food coloring is at the bottom, and because the liquid kind of hardens the soda up at the beginning, it takes a bit of stirring for some of the soda to dissolve and the color to come through.  Meanwhile its really fizzing and overflowing, and then finally the color appears.  It was quite suspenseful, and I was just as excited as the kids were!  Once the color came through and the liquid died down, we would erase the words that matched the color, and then sing the song, seeing if they could fill in the blanks.

The only trouble we had is it took a bit of down time to erase all the words, so next time I would have a second kid on hand to start erasing the minute they knew what the color was.  It helps to have big words too, I had to kind of squish mine in, so shorter songs, or one song per color might have been a little better.

Don't forgot you have to re-prep all of this again before Senior Primary comes in, and then clean-up afterwards, you don't want the room smelling like vinegar for too long!

Follow the Prophet: Scrolls

For "Follow the Prophet" pg 110, this week I brought robes, headgear and props (stuffed lion & a staff) to dress up a few boys as our prophets Daniel and Moses, and then had a boy with a suit/tie fill in for our modern-day prophet in the last verse.

For the Daniel and Moses verses, I also made these scrolls, an idea I got from here.  There are lots more examples of scrolls for all the other verses as well.  I drew my own pictures but made the wood part the same way, with two large craft sticks taped together.

The Moses verse is tough, with lots of hard words and complicated ideas, so we're really working on that one.  The kids loved dressing up as prophets and especially holding the stuffed lion.

He Sent His Son: Q & A

"He Sent His Son" pg 34, is a personal favorite primary song of mine, but I feel for the pianists because it is not an easy song to play, strange rhythms and pauses.  Anyway, still I love it.

No big surprise, this song is all about Questions and Answers

So I made a Q and A practice session:  (it took me 3 weeks to notice I'd drawn the question marks backwards!  And I'm an english major - I was pretty humiliated)

 Each set of Q and A's has pictures to help the kids remember, and I used corresponding colors.  I used these in various ways to help the kids remember the song:

1) Hand them out randomly and tell the kids to put them in order, but they have to do it totally SILENT!  This is tough but we went through it together to see if it was right.

2)  Give the questions out to some kids up front, and then give answers to kids in the audience.  The questions have to go find their answer partners and bring them up to the front.

3) Give Questions to one side of the room, Answers to the other, let them sing back and forth.


One other important note for the kids they liked was to point out that when the song say "rise with living breath" that it is a clue to what they should do with their voices.  Take a big breath and rise with the song.  Then we practice holding the long note and see if they can stretch it a long time before the next phrase.  They really like doing it that way and it fills the gap that happens if they just cut the note off too early.

Snowball Fight!

For one of my fun activities earned by learning their last month's song so well we had an indoor "snowball" fight.  The original idea came from here with my own twists of course.

I handed out 1/4 cut papers and told them to write down their favorite primary song and their name.  As they did this, I began to get my winter clothes on.  Wool hat, scarf, coat, gloves, etc.  I think I left the boots at home!

When they had their papers ready I told them to squish them into a ball!  (they were pretty hesitant to do this at first so I actually had to show them).  Then I told them we were going to have a snowball fight with me as the target!  They loved the idea.  On the count of 3, with a few false starts, they all got to throw their "snowballs" at me, while I tried dodging and ducking.

When they were done I picked one off the floor and we sang that song. 

I even saved all the snowballs and thought I'd do it again sometime.

Originally I was going to have them throw at each other in two teams, but I could see a few of them getting carried away.  I may try this version with a smaller group and spread them apart a little more.

Another variation I thought of but didn't do at the time was that each person's song I picked got to borrow one of my winter clothes to wear, so it would take a while for me to get "undressed" and I would play up the idea of being too hot or too cold, etc.

No matter what way you do it, a big hit all around and the teachers got a kick out of it too!  (next time I'll have to get them in on it)