Campfire

Since we are close to Pioneer Day, I figured we'd do something a little more exciting, so I coordinated with the presidency to incorporate their sharing time.  We removed all the chairs for the kids, left a ring for the teachers on the outside, and built two "campfires" in the primary room, since we have so many kids we couldn't fit all of them around one.  I brought in some wood and made the campfire rings on some towels so it wouldn't make a mess, then got a bunch of red, yellow, and orange tissue paper and placed that in the middle to make the "fire".  You could also enhance this by putting a flashlight or LED candle underneath, but it was too bright in our classroom for this to really work.

This "campfire" I made using rolled up cardboard instead of logs, less messy and the kids don't pick the bark off and throw it at each other!

We then gathered the kids around the fire, and we went back and forth between telling stories that related to the sharing time theme and pioneer stories, and then singing songs in between.  We also would periodically ask the kids questions about the stories and if they answered correctly we handed out marshmellows.  They were pretty attentive.  Great to mix it up and enjoyed having the kids settle down and bit and listen to some good stories.

Hats off to Hats!

I love collecting fun hats for the kids' dress-up box, and they work great for primary as well.  Last week I brought in a bunch of fun hats, and then I passed them out to the kids who were singing nicely.  I did this a few times, moving them around from person to person so most everyone got a chance to wear one. 

Just a few of my fun hats!

 After that, I did my usual and turned it into a game of torturing their teacher, ME!  We sang the song Primary Children Sang as They Walked (pg 214) which has a lot of repetition of the word "walk".  So when we sang the word, I had the kids who hadn't had a turn with hats take one from someone and walk it up to me (I was sitting on the floor so little kids could reach) and stack it on my head, meanwhile I am trying to sing, conduct, and balance about 20 hats by the end.  Of course, they loved it when they all fell down and I had to try to stack them up again.  I will say I was sweating pretty good by the end of that one.  Here's to Hats!

Fireworks!

I pick and choose only certain important holidays to "celebrate" in primary and the 4th of July is one of them, and this was such a great way to do it!

Got the idea here, and modified it of course:

First, I filled some big red, white and blue balloons with some confetti using a funnel, and I also put a small piece of paper with a song in as well.  You don't need a ton of confetti for this to work great.

I then blew them up and attached them to a bulletin board, along with some streamers coming down so they looked like fireworks.  Now, the question was, how to pop them in a fun way.  As always, I raided my mom's supplies and came up with a couple old, wooden cork/pop guns.  I hot glued a push pin to the end of the cork (making sure I could remove it later and not ruin her toy) and practiced "shooting" a balloon.  It worked great.

So, in primary I was obviously careful to keep the "gun" to myself until they were ready to shoot off their fireworks.  One kid came up and they would shoot the gun at one of the firework balloons, which would then pop and send the confetti flying!  So much fun, it really surprised the kids the first time and they loved the excitement!  Like I said, you don't need much confetti because it flies everywhere and I was smart enough to think of putting down a big sheet so it was mostly contained.  I then had another kid come up and they had to search through the confetti to find the paper with the song on it.  It was a BLAST!!