Mother do you love me?

I wanted to do a different song for Mother's Day because I've heard the standard ones a million times, and all of them seem to focus on how beautiful or lovely mother looks.  Not that I mind that sentiment, its just that mothers do so much more than look pretty.  So I decided to use the song "Teacher, Do you Love Me?" (pg 178) and changed it to "Mother, Do you Love Me?"  We have some pretty musically talented people in our ward, so I also asked the female primary teachers to learn the adult part, and sing it with the kids.

My mom and I

So far it is going really well, and as for the kids, they are singing it beautifully.  I mostly taught them the song with some visuals, and started by asking them about all the things their mothers do for them.  I also pointed out the lovely line about how they will still love you "even when you turn away, or go astray, or disobey".  Got me a little teary-eyed talking about how moms will never ever stop loving their kids.  I know my mom won't ever stop loving me, and I'll never stop loving my kids.  No matter what!

Anyway, I'm so excited to have such a great song to sing for all the moms!

My kids and I

(Update: The song was so beautiful on Mother's Day and I got tons of thank yous for the lovely sentiment.  It was a touching song and both the kids and the teachers did a wonderful job.  I'm so thankful the teachers were willing to sing.)

Big Words Billy

Last week we did the BIG!  WORD!  GAME! to learn the meanings of the words in "Praise to the Man" (hymnal pg 27), so this week we followed it up with "Big Words Billy".  I got this idea from various other blogs and made it my own.

I drew a picture of "Billy" on a piece of cardboard and put a small hole where his mouth would be, and then put a deflated balloon in the hole.  Since the big words are pretty hard still for the kids to remember, I put a list of these on the side of the cardboard so I could point to them as we went along.

Luckily, I also enlisted my husband's help.  Originally the plan was to have him blow up the balloon from the back while the kids sang, but when we attempted a dry run at home, it was way too hard to blow up the balloon.  So he got his trust bike pump out and that worked much better.

As the kids sang, he would blow up the balloon, going slower or faster depending on how well they sang.  Of course, MOST of the kids wanted it to pop. so we went ahead and popped a few, but it was kind of funny because we were all so scared of when it would pop that we kept laughing and some were covering their ears (luckily no crying), and then a couple took a really long time to get big enough and my husband was pumping like crazy and the kids were laughing at him even more.  It was great fun!  In senior primary we let a couple of the kids do the pumping themselves but it was harder than it looked.  Anyway, it was fun and the kids sang their hearts out.  It was helpful to do a quick review of the meaning of the words before we started.  I think we'll probably bring Billy in next week as well since it was so fun, as long as my husband is willing to do it again!

BIG! WORD! GAME! Come on down...

We played the

BIG!

WORD!

GAME!

to practice our words for "Praise to the Man" (Hymnal, pg 27) this week!  I figured since its a pretty fast-tempo song, we could get a little loud on this one.

First, you gotta get into the fun of it.  My dad has this awesome jacket that has been through a lot in our family.  His mom made it for him for a dance way back.  It had blue velvet lapels, and it is made of some sort of turquoise shimmery substance.  We used it to play dress-up when we were kids.

When we got older we even were brave enough to have him wear it to daddy/daughter dances, and it was the hit of the party!  It's rather threadbare now and well used and loved.  Anyway, I borrowed the jacket and made a fake microphone with a toilet paper roll, a styrofoam ball, and tin foil, and I did a type of "Price is Right" sort of game show, where I made the audience say "BIG" "WORD" "GAME" every time with their BIG voices, and when I said "Come on down!" they had to run down the aisle looking excited, etc.  Actually it was a little sad because most of the kids had no idea what "The Price is Right" was, so I explained that it was the go-to show at 10am when you were home sick from school!

Anyway, the game was basically set up so that I had cards with one of the big words on it:

PRAISE

COMMUNED

JEHOVAH

ANOINTED

SEER

DISPENSATION

EXTOL

REVERE

HAIL

ASCENDED

TRAITORS

TYRANTS

VAIN

MINGLING

CONQUER

They were called to pick a word and then were given two different definitions and had to guess which was correct.  Sometimes we would try out the definition with the other songs words to see if it made sense.  Some of the definitions were close to be tricky, some were pretty funny.

I then put the words up on the board, and wrote a "translation" underneath so it made some sense to the kids.  I think this went really well (despite them not having the privilege of knowing the greatness that is The Price is Right) and I find it very helpful and important for them to understand the words of the song.  

p.s. They also love thinking of the part that says "V-A-A-AIN" like a staircase going down.  And of course they loved learning to sing "HAIL!" with a lot of energy and strength.