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!