Father's Day songs-help!

Last week our ward choir director asked me what the primary would be singing for Father's day. (what? already?? it's not even mother's day yet...i'm feeling so unorganized about now....) Anyway, obviously she is being proactive and is wanting to choose her songs so that she has ample practice time which is great. Also, because she asked what the primary is singing, i'm guessing that she is considering a primary song but is giving me first choice. So, i need to choose quickly. I looked through the songbook and really, none of the father's day songs jumped out at me. Are you singing for fathers day? What are you singing? Any non traditional songs? Any medleys? I'm open to any suggestions! Thanks for your help!

Mother's Day

Since April is general conference and also stake conference for us, I knew i needed to start teaching our Mother's day songs that we will be singing in sacrament meeting. We're singing the 1st verse of Love is Spoken Here (p. 190) followed by verses 1 and 3 of Mother Dear (p. 206a) I thought of several different ways to teach the songs but ended up choosing the poster method. I REALLY want the children to learn the songs well and posters seem to do the trick for our primary. The good thing about posters is that it helps junior primary learn the words while visualizing and we can use the blobs to cover up different portions of the poster as we practice. Most of all, this way of teaching a song is easiest for me. :) Are you singing in sacrament meeting? I'd love to hear what songs you chose to sing......

Headband Hero

This activity is a great way to review a song. I saw it here and just changed it a bit. I bought a few headbands at the dollar store and printed out some key words from the song we're working on. I attached a paper clip to each word so that it would be easy to attach it to the headband. (you could use adhesive velcro too) Invite a child to wear the headband "nephite" style. Then attach a word to the headband without showing them what the word is. Then the primary sings the song and while singing, we omit the word that is on the headband. After we finish singing the song, the child wearing the headband has to guess what word is on his forehead. To make it more challenging, use several children at a time. This is a little trickier for the chorister but i found it helpful to arrange the children according to the order their word came up in the song and then I would just touch them on the shoulders when their word was coming so they would know when to listen for their word (or their omitted word actually). Make sense? We had fun with it-i hope you will too!

Stop and Go!

This is another simple way to involve the primary children and make singing time fun. I like to have different things to do while singing so that we can sing a song multiple times without the children getting bored of the song. I think i read this idea on the internet somewhere but i'm not sure where (so sorry!) Anyway, make a stoplight with colored cellophane in between. Give a child a flashlight. When they shine it through green, the primary sings normal; red, stop singing (and hum if you want), and for yellow, choose before hand what yellow will mean. For example, yellow could mean stand and sing, or twirl while singing, or sing slooowwllyy (of course this will be hard for the pianist to see so you'll have to tell her when it's yellow), or snap fingers or anything you choose! It'd be fun to turn some of the lights off in the primary room while you use this stoplight. That'll definitely catch their attention! You could even test their "watching" abilities and assign a different action to each color. Red=snap and sing; green=sing fast while clapping; yellow=stand and sing. If you do this, for reference purposes, you might want to write a code on the chalkboard indicating what each color means. I'm sure there are hundreds of ways to use this stoplight. If you find a method that works in your primary, i'd love to hear it! (don't you love how the stoplight is upside down? sorry about that, i wasn't thinking)