Monday, October 31, 2011

Saturday Pictionary

Well, I'm trying. I think maybe I need to set an alarm on my phone to remind myself to post each week about what I did in singing time.

Have I said that already?

This week I planned to do a Halloween sort of thing, I had these paper jack-o-lanterns left over from last year and thought maybe I would do Spin the Teacher with them. (Spin the Teacher is a big favorite with my kids, an idea I got from The Crazy Chorister long ago.) But then I was checking my blog reader on Sunday morning and saw a new post from Camille's Primary Ideas about teaching the song "Saturday". I thought it sounded perfect so I blatantly copied it. The kids loved it! Some of them were familiar with the song already but practically none of them knew the actual words.

To sum up, I had slips of paper with lines from the song:


clean the house
shop at the store 
brush our clothes
shine our shoes
trim our nails
shampoo our hair


and we basically played Pictionary. For Junior Primary I had the teachers come up and draw. For Senior Primary I had the kids draw. It was really fun.

In Junior Primary we sang the song a little at a time, over and over to really get it into their heads. For example, once we learned the lines about cleaning and shopping, we sang up to that point. Then when we learned the lines about brushing clothes and shining shoes, we sang again from the beginning up to that point. Etc. That took up all of singing time. For Senior Primary I didn't think we needed to sing it quite so many times, so we drew all the pictures before singing the song all the way through. Then we had a little time left over, so I chose kids to make up their own "chores" (they whispered them in my ear first to make sure they were appropriate) and draw them. Then we sang our own made-up verse.

Also, before we started in Senior Primary I asked all the kids who had their own Children's Songbooks to hold them up in the air. Then I pretended to collect them, and kids who didn't have Children's Songbooks also pretended to turn theirs in. It's great sometimes to have the kids have their own songbooks, but for something like Pictionary that kinda ruins the game.

Also, both Junior and Senior Primary got a kick out of pretending to shampoo their hair. That kind of surprised me but it was fun.

I love using the chalkboard because it's so simple and the kids love it. Definitely a successful day.

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