"I Stand all Amazed" The Greatest Gift!

This has been a hard one for me to decide on!! After much prayer and a quiet drive to my hubbies work yesterday I think I have finally decided how I will present this wonderful song and sacred message to my kiddo's!! I want to be able to touch their hearts in a way that they will not forget and can remember the message this song represents!
To start out discussion I am going to ask the kids to name some of the best gifts they have ever received! I will have 6 wrapped gifts sitting on a table next to me. Following our "best" gift discussion I will tell them that we are going to learn a song today about THE GREATEST gift we have all received!!
I will pick a helper to come up and pick gift number 1. Each gift box will contain what follows:

GIFT #1 Ephesians 3:19, a heart, and the word strip "I Stand all Amazed at the Love Jesus offers me". We will read and discuss the scripture and what it talks about, which is Christ's love, and then sing word strip #1. We will then post this by a picture of Christ and go on to #2

GIFT #2 1 Corinthians 16:23, pic of people boating on the sabbath to discuss Grace and how HF knows we will make mistakes and he still loves us, Word strip #2 "Confused at the GRACE that so fully he proffers (extends) me". We will post and sing strip #2 and move onto gift 3

Gift #3 Matthew 27:22, large nails, discuss the crucifixion, word strip #3 "I tremble to know that for me he was crucified". Post and sing, Move onto #4

Gift #4  1 Peter 2: 23-24, a crown of thorns or whip, Word strip 4, "That for me a sinner, he SUFFERED, he bled and died". Post and sing!


We will then discuss if this makes us feel wonderful? The response should be no! I will then move on to open gift #5 to share with them why the gift of Jesus's life is WONDERFUL for us. This gift #5 will include: Pic of Christ in Gethsemane. We will discuss how he suffered for all of our sins so that we can repent for all things and be forgiven. I will then read John 3:16

 12 years ago we lost our son in an auto accident. His pic will be in the box, after I read this scripture I will CRY, CRY, CRY, and discuss how through the atonement I will see my son again, how through this gift we can live again in Heaven and with our families forever, Last, to tie this in will be a tissue and how the atonement has made it so Jesus understands all our pains and will comfort us when these hard things happen in our lives. Deep, but very real and I hope that the children can feel and understand the message that I share.

We will then move on and uncover Gift #6, which is my 6ft life size figure of Christ pictured above. The Chorus will be attached around his neck and we will sing it in closing!! Oh it is Wonderful that he should care for me enough to die for me! Oh, it is WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL to me! That is how I am introducing verse #1. #2 will be a special piano piece and #3 will be the congregation joining in so I will teach this one and sing it throughout the year so that they learn it, but I am not going to spend lots of time on it!!
This has always been one of my favorite Hymns and has brought great comfort to me in my life. My goal is to reach out and bring the sweet spirit and WONDERFUL message to these sweet children of our HF. I love this calling and this opportunity to teach this AWESOME message. Thank you for letting me share, Happy Singing!!

Free Calendar Print outs

I found these really cute Calendar print outs at this link HERE
I have printed these and used them in my binder for the year.  They are way cute!!! Thought I would share. I also wanted to add a few more links to some teaching ideas that you could use to turn into Singing time activities. There are tons and tons of ideas all over the internet. Just a little creativity and you can plan an AWESOME singing time for your kiddo's!! Take a peek at a few of my finds.
Cute and Crazy Glasses
http://www.playingwithwords365.com/2012/03/freebie-friday-feed-the-old-lady-who-swallowed-a-chick/
 matching socks
Egg Shakers

The Egg shakers would be lots of fun for kids of all ages including the nursery!! With Easter coming these would be a great addition to any choristers box of tricks!!!

I hope this helps anyone in need of ideas. Let me know what kind of activities you can think up using these links!! Thanks for taking a peek!! I would like to be able to post some of these every week. I will be posting my ideas on teaching "I Stand all Amazed" towards the end of this week. Stay tuned for pics and info!! Thanks for taking a peek!!! Happy Singing everyone!!

Do as I'm Doing!!

I made up this cute board for Do as I'm Doing! It was a huge hit! The kids just wanted to sing this "wiggly" favorite all 20 minutes yesterday!! The good thing about it is you can switch out the actions whenever you need new ones and this can last forever!!! Another great thing is you can pull this one out whenever you see that the kids need some wiggle time!!!

To make this simple and easy activity all you need is a posterboard, these pocket envelopes that I found at the Dollar Tree, markers and..

Some action print outs like these:

You just cut, fold and add to your pockets. I then glued them onto my poster board and added some color!!! Short, sweet and lots of FUN!!!

Lights, Camera, ACTIONS!!

Wow, where has the week gone? I can't believe we are already to Thursday!!! I promised pics two days ago and am just getting around to putting them on here. This weeks singing time will be a review for us. We will be doing an activity I did with singing time when I was chorister years ago. It was a real hit with the kids then and I am hoping for the same results.
They say that kids learn well when  actively involved. I have found this to be a true statement!! Last week was our first week for "I will Follow Gods Plan." I used the GPS idea you can see in a previous post. It went really well and the kids caught on quite quickly. This week we will review the song and words by adding our own actions. This will help to reinforce the words for the kiddo's and hopefully we won't need the pics for the song after we get done with this week.

To Start this one out I will be splitting the kids into 4 separate groups. Each group will be getting an envelope like the ones pictured here. To print the clapboard you can right click on the one above, save image as, and then print. I just glued these onto 4 large manilla envelopes.

Each envelope has words from the song.
#1My life is a Gift, my life has a Plan
#2My life has a purpose, In Heaven it began
#3My choice was to come to this lovely home on earth
#4and seek for Gods Light to direct me from Birth

Each group will get their envelope. When I say go, they will each  have about 5-7 minutes to come up with actions for their part of the song.

When time is up each group will show and teach their actions. For the remainder of the song I will add on the paper plate version that is shown HERE.

 For a fun touch I will bring in my director chair and choose reverent children to get a turn to direct from the chair. I plan on having my husband record each group as they show their actions and as we put it all together. We will watch this on another Funday Sunday! Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for taking a peek!! Happy Singing!!!

St. Patricks Day Singing Time Ideas

I have several short, sweet and simple St. Patty's Day singing time ides to share today! I have found some wonderful teaching sites and have changed up a few of the games that they use in the classroom and have made them fit for singing time in March. If you are interested in checking out any of these blogs they are listed on the right hand side of my post. Check them out! They really get your creative juices flowing:)

The games I have come up with are as follows:

Pass the Coin: This would be geared more towards Sr. Primary and used as a review because you would be repeating the song as you play. For this one, the kids would sit in a circle. You would have one child be the Leprechaun. They would start out standing in the middle and covering their eyes.  You would hand a child in the circle a coin and the children would then start singing the song. As they sing the Leprechaun can uncover their eyes. When singing the kids would secretly pass a coin behind their backs. When the Leprechaun thinks they know who has the coin he would take off his hat and the kids would stop singing. The Leprechaun would then try and guess who has the coin. If he/she is right then the child who was guessed has to be the Leprechaun, if not guessed correctly then play continues and the kids would start singing from where they left off or from the beginning of the verse. Whichever you decide!!

Steal the Gold: This is the one I was thinking through yesterday! For this one you would have two teams! Each team would start out with a pot of gold. You can find pots and gold coins at the Dollar Tree for this one! This would be a good review for any songs you have been teaching! To begin you need to do a quick guess the number to see which team starts first. You would have shamrocks posted on the board with different numbers. The lower the number the easier the question, song task to perform, the higher the number the harder!! The starting team would decide on a shamrock, say they range from 1-5, they pick a 5, this is where you get creative, they would then have to do whatever task is listed on the shamrock, if they can do it then they would get to take 5 pieces of gold from the other teams pot, if they can't do it, answer it, sing it well, then they can challenge the other team, if the other team can do it then they get to take 5 gold from the challenging teams pot, etc. This is a fun, competitive one!!! At the end, whoever has the most coins, (gold) gets to pick a treat first!! A pot of rolo's, choc coins, twix bars, etc

Sneaky Little Leprechauns: This would be a fun one to do to the Bishop. Its like a heart attack but made for St. Patty's day. You could make this simple and have songs on the back of shamrocks. Have the kids sing and do fun actions with each song or perhaps do the magic shoe idea, which you can find posted on Sugardoodle. Then at the end you can have the kids sign this cute letter from the sneaky leprechaun and leave a bag of chocolate at the bishops door with the letter. Click on this link HERE to get a copy of the letter. You will have to scroll down and click on St. Patrick's Day on the right hand side of her blog.

Matching Game: This is just your basic matching game but you can use cute items to go along with the St. Patty's day theme.

Find Lucky: This is the same concept as finding the Musical note but you would hide a leprechaun figure. This would be a good, simple one to use for practice on one song. The kids would be repeating but usually they have fun with this one and don't seem to mind. Someone steps out in the hall while a kiddo hides lucky. The other child comes in and the kids sing while they search the room. If they are close to Lucky then the kids sing louder, if they are not close the kids sing quietly!! Hot and Cold!!!

Shamrock Toss: For this one you could have shamrocks lying on the floor with songs on the back. A child would get to come up and try and toss a coin on to a shamrock. The kiddo's would then sing the song that the coin lands on. You could spice it up a bit and have rainbow sticks that have different fun ways to sing the song that is landed on.


Whats in the Hat: For this one you would just need to buy a Leprechaun hat. I know they Dollar Tree has these. You would put items in the hat relating to words from songs you are teaching. The kids would pick out and item and tell what part of the song or what song the item goes with.


Help Lucky get to his Pot of Gold: You can make up a board game using questions for songs you want to review. Or, you can make a pathway of shamrocks that lead to the gold and have teams trying to get their leprechaun to the Gold first. So, the shamrocks would have songs to sing, questions, loose a turn, move back 2 spaces, etc You can download a St. Patrick's Day board game HERE. Just customize to fit your needs.

Four Shamrocks in a Row: This one would be like Tic Tac toe but they would have to get four shamrocks in a row. HERE click and you can get a copy for this one on this site!!

Go for the Gold: For this one you can have the kids come up and pick a gold coin card out of a pot. If they can answer the question about a song or songs for review then they get to keep the gold, but beware, if they pick a leprechaun card they loose all their cards and have to start over. This would be a good one for 2 teams!!

These are the ideas I have come up with!! I will be posting my singing time for Sunday this evening for Lights, Camera, Actions!! Please stop back in if you are interested in pics for this one!! Thank you all for stopping by!!! Happy Singing!!

Wheels Turning.... "Steal the Gold" March Singing Time Activity

Ok Ladies, I have been seeing St. Patrick's Day ideas out there for singing time in March. Wow, you guys are way ahead of me. I feel lucky to get my weeks plan out there before the weekend, yet alone the month ahead. I found an awesome music site on Pintrest today. This lady that does the site is an actual Music teacher. Her plans are there for download but it costs. I just took the title of one of her games she has on her download and am trying to put something together for singing time.  You can view the link HERE.
 She has a game  posted called Steal the Gold. In her version the students break into teams and race to find the "gold" or the right rhythm for certain songs. I would like to turn this into my St. Patty's singing time but my creative juices aren't quite flowing like I'd like them to be. To be honest I hadn't even started thinking that far ahead.  I would like to have the kiddo's break into two teams and search for the gold, but what am I going to have them do to reach their reward? Since "Gold" is usually at the end of a rainbow I will want to incorporate a rainbow into the mix, but how? Do I want to use multiple songs or just use it as a review for He Sent his Son and I will Follow Gods Plan? I am going to sleep on it and hopefully  by tomorrow I will have my St. Patty's day activity planned and ready to share with all of you. So stay tuned to see what I come up with for this one.

Now, for me and things more at my speed, I have an easy activity I will be doing with the kiddo's this Sunday. I will continue with my review of "I will Follow Gods Plans" We did the GPS activity last week and it was a hit. The kids loved following the map and putting the pics together for the song. They did a great job!! I will be posting the Lights, Camera, Actions activity tomorrow. Please stop by and check it out for a fun and easy review game.

Thanks for stopping by!! Please check back in and see what I come up with for "Steal the Gold" for my March activity and pics of this weeks Lights, Camera, Actions singing time!!!

Singing Time Ideas

Ok all you Choristers out there, I have become a huge fan of Pintrest lately! There are so many creative people out there willing to share their talents with the world. I have started a pin board of things that I see that I could get creative with and use for singing time. I wanted to share a few of those with you and see what ideas you can come up with. I have to use the links. I am not sure how else to place them here.

The first one I found was a Tiddle a Wink or Skee ball! For this one there are so many different things you could do. You could put different songs in each ring, the lower the points the easier the song, you could put questions in the rings about the songs for the program, the lower the number the easier the questions. The kids would roll a ball or toss a button into the rings. Whatever ring they get they would either sing the song or answer the question to get the points for that ring. Take a look at the link and let me know what kind of creative ideas you can come up with for this simple game. HERE

One more I would like to share with you today is this one HERE The Toss and Talk Ball! I was thinking for this one you could have different questions about a specific song your working on or different questions about all the songs for the program. You could have the kids sitting in a circle singing a song passing the ball and when it stops whoever has it has to answer the question that is on the top of the ball. If they can't answer then they would have to sit in the middle until the next person can't answer. Then they get a chance to redeem themselves and get back in the game. I thought it would make a good review game. What ideas can you think of for this one?

I will be throwing in some of these links and ideas as I go along each week. Please share your ideas in the comment section for others to see.Thank you so much for sharing!!!

Happy Singing!!