November: Week Five.

Monthly Theme: My family and I can serve others.
Scripture: “By love serve one another.” (Galatians 5:13)

Tomorrow, the Senior Primary kids are going to perform their pipe chime rendition of Love One Another for the Junior Primary kids. I'm hoping they need only one practice round, so it doesn't take too long.

Then, I am taking an idea from the Primary in Doha, Qatar:

"Half the time they learned Christmas songs and the other half, they passed out plain white paper (full 8 1/2x 11 sheets) and pencils and had the children write their favorite primary song on the piece of paper. They then crumpled up the pieces of paper all together. (Make sure you tell everyone what you're doing beforehand so you get the crumpling noise effect all together.) Then they had drawn a snowman on the white board and said, "This is the only time in Primary you will be able to throw snowballs." Then they all got to throw their "snowballs" at the snowman, trying to hit him. The music director then put all the snowballs in a little cooler (so they wouldn't melt, of course). Then the music director had a primary kid come and pull a snowball out of the cooler to sing. The person whose song it was got to conduct with the baton. It was handy because when the lesson was short, they just chose a couple extra snowballs to sing. They will do a few each week until Christmas, but it could be done anytime during the winter."

Thanks Lindsay, for the suggestion! I think this is a great idea. Its function is similar to what I've done in the past with choosing favorite songs and have the child conduct, but the snowman idea is new.

For tomorrow, since we have both Senior and Junior Primary together, and we miss out on next Sunday due to Stake Conference, I want to get started on Christmas songs. I think I'll just have each child write their name on the snowball and then have a list of songs on the board to choose from. When the snowball with their name gets picked, they can select a song from the board. We'll erase as we go. That way we can get some Christmas songs in that they know, but might not top their favorite list, since they haven't sung them for a year.

I'll let you know how it goes!