4th of July Singing Time

I am so excited for singing time this Sunday! I love having a once a month review Sunday where we just sing lots of songs we have learned in a fun way. This week, we will be combining a lot of fun ideas into one.

Last year, I saw the idea to put the names of songs inside party poppers on the Primary Chorister Page on Facebook. I can't remember who shared it but the idea is so fun so I thought I would pass it along! You just take the cardboard end off carefully and roll up a colored paper with the name of the song on it. Then you have a child come up, pick the party popper of their choice and then they can pull the string. Once they do, the name of the song flies out with the confetti. It is super fun and the kids love it! We did it on the side of the room away from other kids to make sure we were safe and of course my hubby brought in the vacuum to clean up at the end. Of course you could also do this with confetti filled balloons if you don't have party poppers too!

On each slip of paper, I will also write one of three things: flags, lights, paper plates, hand motions, or glow sticks. I have them written on the specific songs so I don't have to come up with stuff on the fly. If it says flags on the paper, we practice leading the song as if the flag was a baton to the beat. You can find how to lead in the back of the hymnal (if you need to know the easiest ways to learn those). Then I just drew those patterns out and put up the pattern on the board that corresponds with the song we are singing. I got the flags for cheap on amazon and just reuse them each year. They are easy to store.

If the paper strips say "lights" we sing using glow light hand motions. I have a few videos that I have made with glow lights in case these are songs you are learning. I will include them below to give you an idea of what I mean. I got the lights on amazon for pretty cheap and we just reuse them. Here are some ideas for some songs:

For the section that says "glow sticks" I decided we would use them similar to straws or rhythm sticks. Of course they wont make the same sound that rhythm sticks do, but since they have used rhythm sticks and straws with these songs before, it will make it even easier for them to pick up the motions and they have the fun of glow sticks! Here are my videos with straws and rhythm sticks that you can use just by substituting glow sticks:

This year I also made a video using a glow bracelet in case you wanted an option just using one glow stick for larger primaries. You just wear it as a bracelet and follow the movements. Here is the video for that:

This year I also thought it would be fun to add a sort of parade section using paper plates. Often families go to parades this time of year and I thought how using paper plates looks like cymbals of a marching band, so I thought that could give us another fun element. Here are some videos you could use for that option:

I am planning 1 song with glow sticks, 1 song with finger lights, 1 song with paper plates, 1 song with hand motions, and the rest will be flags (for me that is 3 other songs). Since I have 2 primaries learning different songs, I was able to make or find 4 songs to go with the light up stuff for each category. I may not get to all the songs I have planned with our poppers, but it is fun to see how many we can get through! Sometimes if we don't get very far, I might do this type of singing time for 2 weeks in a row to get through all the songs. This way we can review all our program songs within the two weeks. And the kids had so much fun with this singing time last year, so I had to share. Hopefully this helps some of you too! I added a few new videos this year, so hopefully I will keep adding more options each year!

Happy singing and Happy 4th of July too :)