2015 Yearly Planner

It's not really like me, but when it comes to planning for singing time, I like to knock out the whole year in one or two afternoons.

I am normally quite the "fly by the seat of my pants" kind of girl and rarely plan for anything. But maybe the thought of occupying myself with something worthwhile that lets me avoid housework for one or two afternoons (without feelings as guilty if I still avoided work for one or two afternoons just playing solitaire) is what ropes me in.

Because I am quite the thief when it comes to planning singing times geared towards the year's sharing time songs, of course those activities are not included (because they have not appeared on the internet for me to steal them yet).

I do however, have several seasonal activities already plugged in.

This calendar includes monthly birthday and welcome songs and then the weekly opening songs that I try to match to the different weekly themes.

I do not list Reverence or Closing songs simply because I almost never have time to include them.

Often, our first counselor will sing some of the books of the Bible or Book of Mormon songs, but because I am quite busy trying to wrangle my nursery child into her class, I just let her deal with that.

Here is my latest version on google docs.

And don't forget to check out my other singing time blog: Would You Like to Sing a Song? I update it much more often than I do on this one.

Lego derby for fifth Sunday in August

So, August ALSO has five Sundays in it. This past fifth Sunday I did a simplified version of the 4th of July poppers (without the cardboard tubes) and somehow it didn't seem as fun, but it occupied the whole time, so I guess I can't complain.

While I wouldn't call last Sunday an EPIC FAIL, it did make me think that I would have to work extra hard to come up with something awesome for the ridiculously soon next fifth Sunday.

I hope I have found it - although it will require some buying of lego wheels for me.

Here it is - completely plagiarized from Hum Your Favorite Hymn

My son was a new Cub Scout so I had Pinewood Derby on the brain -- I decided to do a LEGO Pinewood Derby! I made a very very simple cardboard ramp (and in the Primary room, I just propped it up against a chair at the back of the room).

For both Junior and Senior it was the same.
I put together bags of LEGOs beforehand, one per class. The same exact number and type of LEGOs. Also beforehand, we made 5 basic LEGO cars (Junior and Senior each have 5 classes) -- wheels and a base for them to build on.

I also prepared papers that listed their song choices.

So we began by singing one song together.
Then I handed out the bags of LEGOs to each class, and one of the cars, and told them they had a couple of minutes to work together to add the LEGO pieces to their car.
We then chose two classes to go first -- they raced their cars, and the winner got to pick the next song from my list of songs.
Then another class raced the winner of that race.
And so on until everyone raced.
It was kind of rowdy but fun!