Hi there, Lindsey here. I just wanted to tell you about a super fun Halloween party we threw on Tuesday! In our church I work with the young women (girls ages 12-18) and we decided that in October we wanted to throw a Halloween party for the primary kids. You've heard my mom talk about working in the Primary. Primary kids are ages 3-11. The week before the Halloween Party, the Young Women met together to come up with ideas of fun games and activities to do with the kids. Here is a list of the ideas they came up with:
We had a lot of fun coming up with ideas and each chose a booth or two that she would be in charge of running. I handled making these certificates for the costume contest. We came up with ten different categories. Here is the one for "The Most Historic Costume." My daughter won "The Most Disney Costume." She is being Luisa from Encanto this year because "Luisa is super strong and so am I!" At the beginning of the Halloween party we had the primary kids line up and march around together to music while the Primary Presidency (the adult leaders who make sure everything in Primary is running the way it should) judged each costume and came up with the winners for each. Then we started the festivities with every kid being able to go around to each booth. At every booth there were prizes. I handled the Mummy Bowling. My daughter had bought me a toy bowling set for mother's day three years ago (it resides in her bedroom in case you were wondering.) It came with ten plastic pins and two small plastic bowling balls. When one of the young women suggested Halloween bowling I was so glad we had it on hand! To make the mummies I cut toilet paper into strips and then wrapped the pins up in toilet paper. Then my daughter drew different faces on all of them. we wrapped the balls too and my daughter said it was going to be a Mummy battle! At the church I set up the pins between two chairs and I wrapped twine around the chairs to keep the pins from going too far away. The kids had two chances to knock the pins over. If they knocked any pins over they got 1 piece of candy. If they knocked them all over they got two pieces of candy. If they didn't knock any over their consolation prize was... a piece of candy. (Our goal here was for the kids to have fun!) For the Ghost Hunt I made twenty of these little ghosts and taped them up around the gym. Throughout the night the kids counted up how many ghosts they could find and the ones who found the most won a prize! These ghosts were so easy to make! I wrapped a tissue around a cotton ball and tied it off with one of my daughter's small elastic hair tie. Then I drew the little ghost faces on with a sharpie marker. My daughter really loved everything, but was excited to get a unicorn painted on her face. She was also excited by the glow in the dark fangs she won at one of the booths. We gave each of the kids small treat bags to hold their candy and prizes in as they went around to each booth.
She also especially loved the "Ghost Face" game. She had to stick her face in a pile of whipped cream to find the candy corn hidden in it. Her face looked like a ghost face when she was done because of the whipped cream all over it. The Spider racing was a perfect game for little kids. You take straws and blow through them to get your toy spider to move. The first one to the finish line wins! The Eyeball Racing game was just like the egg spoon race game where you have to balance an egg on a spoon and "race" from one end to the other without your egg falling off. However, instead of eggs we used plastic toy eyeballs. The Haunted Table was the "scariest" thing we did with the kids. The table was set up with a sheet and kids had to reach their hand in to feel "eyeballs" (peeled grapes), witch's fingers (carrots), brains (chopped mushrooms), and a pile of nerves (spaghetti). Then they had to guess what each thing actually was. Towards the end of the party we gathered all the kids around to play Halloween Bingo. One of the women who works in the Primary already had cards made up that she's used in the past with the older primary kids. Since it was all words we teamed up a reader with a non reader. The board had all Halloween words. We played until three teams had gotten Bingo. Then we took a group picture and announced the costume contest winners. The Primary kids had a blast at this Halloween Party, and the Young Women absolutely loved throwing it for them! I hope this will give you ideas for your own Halloween Party, and have a fun and safe Halloween!
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Thankfully, I still have the job in my church of teaching singing to the children ages 3-11. Over all of the callings I have had throughout my life in the church, this is my absolute favorite. I love getting to know all of the children and having fun singing with them. I love sharing my testimony with them through music. Most of all, I love how strongly the Spirit speaks to us in Primary when the children love and understand a song and sing it beautifully. All year long, I teach the children songs that they will be singing for the whole congregation in the Fall. It is called the Primary Sacrament Meeting Program. For many, it is the best Sacrament Meeting of the year because of the sweet spirit the children bring when they sing and speak. As I teach them throughout the year, it is easy to get caught up in getting them to perfect their singing, i.e. knowing the words and singing loud enough. But, I know that the most important thing I should teach is the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ through song. I want the children to learn and understand the doctrine taught within the music. When they do know and understand the message of the songs, they actually do sing their best because they love the simple truths that the Primary Music teaches. Recently, I came up with an idea that checks the children's understanding of the songs that we are singing this year. It was a sort of trivia game that made the review fun as well as informative. This idea could be adapted to any songs that your Primary is working on. I am including printable versions of the graphics that I used for my kids and I think that you will be able to see how you could personalize your own. You can simply click on each picture to get the pdf file to print them yourself!
These last 2 pictures are about verses from "Follow the Prophet." We practiced Enoch and Moses on this particular week. After you print the pictures, the prep work is easy. I used magnets to put the pictures up on the blackboard randomly. I asked the children as they came in to look at the pictures and if they could read, to read the questions and quietly think about which ones they could answer. I had them whisper to their teachers and to their other classmates who all shared what they thought the answers were. Then, one at a time I gave each class an opportunity to send up a representative to choose one of the pictures and tell us which song it was about. Then, I would discuss the song briefly with them. For example, for "My Heavenly Father Loves Me," I explained the scripture from Alma and we talked about how seeing Heavenly Father's beautiful creations remind us of his love for us. For "Guide Us, O Thou Great Jehovah," we talked about what it means to be fed by the Spirit. Then, we would sing the song. Everyone felt involved and the children had great insights. I was able to bear my testimony of the truths we discussed. It was a simple and effective activity. If you want to make your own graphics for additional songs, my two favorite places to do that are on Canva or on Google Drive. You could even make them on Word and just use stock pictures. I hope that if you are the chorister in your Primary, you will love it as much as I do and that you find this idea helpful! Let me know if you give it a try! PS: Here is the link to "I Will Walk With Jesus." Other Primary Ideas I've Shared
This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. Thanks for your support! I don't even remember where I learned the silly game, "Don't Eat Pete", but I have played it as a down time game with kids when I taught school and they always loved it. About 4 years ago, I taught it to my grandchildren. We all played it as a family and had so much fun laughing and especially watching the little ones get a big kick out of it. Here is how you play:
With that in mind, you will now understand why when I was in the store looking at the Easter Candy and I saw Peeps, that this variation of the game came to my mind. Why not an Easter version of Don't Eat Pete? And thus, Don't Eat Peep was born! I made this 9 square board. When I printed mine, I discovered that I was running out of colored ink, so yours will have yellow on it and look even cuter. I numbered the bunnies from 1 to 9 so that when you play, you just pick the number that you want to be Pete. Then, look! I found these bunny shaped marshmallows at Walmart! I can hardly wait for my grandkids to get here so that we can play together! Click on the button so that you can get your own game board. I copied mine on card stock, but plain white paper works just fine. Just click the button and print yours right away! You only need one copy and everyone can play! Singing Time Version I have written posts before about things I do with the young children at church as I teach them singing. We do a lot of activities to make it fun. "Don't Eat Pete" is a game that I have converted to use with my kids for Singing Time.
Birthday/Kid's Parties! If you have extra kids or grandkids coming for Easter, "Don't Eat Peep" is great for any size crowd. If you want to play "Don't Eat Pete", at other times of the year, for birthdays or other parties for kids, I found these game boards available on Etsy! The site is called Paper Tagged. Just click the link or picture to order! In this game, everyone gets to eat treats and you could keep track of who got to eat the most and the least to give out ultimate prizes if you would like. I have played it with large classrooms and church groups of up to 40 kids! It is the perfect game for any sized crowd of kids. And that's how it works! I hope you can use these ideas and enjoy the free printable board for some Easter fun!
This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase after clicking them, we will be compensated, but there is no additional cost to you. All opinions expressed are our own. Thank you for your support. I have written before about my job at church to lead the young children in singing. Each year we put on a program for the entire congregation and singing is a big part of that program. Now that our church has implemented a home centered/church supported program entitled "Come Follow Me," based on the teaching of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, singing in Primary plays a big role in the support of those gospel studies. I love teaching and singing the songs of the gospel with these young children, and they love to sing with me. I follow a few different bloggers who also do this job in various other congregations throughout the church. One of the popular ones is Camille of Camille's Primary Ideas. I was looking at her site the other day and she has a great idea for a song review game based of the actual game of "Would You Rather." It is a fun game that has questions that requires the kids to make a choice and then change sides of the room according to their choice and sing the next song from there. Camille even made some awesome printables to go with her ideas. She cites Sue McDonald Daniels as giving the original idea. I loved this idea and decided to try it out last Sunday. The only difference is that I wanted all of the questions to go along with the topics and songs that we have been studying. For example, I asked, "Would You Rather eat bread or fish?" and of course that went with the miracle of feeding the 5,000. I also asked questions that would go with specific songs like, "Would you rather go into the Sea of Galilee or the River Jordan?" to go with Baptism on page 100 of our children's songbook. It is about John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. This game took very little preparation, except to come up with the questions. The children love it because they were able to get up and move around and the questions made them think. You can engage them by asking them what scripture story they think the question is referencing or why they made the choice that they did. We got through about 5 songs before I had them all sit back in their regular seats and we sang a quiet song to settle everyone down. This will be an activity we will use again! So, to get ready to use it with topics throughout the year, I brainstormed some questions to use with topics coming later in the year. I am sharing them with you today. If you click the button, you will get the PDF file to print off. Hopefully, these questions will help you to come up with more ideas, like Camille's did for me! Let me know if they do because I will can always use more ideas. The beauty of this idea as well is that you can use the questions from the beginning as the year progresses to review again! So, the questions are evergreen! I hope you have as much fun with this idea as I did with my kids! Now that Easter is coming, Don't Forget this "Don't Eat Pete" Free Download to play with your kids!
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Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
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Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
April 2024
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