Motivation for the Year and Helper Pics for January

I usually do a Motivator for the year. Last year we built an ice cream "Sunday" one scoop at a time for each song we learned. When the children knew the song "Program Perfect" they earned their scoop and then we celebrated the Saturday before our Program with a big Ice Cream Sundae party. They were so excited about it all year long.

This year, we're going to build our Pizza. They get a slice each song Introduction Sunday, and then they get to add toppings as they make that song "Program Perfect" Then, the Saturday before our program in October...we'll have a Primary Pizza Party. If you like this idea, you can easily make a chart out of poster board. I recently got hooked on making felt food for my kiddos and so I'm going to make a pizza out of felt that we can use. It will be an eight slice pizza instead of a four slice pizza and more toppings too, but here's a picture to get the idea. I made a whole bunch of felt food for a Christmas gift for my kids and it was way easy and way fun. If you want me to send the pattern I made and the instructions on how to make this, leave your email in the comment box and I'll figure out how to get that too you.

Anyhow.... I also decided to solve my "picking helper" problem. I'm tired of the sticks...It was annoying and I had several children come to me saying that they hadn't been picked in forever and just knew their name wasn't in there. So, some brilliant person on the primusic website suggested a great idea to do something fun to pick the names and the child could keep it afterward. That helped me to think outside of the box for a min, and I ended up back in the box...the crayon box. Here's what my crazy brain came up with.

I'm going to buy 1 box of 64 crayons for Sr. and one for Jr. I'm going to print out some small labels that have the different children's names on them. It will say, "Thanks for being a great helper in music today. Child's Name." I'll bring my box of crayons with me and call it my "Primary Colors". Then, I'll choose a color (choose a child) and they get to keep their crayon. I'll make sure and have some extras so I can add newbies last min and also visitor crayons to include those who visit our primary.

When the boxes are empty, I'll post my next idea for choosing children here.

I'll be posting my Repeat Week game mid-week so stay tuned.

*Thecrazychorister