Singing Time Butter

Yep - I had fun in primary again today. Thanks so much to my sister for this idea...it really turned out well.



A little history 101:
In July of 1847, the first Mormon pioneers arrived in Utah (Mexico Territory) and determined that "this is the place" where they could settle and live - safely cocooned in the Rocky Mountains, and mostly out of everyone's way. It was a time and a place to heal. In Utah, the 24th of July is the state holiday which celebrates the pioneer heritage and Utah's eventual statehood. We look back on the early Mormon pioneers and recognize the sacrifices that many of them made - leaving their homes, families, possessions, even losing their lives or loved ones on their trek west. Now days it is difficult to imagine how great these sacrifices were. They were made however, by a people who had been seeking for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and when it was restored on the earth through Joseph Smith these people recognized it and were willing to give everything to receive the blessings of the gospel.

In primary last month the children learned several different pioneer songs - songs which narrated how the pioneer children walked and walked and walked...(you get the picture). Today in primary, I thought we could take it a little further and tie our review in with the Church's pioneer history.

I had a chart on the board depicting different ways to sing a song. FF, pp, stacatto, lento, presto, and maestro (the last one is not a musical term by the way) - each musical term tied to a number on a die (dice).

We talked about how difficult it might be if you were walking all day to prepare a good meal for dinner. We then talked about how the pioneers were able to make butter by pouring the cream from their milk into containers and hanging it on the back of the wagons. As they traveled all day long, the movement would 'churn' the butter as they went and they would have butter at the end of the day for their dinner.

I gave each class a jar with some whipping cream in it and told them that we were going to work on learning the Crusader's Hymn - Beautiful Savior which they've been working on all month.

A child got to roll the die to determine which style we would use to sing our song and then 1 class member got to 'churn' their butter as they sang. If it was a presto song, they got to churn like speedy gonzales. If it was piano, they had to do it softly etc. If they got 'maestro', then the teachers had to sing, and the kids only got to churn as well as their teachers sang - they loved that! After each verse, we'd go for another singing option and the kids would pass the jar to their neighbors.

After we were done, during sharing time I dumped out the extra liquid, added a bit of salt and buttered up some rolls for the jr. primary kids to eat with their butter. I let Sr. primary take care of their own. The kids LOVED this activity and it definitely helped move our review right along!