Choose the Right

We didn't sleep very well last night (Ethan kept crying in his sleep), and what with us being sleepy-heads and the blizzard-like conditions we woke up to, we were late to church. . . again. I found out during primary that I had missed a rather important announcement in Sacrament Meeting. We have a new primary presidency! For now I'm just supposed to continue business as usual, but it will be interesting to see if/what changes they make.  I'm a little bit sad because I felt like things were starting to really work well with the old presidency, but I'm excited for the change too.

Anyway, I've obviously got primary on the brain, so I thought I'd share what we did for Singing Time today.

I've been hanging on to the peek-a-boo game I made for Ethan's birthday party. The theme for primary this year is Choose The Right, and I just knew I could implement it in some sort of activity. On Saturday, I finally figured it out.

We are learning the hymn Choose the Right this month, and I decided to work on the third verse this week. After we did our Article of Faith song and I introduced the wiggle worm jar that I just made, I brought out my cardboard contraption. I had the kids put on their listening ears (they just cup their ears), and I sang the first phrase for them, and then we all sang it together.

Choose the right! There is peace in righteous doing.

Then I picked someone to come up and open up the first two trap doors and we all decided together which choice would bring peace. The first picture shows some kids cheating, and the second one is supposed to be a boy studying.

Choose the right! There's safety for the soul.

The kids were pretty quick to decide that eating a carrot was much safer than smoking a cigarette. 

Choose the right in all labors you're pursuing; Let God and heaven be your goal.

With this one we talked about how money in itself isn't bad, but if we are talking about what you want most in life—your ultimate goals—heaven should be at the top of the list.

After each choice was made, we closed the bad choices and were left with this to remind us as we reviewed the verse. (They learned the chorus last week.)

And here's a picture of the whole thing just in case you wanted to see it.

For the pictures, I just found free clip art online, zoomed in on it till it was the size I wanted, held a blank piece of paper up to the screen, and traced it with a pencil. Then I went over them all with a sharpie. That way I didn't use any expensive printer ink and I didn't have to worry about sizing the clip art or making sure it didn't go all pixelated on me.

The kids had fun with it, and I did too. It wasn't difficult to make at all, but it did take some time, so I wish I knew of someone nearby who would want to use it. Seems a shame to just throw it away. At least the cardboard was used multiple times!