The Sunday Before Halloween - Choose one of THREE activities!

Oct 29 Update:
I took some pictures after Singing Time on Sunday to share what we did:

Before I Talk about Tomorrow's Activity ...

I was so thrilled about how the primary program went last Sunday. Our primary president did an amazing job of incorporating all of the talks, children's lines, the placement of the kids and teachers, and with some very limited input from me, the placement of the songs. The program went very smoothly. The children were so reverent and wonderful. I am so impressed with these children and their beautiful hearts and testimonies.

I want to share three special things I did that I think went very well. I never paid attention to all the special thinking that went into this for the primary chorister, before this was my own calling.

• "As a Child of God" - I had the girls sing the first verse before the boys joined in for the choir, and then did the opposite for the second verse. Everyone sang the third verse.
• "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" - I had eight girls (6 and 7) come up to the podium to sing the second verse of the song before the primary joined in for the chorus. This had a beautiful effect and enhanced the words of the song.
• "Choose the Right" - The children signed all three verses of the song with me, then the congregation joined in for the last verse of the song, and we made this the closing song of the program. It was perfect. 

Singing Time Activity ... so many Halloween ideas ...

Idea #1 - Costume Clothing
I was tempted to work on the Christmas program songs with the children this Sunday, but they have been working so hard on learning new songs all year, that I went to my favorite singing time blog, The Crazy Chorister, for inspiration. The Crazy Chorister is retired, but I looked for her past October activities, and found one that I loved, where depending on how children sang, either their teacher or the chorister would end up wearing a bunch of costume clothes. What a cute idea. She did not reference Halloween but I like the subtle tie-in.

Idea #2 - Decorate the Pumpkin

Draw a pumpkin and bring in various pre-cut pumpkin parts (eyes, ears, mouths, noses). Children get to come up and help decorate the pumpkin. Each piece they choose will determine what song we sing. I was thinking it could also be a blooper, where some parts will say, "Oh, no song, but your teacher has to wear a ..." and then pick something from the dress-ups pile. This was inspired by notion of making people dress up from the Crazy Chorister above, but is a way that I would be more comfortable playing the game. I'm not as crazy as the Crazy Chorister!

- OR - 

Decorate a real pumpkin with the same principles. Use toothpick holes already inserted into the pumpkin and pre-cut vegetables. The fun part about this is that you could then put the pumpkin on your doorstep for children to recognize when they come by to go trick-or-treating!

Idea #3 - Trick or Treat?

My stake primary chorister shared this one with me. You have little pumpkins stuffed with pieces of paper, that are either a trick or a treat. (Can be substituted easily with pieces of paper if you don't have little pumpkins, which I don't.) If it is a trick, it will say something like, "Trick! Only your class sings this song!" The real trick, is to make all the pumpkins tricks! Then, at the end, you can tell them that you tricked them, and give them all a treat. 

This can be combined with one of the above activities - if you choose the "wrong" pumpkin it's a trick and your class has to sing the song a certain way, etc.