April flipchart: I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ

You can download the WORD DOCUMENT or the PDF here.

April: week 1 (introduce)

I really liked the suggestion on how to introduce this song, as outlined in the 2010 outline for Sharing Time, so, that is where my INTRO comes from. I will do the same INTRO for both Junior and Senior, but will change how I go about teaching the song for both groups.
***I plan on reviewing He Sent His son, so that plan is at the bottom of this post***

INTRO:

Ask the kids to stand up if:

• They have ever belonged on a sports team.
• Belong to a neighborhood
• belong to a family.
• If they belong to a church.
• Ask them what church they blong to. Show them a blown up picture of the Church Logo.

               

Tell them that belonging means to be an important part of something. We are all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We belong to Christ’s church.

JUNIOR primary:

(We have a VERY young Junior primary...)

Tell the kids that you brought a friend who also belongs to this church, who wants to teach them a song. Show them a puppet. (It would be awesome if this puppet could wear a missionary-type name tag) Tell them that they will take turns singing: when the puppet sings, it is the children’s turn to listen, and when it is the children’s turn to sing, the puppet will listen.

Have visuals up on blackboard, scattered, and have the kids help put them in the right order.

Procedure: The puppet will sing a sentence of the song, the kids will find the correlating picture, the puppet will re-sing that sentence, then the kids will sing that sentence. (most of the sentences are VERY short, so do a few repetitions for each one) Then, group the sentences into phrases (each color below represents a “phrase”) and sing through that phrase.

I belong to the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I know who I am.

I know God’s Plan.

I’ll follow him in Faith.

I believe in the Savior Jesus Christ,

I’ll honor his name!

I’ll do what is right!

I’ll follow his light!

His truth I will proclaim!

When finished, have a volunteer, come point to each picture as the puppet and primary sing through the whole song.

SENIOR Primary:

 Have visuals scattered on board. Start singing, and have the kids put the pictures in the right order, but only one person can put a picture up at a time, then they will  pick someone else to find the next picture. When the pictures are in the right order, talk through the song with them, explaining the importance of each phrase.

Review: He Sent His Son

Invite kids up to hold visuals for the Questions, leaving spaces between each child, for the answers. Post the answer pictures, scattered, up on a blackboard. Ask a question, then have a child go find the matching answer, and stand in the correct spot. Sing through that question and answer, then repeat. When all pictures are in the correct spot, sing through the whole song.

April: week 2 & 3 (Reinforce)

I'm so excited about this week, because I get to bring back the Magic potion!   It's been over a year since we last did this, and it was SUCH a big hit. I love this idea because we can repeat, repeat, repeat! And even the tiniest juniors can be involved, even though they can't read yet. Besides, how could a science experiment in Primary, NOT be fun?!


Click HERE for a full, detailed description on how this works. I'm just going to give a brief summary below...

1) Write out the words to the song in 4 or 5 different colors on a dry-erase board. 

 (I did this last year to review How Firm a Foundation)

2) Have this prepared before hand: The clear cups contain a mixture of water and vinegar. The teaspoons have a drop of food coloring under a scoop of baking soda.

3) Invite a child to pick a spoon, and stir it in a cup of water. It will start to fiz as they stir. When the fiz goes down, it will reveal a color. 

4) Then, have a child (or several children) come up and erase that color of words. Then, sing through the song.  You could also sing through the song WHILE the kids are erasing the words, to maximize singing time, and minimize waiting time.

5) Repeat this process until all the words have been erased. 

*** If you have separate Jr. and Sr. music times, you'll have to be quick about changing the water/vinegar out and setting up the spoons, and rewriting all the words. 

Last time, I forgot to add the vinegar to the water for Sr. sharing, and there was no fiz!

Totally lame! 

Don't forget the VINEGAR! :)

April: week 4 (Test)

Hat/Mystery word game

***This is not my original idea. I have no idea the original source, as I have seen it in numerous places...***

Update: I tried this with my junior and Sr. Primary today, and they loved the game....the Hat....no so much. Only one little girl wore it.  :) I just held up the cards so the primary could see. Thanks to a comment left by Dana, who suggested  taping the card to the kids' heads. That could be fun! Also eliminates concerns about lice. Ack! Thanks Dana!!!

This game is similar to the keyword game.

I have 4x6 index cards, that I have written a key word on. 

In primary, pick one of these cards, or have a child pick a card.

Invite another child to come up and wear the hat. 

Once the hat is on, show the card so everyone BUT the child wearing the hat, can see the word. 

For Juniors: you might have the child go out in the hall, and then tell them what the word is.

Then, sing the song, but do NOT sing the word that is on the hat. At the end of the song, the child wearing the hat tries to guess which word is on the hat.

Hint: Help out your primary by putting your finger to your lips as if to "hush" them when the key word comes up in the song...

My key words for "The church of Jesus Christ" are: Know, Believe, Follow, name, right, light, proclaim, etc...

(this is my son. Isn't he handsome?)

Niche Site Profits April 2011

 With the eHow WCP closed for good and taking with it the backbone of what was a full-time passive residual income from writing, I've been working harder than ever on my own properties to rebuild my monthly residuals. I recently shared my residual income without eHow. In April, I focused efforts on two of my own sites to begin rebuilding monthly cash flow. I'll share their income reports below.

Facebook Fan Page
In April, I added some backlinks and set up a Facebook page for my pets site.  The Facebook page has 15 fans and I've posted links to articles on my site there, receiving a few comments and a sprinkling of visitors. With the Google changes, social media is increasingly important for traffic and rankings.

Outsourcing Content
While the pets site was previously written entirely by me, and is on a topic with which I am very familiar and work with in real life on a daily basis, I decided to hire a freelance writer to help me add more articles to it in May. The writer has personal experience in this niche as well, and I'm confident I'll see quality work from him. I'll update on that front next month.

Pets Website Earnings
Income for this niche hit its peak in March, as was the case in 2010 and 2009, and will wind slowly down from here, with the fall months typically the lowest-earning.

Adsense      7.74
Clickbank   0.18
Amazon        .44

April total   4.36

(-.33 compared to March 2011)

Family Niche Blog Income
Just the other day, I lamented to my husband that my newer niche blog on a family-related topic was only earning about a month from Adsense, whereas the pets site at the same age was making -0 a month from ad clicks and affiliate commissions. It wasn't until I listed and tallied all its income sources that I realized it's actually doing very well.

Started last August, it's less than nine months old and has just 15 blog posts and four pages. I discovered this niche from one of my eHow articles that did exceptionally well (it earned over ,000 in revenue share and more than ,500 in affiliate commissions in 3.5 years).

Family niche blog income sources in April 2011:

cj.com       .75
RA sales    .82
Clickbank  .24 
Amazon     .06
Adsense      .82

Total         .69

Thus my total earnings from these two sites in April was 4.05 -- to me, a very encouraging number. I have over a dozen domain names, most sitting unloved with just a few pages or posts apiece (or in some cases, nothing), but by focusing my efforts on one or two sites at a time, I hope to bring them all up to at least the 0/month mark by next year and keep growing from there.

•  Check out my Tools & Training resource page for links to the products and services I use and recommend. If you haven't made your own profitable website yet, everything you need to get started is right there.

Do you have a niche site or blog? How is it doing? If not, what's stopping you from moving forward?