Week 23- 4th of July review

How exciting to have the 4th of July be on Sunday! I was reading ideas online, and there was one chorister who was planning on sharing the story of how Willford Woodruff had a vision of the signers of the declaration of independence. Since the sharing time lady told me to take a lot of time, I decided I'd go ahead and give a little history lesson before we started singing today.
I started by telling the kids I was going to be their history teacher, and I grabbed a big, old book, that I had written "History" on, and pretended to start reading from it. (WHile I spoke, the pianist played "battle hymn of the republic" in the background.) I told them that over 200 years ago on this very day, the 4th of July, these men (I pointed to a picture of some of our founding fathers), men like Benjamen Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, made this (then I pointed to my fake declaration of independence.) I took down the declaration of independence and walked around the room giving all the kids an up close look as I explained what these men wrote in the declaration, and how the declaration was so important to our country becoming free. Then I said, "What if I told you, that these very important men in U.S. history, who you'll learn all about in school, that after they died, THEY WANTED TO BE BAPTIZED INTO THIS CHURCH!"
I told them there was another character in this story, Willford Woodruff. I told them that he was the prophet of our church after these men had died and how he had a vision where the signers of the declaration of independence asked why no one had been baptized for them and that they wanted their temple work done. I told them how he was baptized for all the signers of the declaration, and that he baptized his friend for many presidents of the U.S. I ended with, "These men who were so important to this country, after they died found out what was most important of all...returning to our Heavenly Father. And that is why they asked WW to be baptized for them.

I then turned to another part of my "history" book and told them that I wanted to teach them about our flag. I told them what the colors symbolized and the stars and stripes, etc. Then I showed them the little flags I had made and told them that each one had a freedom written on it, that would tell us which song to review. For example, one of the flags read, "I have the freedom to be a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints". So then we reviewed our song, "The Church of Jesus Christ".

For the senior primary, instead of doing the bit about flags, I went straight from the WW story to our song review using POP-its! I asked permission from the primary president first to use these loud, kind of messy 4th of July things, and she said it was no problem. Clay helped me put the names of songs to review inside of each of the POP-its. The kids loved the POP noise and the flying mini streamers! I loved today and I was AMAZED at how reverent all the kids were during their history lesson. Bless their hearts!