Pioneer Singing Time

Pioneer Singing Time Crickets and Chopsticks!

Tell the story or the crickets and the seagulls. Dump out the bag of “crickets” (I printed the words below on a brown paper and crumpled them up into tiny little balls) and tell the kids that we are going to eat some crickets today and learn some things about the pioneers. Choose a child to try to pick up a cricket with chopsticks (I had real chopsticks and a clothes pin for the younger kids). Unfold the paper and sing the song of tell a pioneer story.

Along the trail, and in the evening after the Pioneers walked between 14 and 20 miles a long day’s walk- pioneers would sometimes day- that’s like walking from here to the sing to keep their spirits up. dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving point! Choose your favorite primary Sing: Pioneer Children Sang as song They Walked p.214 (use the stop and go signs if it’s not an (Stand up/sit down every time you hear the action song) words “walked”) Brigham Young chose the spot for the Salt It took a lot of courage to be a pioneer. It Lake Temple just 4 days after they arrived. It was a very difficult journey and many people took almost 40 years to build complete it! died along the way. Sing: I Love to See the Temple Sing: Nephi’s Courage p.120 p. 95 (Use the stop light to sing this song loud, (Everybody leads) soft, and to stop altogether) It all started with Joseph Smith and the Many pioneers lost their homes and every restoration of the gospel. single thing they owned on the journey. The Golden Plates p.86 They remembered that the thing that (hide “golden plates” and sing hot and cold mattered most to them was their family. so that somebody can find them) The Family p.194 (With puppets) The pioneers traveled 6 days a week. Guess The pioneers followed the prophet to Salt which day they rested! Lake, and then they followed him by obeying Sing: Saturday p.196 when they were called to settle new parts of the area. Pioneer means: One that goes before, Sing: Follow the Prophet p.110 showing others the way to follow. (Use the animal signs to follow the leader) Sing: Do as I’m Doing p.276 (Pioneer style- do actions that show things that pioneers had to do)

Pioneer Story: Brigham Young was the prophet at the time, and he arrived in the first wagon train. He was very sick but when they could see the valley he said “This is the right place, drive on”. He later recorded that he had seen the valley and Ensign Peak in a dream and he recognized it when he got there. (July 24, 1847)

Pioneer Story: Sometimes families brought more than they could carry the whole way. They had to leave special things behind like books, furniture and family china. The Kimball family, wrapped their piano in buffalo skin and carefully buried it. The next year, they came back with a team of oxen and took it home.