4th of July Singing Time

Here are the completed aids for my 4th of July singing time. I'll get home from traveling with minutes to spare, practically speaking, so I'm happy to have this ready to go. I'm planning to lead the kids outside in a short parade around the building. We'll march with kazoos and hum or sing the patriotic songs they might know. Then we'll come inside and use the "firecrackers" to choose other review songs, perhaps using the case studies I posted about earlier.


The firecrackers are spring-loaded party poppers that I got in the party aisle at Walmart. I just covered them with patriotic paper and added the silver "fuse." These poppers have a strong spring inside. When you twist the bottom, it makes a loud (but not too loud) popping noise and bursts with confetti and streamers inside --no smoke or smell. I slit open the top cardboard piece and carefully emptied all the small stuff out. Then I numbered each popper, repacked it with only the long streamers and taped the little cardboard piece down again. I did this so that I won't have quite such a mess of little confetti to clean up. The idea for these came from the discussions on the Primusic group on Yahoo.

After creating the pattern from the directions in the Friend, the hat went together easily. I thought it was too tall and trimmed 2 inches or so off the front height. It fits me pretty well, but was too big for my daughter and nephew. They were not around when I was making it! Ahhh well.

I hope you haven't missed the recent cute ideas for the 4th on Kristen's blog and Tara's new blog. You'll be glad you checked. Tara's sparklers are definitely going on my list for next year and I can adapt Kristen's lei idea sooner than that I think.


With two holidays and teaching "Come Follow Me" this month, there is a lot to try to do in July. It feels busy already! :O)