I used this activity to review the primary program songs. It was meant to emphasize that we were working on getting the bugs out of the songs (getting rid of and fixing any problems).
Items needed: 1 poster board, eleven sheets of cardstock, plastic bugs (spiders, flies, and beetles), double-sided removable tape, magnets, eight wide mouth jars, Metamucil, food coloring, a cookie sheet, a container of soapy water, and a towel.
Using a black marker, divide a poster into squares – nine squares across and seven down. Each square should be a little under three and an eighth inches on each side.
Print the cover squares onto cardstock and cut them out. Using double-sided removable tape, place each cover square on a poster square. Put the letters spelling “Get the Bugs Out” in the middle of the poster.
Change the song titles to whatever songs you are working on and then print and cut them out.
Make some colored jars of slime - red, yellow, dark blue, light blue, green, purple, pink, and orange. The recipe can be found here. Put three bugs in each wide mouth jar – a spider, fly, and beetle. Put a different colored slime in each a jar and tape the matching colored song titles to the jar lids. (The slime will stay good for several weeks if stored in the fridge.)
Put the poster on the board using strong magnets.
To play this game the children take turns taking off the top cover cards on the poster. When a child finds a bug, that child gets to judge whatever the bug represents such as: Spiders – Words, Beetles – Projection, Flies – Presentation. The color of the bug on the poster determines what song they are judging. When the child thinks the song is free of problems in the area they are judging they get to reach into the song jar and pull out the bug they uncovered on the poster. Afterwards they wash their hands in the soapy water and dry them on the towel.
Be sure to place a cookie sheet under the jar to catch any drips as the bug is removed. Also push up the sleeves on the child if needed.
When the children find three bugs in a row they get to do a fun activity song as a reward. We did the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with these visual aids. I put magnets on the back of each picture and put the pictures on a metal cookie sheet. The child who pulled the third bug out of the jar got to mix up the pictures in each column. The children had a blast trying to do the new order. They sang the song one time for every three in a row they got. I started off with the pictures in two columns, the first part of the song in one column and the second in the other column. After doing the song a few times that way, I then let the children take pictures from either column and mix them.
I did this activity for primary music time for four weeks (until we had finished reviewing all the songs) and the kids never got tired of it. They loved it!
Note: The inspiration for this idea came from other music websites that posted ideas for the theme of getting the bugs out of the songs. Thank you for sharing your ideas!