You've Had a Birthday

With the new time changes taking place in 2019 I know some wards have decided to cut out singing birthday songs to the primary children.  In my primary we have decided to continue to sing happy birthday to the primary children, but it is now part of my 20 minutes of singing time versus opening exercises.  For this reason I have chosen to sing You've Had a Birthday to every child during 2019 so that I am not spending a lot of time teaching new birthday songs.  We have a small primary so this isn't a big deal since we aren't singing the song every week.  If you have a big primary you might want to learn several songs to rotate so everyone doesn't get bored.

Since we are singing the same birthday song to every child I wanted to come up with something that would make the song special and that the children would look forward to.  So I bought these birthday blowouts at the dollar store. They do not make noise, but when you blow through them the end shoots out like a frog's tongue.

On a child's birthday I have them come to the front of the room and give them the blowout.  Each time we sing a rhyming word "hooray, today, too, you" the birthday child blows on their blowout. This is really simple, but the primary children LOVE it! At the end of the song they get to keep the blowout to take home. I have them put it under their chair to keep them from blowing it the rest of singing time.    

For the rest of the primary I give them THESE egg shakers and let them shake to the rhythm while we sing.