I have a calling in church where I teach music to all the children ages 4-11. I love my job and try to make it as fun and interesting as I can.
When I needed a game to play to encourage participation and to help us review the many songs we have been learning, I turned to Stanley the Singing Bee. Stanley loves music and he is especially attracted to these special “song” flowers. When the music is sung really well, Stanley lands on the special flowers- but OOPS, his stinger pops the center of the flower, and we have to find another “song” flower for him!To make your own Stanley and “song” flower garden, you will need flower shapes, water balloon size balloons (filled with air, not water- although after blowing just a couple of these up, you’ll wish you could just use water!), 12″ dowels, a container, and Stanley.
After your flowers are made, cut a small hole in the center. Push the tail of the balloon through and tie it around the dowel. This will hold the flower on, but when the balloon pops, the whole thing falls apart- the kids LOVE that. I cut out leaves and numbered them then glued them to the sticks- the numbers correspond with a song or verse that we are reviewing.
I put some Styrofoam into a flower container and then pushed all the dowels into the foam to make the garden. (You could certainly get much fancier than this, but I have found that children don’t care and I have other things to watch on tv/do.)
Stanley is a large circle cut out of cardboard and covered with yellow paper and strips of black. He has two large white circle wings and a smaller black circle head. When I glued on the yellow paper, I placed a needle between the cardboard and the paper where his “stinger” should be so he could pop the balloons.
Some rules we have had: Stanley is afraid of loud noises- so if it’s not reverent, or the singers shout instead of sing, he’ll go away and won’t come back out. Stanley really loves the words, so he needs to hear all of the words or he’ll get bored and won’t land on the flower.
I usually have a teacher or leader play Stanley, so I can focus on leading- and we get a more impartial “judge” to decide if they sang well enough for him to land. The kids love this, I have saved all the pieces and we’ve already used it a couple of times this year.
