Friend July 2020 “Cook Like a Pioneer” Johnny Cakes: Add or subtract the items in the picture to to find out how much of each of the ingredients to use.
Friend July 2018 Horseshoe Cookies
Friend July 2017 “Family Night Fun” Marshmallow Covered Wagons
Friend July 2021 “Pioneers Then and Now” A pioneer is someone who helps lead the way. There are many ways to be a pioneer! How many similarities can you find between these two pioneer families?
Friend July 2020 “Following the Pioneers” Anyone who leads the way to help make life better for others is a pioneer. Activity: As you pass through each circle in the maze, read the ways you can be a pioneer!
Friend July 2019 “Funstuff: Modern Pioneers” Put the pictures in order of a modern pioneer family joining the Church in Nigeria.
Friend July 2022 “Draw It” Some of the first pioneers in the Church went to the Salt Lake Valley in covered wagons. For Pioneer Day on July 24, learn to draw a covered wagon and oxen!
Friend July 1985
New Era April 2020 “Fun Stop” Games you can play with sticks
Friend July 2018 The Hop, Step, and Jump Game
Friend July 2017 Churn butter, talk about pioneers in your family, or hold sack races.
Tic-Tac-Toe Three Wagons in a Row Game
When one of the children gets three wagons in a row they get to choose one of the wagons and get its bag out. Whatever is inside the bag is the activity the Primary children will do, such as singing a pioneer song, or listening to a pioneer story, or doing a pioneer game or activity. After the activity, have the children continue playing the game in the same manner until all the bag activities have been done (or until time runs out).
Friend July 2019 “For Parents of Little Ones” Ideas on how to celebrate Pioneer Day by discussing how their ancestors (or themselves) were pioneers, such first to go to college, first to join the Church, etc.
Ensign July 2016 Pioneers are people who prepare the way for others to follow.
Draw a picture or find a photo of one of your ancestors. Can you find a story of how they prepared the way for you to follow? Write two ways you can be a pioneer today.
Friend July 2018 “Find the people in your family tree who were pioneers, such as the first person to join the church or the first to graduate from college.
Friend July 2020 “Following the Pioneers” It’s not as important to walk where pioneers walked as it is to live like they lived, such as having faith, obedience, not leaving anyone behind, and working together to build Zion.
Friend July 2020 “For Older Kids” A pioneer is someone who does something new and helps others to follow.Were you the first in your family to do something? What was it? Draw or write about it in your journal!
Friend January 2022 “How Can I Be a Pioneer?” To be a pioneer, we must believe, work, serve, and overcome our hard times like the early pioneers did.
Tic Tac Toe – Three Wagons in a Row: Pioneer Game
Preparation
Game Rules: Have a child roll the dice (or draw out numbers from a bag). The child moves one of the wagons the rolled amount of spaces across the tic tac toe board. Another child rolls the dice and does the same thing. The object of the game is to get three wagons in a row, diagonally, horizontally, or vertically. This is not a competition. There are no teams. Let each Primary child take a turn rolling the dice and moving a wagon.
When one of the children gets three wagons in a row they get to choose one of the wagons and get its bag out. Whatever is inside the bag is the activity the Primary children will do, such as singing a pioneer song, or listening to a pioneer story, or doing a pioneer game or activity. After the activity, have the children continue playing the game in the same manner until all the bag activities have been done (or until time runs out).
(When there are no spaces where they can move a wagon, they must choose one of the wagons to slide off the game board to the right as their turn. When all three wagons on a string are on the right side of the board, they can start moving them back across to the left side of the board.)
Friend July 2017 “Pioneer Night” A family celebrates Pioneer Day for Family Home Evening.
Friend July 2019 “For Older Kids” “I got to play a part in the British pageant. I have really enjoyed portraying a wonderful girl. I have learnt the sorrow she felt and the brave personality she was. The opportunity of being in the pageant has bought me closer to the Saviour, and I will never forget it!” Poppy F., age 11, West Sussex, England
Friend July 2017 “Road to Zion” After Mary’s father has a stroke, Mary gets her family to Utah traveling alone in their wagon.
Friend January 1986 “Ellen Pucell Unthank” While crossing the plains in handcarts, Nellie’s parents died and Nellie’s feet froze and had to be amputated, but she remained faithful and thankful.
Friend June 1988 “The Scent of Lilacs” Becky and her brothers and sisters lose both their mother and their father as they travel to the salt lake valley.
Friend June 1987 “Jacob Hamblin” Jacob has a reputation for being honest with the Indians, which his son finds out.
Friend July 1987 A little boy went missing from a handcart company. The father was to use a shawl to signal the mother if he found the boy alive.
Friend July 1987 “The China Doll” Lou worries there won’t be room for her doll in the covered wagon.
Friend July 2015 Part 1 of 2. Two girls leave their mother in Sweden & travel to America
Friend August 2015 Part 2
A pioneer is someone who goes before others and prepares the way for them.
Friend July 2018 “A Different Kind of Pioneer” Gabby doesn’t have any ancestors that crossed the plains to tell about at Primary Activity Day, so she tells about her great-grandmother who was a pioneer through her faith in God. Her faith influenced Gabby’s mother to join the church.
Friend July 2016 “A Priceless Heritage” When President Eyring’s great grandfather joined the church he left a priceless heritage for his descendants.
“A Different Kind of Pioneer” – Friend July 1984 – Girl gives a Primary talk about her family joining the church.
Friend July 2019 “Mara the Pioneer” Mara learns that she is a pioneer because the church has only been in Cambodia for 25 years.
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Friend October 2024 “Joshua the Pioneer” Joshua decided to give a talk in Primary about pioneers. He finds out he is a pioneer too. He was adopted and was the first person in his birth family to join the Church.
Friend April 2021 “Julia Mavimbela” During a time of racism and violence in South Africa, Julia wanted to bring goodness to her community, so she started a community garden. She taught love and forgiveness. Then she met missionaries and joined the church. She continued to teach love and helped start Women for Peace, a group to promote unity and peace in South Africa.
Friend February 2021 “Pioneers in Every Land: Vicky Tadić” Vicky was curious why the family next door was different. The mom invited her to church in their home (because there wasn’t a church building in Bosnia). Vicky learned about the Holy Ghost. The next day a voice in her mind told her to stay away from some trash cans. Suddenly a car crashed into them. She was glad she listened. Soon her whole family was learning about the gospel and was baptized.
Friend July 2020 “I’m a Pioneer Too” Song and Sing-Along Music Video
Friend July 2016 “When I Hear of Pioneer Children”
Friend July 2017 “Come, Come Ye Saints” Simplified sheet music and music video
Friend July 2019 “To Be a Pioneer” Simplified playing version and music video.
Pioneer Choosing Activity
Since it was Pioneer Day this week, I decided to have the children sing pioneer songs for music time. I started out with a choosing activity. I used the crickets and seagull idea from Sugar Doodle. I covered the outside of a metal bowl with green tissue paper to make it look like a green hill. I printed off some crickets and a seagull from clip art on Microsoft Word. I used double sided tape and taped a strong magnet to the back of each cricket. I also wrote the name of a pioneer song on the back of each cricket. I put the crickets on the bowl. I taped one end of a string to the back of the seagull. I taped the other end to a dowel rod. On the back of the seagull’s beak I attached a paper clip.
In Primary I told the story of the crickets and the seagulls. After that I had a child “fly” the seagull to the crickets and pick one up with the beak. We sang what song was on the back. I chose the following songs to put on the back of the crickets:
Pioneer Children Sang as They Walked
For this song I had the senior primary children get up and move over one seat every time they sang the word “walked”. This only works if you have all the children sitting in an even number of rows and in one section with no aisles. The children in the front row will move to the left, the children in the second row will move to the right, and so forth. When a child comes to the end of their row, they will go to the row in front of them. If they are already on the front row, they will move to the back row.
The children loved this activity. The teachers even wanted to participate, which was good because they helped any children that were unsure of what to do. (I had pages of a flip chart made by Jolly Jen posted on the board just incase someone didn’t know the words.)
For junior primary have them slowly walk randomly around the room as they sing the first two lines. Then have them stop and do the following actions: rub their hands together for washing in the stream, hammering action for work, jumping rope for play, making a tent with finger tips pressed together for camped, making a book with open palms together for read, and making praying hands for the word prayed. Then have them start walking again as they sing the last line, but this time have them walk back to their seats. On the last walk word have them sit down.
The Handcart Song
For the handcart song, I used the hand cart racing activity -July Friend 1981 Funstuff. Since we aren’t supposed to use competition in Primary, I had the teachers do this activity. The kids thought that was funny. I tied the two strings to two empty chairs in the front row. I had the words/flip-chart made by Laurie Lee posted on the board. I told the teachers they could begin racing when we started singing the second half of the song. (The children knew the second half of the song better than the first, so they were able to watch the race and sing at the same time.)
It is really hard to get those pictures to move along the string, so it was funny watching the teachers try all kinds of ways to make them
To Be a Pioneer
For this song I used the pictures found on page 3 of the July 2010 Friend (flip-chart). I posted them on a display board. You could put the do’s and don’ts on different sides. I had a child wear a bonnet to represent a pioneer. She did the actions to the first part of the song such as: pretending to push a handcart, waving goodbye, walking. Then when it came to the part “to be a pioneer” she pointed to herself.
I told the childen they could develop the characteristics of a pioneer such as courage, faith, and working for a cause that is right. I used a boy with a missionary tag to be a modern pioneer. He pointed to himself when we came to the ending part “to be a pioneer”
Fun to Do
We also did Sugardoodle pioneer actions to the song Fun to Do. I had them start off with bouncing on their chair to represent riding in a wagon (Riding in wagon is fun to do). Then I asked if they could think of any other actions pioneers did. I gave them some suggestions. They came up with “getting warm by the fire is fun to do”. They put their hands out like feeling the warmth and then rubbed their hands together. They also wanted to do milking a cow.
