With President Hinckley's birthday coming up I thought some of you might be interested in using this idea. I found a simple version of Pres. Hinckley's biography on the web.

http://www.indirect.com/www/crockett/gbhlife.html

I then picked short stories or facts about the prophet and chose a song that would remind us of what I just told. This biography has lots of short stories that could remind you of many songs. We have a young primary so I hung pictures on the chalkboard and I had them come up and choose one. It would determine which story I would retell the children. For an older primary you could perhaps have the children come to the front and read the story. The children really enjoyed this combined story time/singing time and I loved learning so much about the prophet.

Here are a few examples:

"When I was a boy, we lived on a farm in the summer. It was in the country, where the nights were dark. There were no streetlights or anything of the kind. My brother and I slept out-of-doors. On clear nights - and most of those nights were clear and the air was clean - we would lie on our backs and look at the myriads of stars in the heavens. We could identify some of the constellations and other stars as they were illustrated in our encyclopedia. Each night we would trace the Big Dipper, the handle and the cup, to find the North Star.... We came to know of the constancy of that star. As the earth turned, the others appeared to move through the night. But the North Star held its position in line with the axis of the earth."

Sing: I am Like a Star (Cartoon Picture of Stars in Sky)

"At the age of fifty [my mother] developed cancer. [My father] was solicitous of her every need. I recall our family prayers, with his tearful pleadings and our tearful pleadings. Of course there was no medical insurance then. He would have spent every dollar he owned to help her. He did, in fact, spend very much. He took her to Los Angeles in search of better medical care. But it was to no avail. That was sixty-two years ago, but I remember with clarity my broken hearted father as he stepped off the train and greeted his grief-stricken children. We walked solemnly down the station platform to the baggage car, where the casket was unloaded and taken by the mortician. We came to know even more about the tenderness of our father's heart. This has had an effect on me all of my life. I also came to know something of death-the absolute devastation of children losing their mother-but also of peace without pain and the certainty that death cannot be the end of the soul."

Sing: Families can be Together Forever (Cartoon Picture of a Family)

"When I was a boy living here in Salt Lake City, most homes were heated with coal stoves. Black smoke belched forth from almost every chimney. As winter came to a close, black soot and grime were everywhere, both inside and outside of the house. There was a ritual through which we passed each year, not a very pleasant one, as we viewed it. It involved every member of the family. It was known as spring cleaning. When the weather warmed after the long winter, a week or so was designated as cleanup time. It was usually when there was a holiday and included two Saturdays. My mother ran the show. All of the curtains were taken down and laundered. Then they were carefully ironed. The windows were washed inside and out, and oh, what a job that was in that big two-story house.

Wallpaper was on all of the walls, and Father would bring home numerous cans of wallpaper cleaner. It was like bread dough, but it was a pretty pink in color when the container was opened. It had an interesting smell, a pleasant refreshing kind of smell. We all pitched in. We would knead some of the cleaning dough in our hands, climb a ladder, and begin on the high ceiling, and then work down the walls. The dough was soon black from the dirt it lifted from the paper. It was a terrible task, very tiring, but the results were like magic. We would stand back and compare the dirty surface with the clean surface. It was amazing to us how much better the dean walls looked.

All of the carpets were taken up and dragged out to the backyard, where they were hung over the clothesline, one by one. Each of us boys would have what we called a carpet beater, a device made of light steel rods with a wooden handle. As we beat the carpet, the dust would fly, and we would have to keep going until there was no dust left We detested that work. But when all of it was done, and everything was back in place, the result was wonderful. The house was clean our spirits renewed. The whole world looked better."

Sing: When We're Helping We're Happy (Cartoon Picture of a House)