If you’re looking for a darling Back to School Singing Time Idea, you’ll adore this What’s in my Backpack Review game! Just fill up a kids back to school backpack with a variety of school supplies. Each will add a fun action or way to sing that will mix up singing time.
Best of all, you can use this activity with one song, a couple songs, or add all of your Primary Program songs to the rotation!
**More Back to School Singing Time Ideas Here!**
What’s in my Backpack? Review Game
*Downloads are available at the bottom of the post when signed in!*
How to Play:
Gather a variety of school supplies. Label each one with your activity cards, if desired, or just have those ready for matching.
You can sign through a mix of songs and match them to the objects or roll a dice to pick your song to sing! You can sing just a single song over and over, but I think this activity would work best with at least 2-3 songs since a lot of the activities rely on picking a single keyword.
Prepare a list of one keyword to use for each song, so you can align the actions with the specific keywords!
Load up a backpack with all your supplies and then pull out one object at a time. Read out the fun action to use while singing.
Continue picking out objects from the backpack and singing through your songs!
School Supplies Action List and Ideas:
- Markers – Draw the Song
- Use printer paper and draw each line of the song
- Eraser – “Erase” one word from the song
- Pick one word to NOT sing like it has been erased from the song entirely!
- Pencil – Change one word to a silly word
- Pick a word that repeats or a strong keyword to switch it up to a new word! Like change “I” and “me” references to their own name!
- Crayons – Draw shapes in the air
- Use your finger like holding a crayon and draw a variety of shapes to match the song. Like circles, heart, rainbow, stars, etc.
- Stapler – Pat on keywords
- Pat on your lap on the main keywords. Try a double syllable with two pats!
Extension Ideas:
Have the kids reach into the backpack (without peeking) and pick out one of the objects! You can have all the item cards listed on the board so they can try to pick a specific one. Have them try to guess what they’re holding, then reveal it!
Randomly place a variety of school supplies under each child’s chair so everyone has one school item with a variety underneath each seat. When their object is drawn, they get to come up front to help lead! You might have 2-3 or more leaders, that’s totally fine!
Let the kids lead the music with the revealed object!
Just for fun, I had to share this other themed What’s in my Singing Time Music Bag post with you! You could totally play a twist on the backpack theme and pull out random fun things from your singing time music bag! Head over to this post to see a detailed explanation and tips of everything I carry with me to Primary and how I stay organized!
What’s in my Backpack Review Game
Singing Time Printable Song Helps
I’m really excited about this activity and how flexible it is that you can use for whatever mix of songs you’d like and still fit in a theme while getting in tons of repeat singing! Picking an object doesn’t take long at all.
This printable lesson plan includes a 1-page printable with 6 different school supply actions cards!
You’ll find 12 additional school supply singing time actions and larger full page supply cards included in the INSTANT Primary Singing membership in the August Doctrine & Covenants packet!
Subscribe to Primary Singing PLUS+
to Unlock Free Printables
Our printables are free to our email subscribers and loyal fans! You can sign up to join the free Primary Singing PLUS+ to unlock all in-post printables on this website automatically by sharing your email address.
For all the details of how Primary Singing PLUS+ works and answers to FAQs read more details here! Already an email subscriber? Grab your printable below!
For another fun Back to school themed activity, head over to see our Build a Pencil Song Scramble Review Game!
What other fun actions could you add to What’s in my Backpack list?
This post may also be available in:
English 
Español
Could you expand on some of these items- like what do you do for draw the song? Like draw it in the air? Or do you have them draw it on the board while you’re singing? Draw shapes in the air, switch singing from side to side, hide and seek- could you maybe expand on these a little more too? Thanks so much!
Sure! They’re definitely flexible so you can use and interpret them however you’d like, but I’ll add more details for each how I imagined using them. 🙂