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Saturday, June 22, 2013

Learning a New Song (Every Star is Different) with Stars and Singing Bricks

Whew. Crazy week. I have been a bit slow on the singing time blog this week because of my other calling, as Girl's Camp director. I returned yesterday from a week of fun, sun, and feeling close to my Heavenly Father in a place where I can get away from worldly distractions. I loved being there with the girls in my ward that are beautiful on the inside and out - some I've known since they were in primary with me!

This week, I am excited to teach "Every Star is Different" to the primary on Sunday. This is one of the optional songs that I chose for the program this year. I have a reading-based lesson for Senior Primary so I am going to teach this song in a different way for Junior Primary. Both groups, however, will start with an introduction. Whatever we don't have time to get to this Sunday will be carried over into the following Sunday.

Introduce the Song
For Junior and Senior Primary I will play a "What Song Am I?"' game. I'll put stars on the board and have a child choose one. The children may not know this song at all so the point isn't necessarily to have them correctly guess the song, so much as learn about the song.

Each star will have a different hint:

1. Play one measure of the song
2. Play another measure of the song.
3. The music for this song was written in 1939, but the words weren't written until 1951.
4. The man that wrote the music for this song, K. Newell Dayley, also wrote the music for other popular church songs, like, "Lord, I would Follow Thee," and "I Feel My Savior's Love."

I couldn't find any additional information about the writer of the music - so if anyone knows more, please let me know! I found the information about Dayley on wikipedia.

Junior Primary
I will pass out some stars I found at teaching supplies store and ask each child to take one minute and draw a face onto their star.

After the children are done drawing, I will gather all the pens, then ask all of the children to hold their stars up and look around at each other's stars.

I will ask, "Are any two stars that you children drew on exactly the same?"

I will talk about how no two stars are identical, just as no two children are the same. We are all children of our Father in Heaven, and he loves each and every one of us. He gave us different talents, and different families on earth. Some of us like to raise our hands and answer questions, and some of us are shy. Some of us are good at listening and some of us are good at talking, etc.

1. I will then sing the song and ask them to listen carefully so they can tell me what the song is about. I will ask them to hold up their "star" whenever they hear the word "star."
2. I will then ask children what the word "bright" means ("filled with light," "reflecting light") and discuss that with them.
3. I will sing the song again and ask them to count how many times they hear the word "bright." Depending on time, I may just work on the chorus line.



Senior Primary
1. I will start out with introducing the song, as mentioned above.

2. I will then have the children listen to the entire song without the words and ask them to raise their hand when they think they hear a big shift in melody of the song. I will have the pianist give an example of when the melody changes in a song, e.g., ...

3. Next, I will sing the song for them and tell them there are three words that are used a lot and ask them to listen for the three words (star, shining, brightly).

4. Next, I will put the words up on the board and have them sing the song with them. Then, we'll move into the singing bricks: I stumbled on this post and loved this idea posted in 2009 for singing bricks.
a. Write all of the words of a song on different colored "bricks."
b. A child comes up and chooses a lego from a sack. You remove all the words on papers that are the same colors as the bricks.
c. Children sing the song with those words missing.
d. Continue until the entire song is memorized!

Brilliant, simple, and fun!



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