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My publisher, Cedar Fort, is giving away ten free copies of my new children's book through Goodreads. Enter to win! The drawing runs through October 10, 2017.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

My Nativity ABCs

by Esther Yu Sumner

Giveaway ends October 10, 2017.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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Visit "My Nativity ABCs" on Goodreads to enter now!

And, if you're in Salt Lake City this weekend, you can visit the artist for this book, Alex Worthen, at his booth in Artist Alley.

I wrote a children's book and it's coming out next month! "My Nativity ABCs."

I wrote a book for my primary kids and it's available for pre-order on Amazon!

My Nativity ABCs goes into publication on October 10, 2017.

I love the Christmas songs in the Children's Songbook and I always tried to start singing them with the children as soon as it was remotely appropriate (November 1) until it was time to move on (second week of January). This ABC story focusing on the Nativity is written as rhyming text, inspired by my years as a primary chorister. I've put the story to song in my head.

"My Nativity ABCs" focuses on the nativity story from my perspective of what I want to share about it to the children, as a primary president, primary chorister, and primary teacher. This is largely influenced by recent annual primary themes that are established by church leaders for each year, that we actively think about all year as we work to help the children understand how much God loves them.

1. Choose the Right
2. I Know the Scriptures are True
3. I Know my Savior Lives
4. Families are Forever
5. I Am a Child of God

I tied these themes and other inspiring lessons from the scriptures into this book. For instance, F is about family and faith, which focuses on Theme #4 above.

The talented illustrator Alex Worthen did such a fantastic job with the art for this book. I'm excited to see it hit the shelves next month!

Christmas Singing Time with a Nativity Cut Out.

I found this great nativity cut-out in the LDS Media library.

Scavenger hunt, anyone?

** 12/16/13 update in red below. :) More ideas.



A few ideas for this one (first, cut out the four pictures).

Option #1. Hide the pictures around the room, but so that they are visible. Sing a Christmas song that talks about the nativity, and have the children point around the room as they sing the song. For example, if you were to sing, "Sleep, Little Jesus," then you would have the children look for and point to the baby Jesus for "Sleep, Little Jesus, Lord of the earth," then point to the shepherds for "Shepherds will come to thee ..." etc.
Update: My new chorister did a version of this activity on Sunday, but instead of having them point, she had them stand up and turn toward the picture. It was so fun to see all their bodies turn, and because the pictures were on all four walls, they turned all the way left, all the way right, all the way back - it was great participation; loved the idea!

Option #1. Hide the pieces around the room and play the hot/cold game with Christmas songs until all four pieces are found. Obviously, this is a slightly different take on the hot/cold game, so once the child has left the room, you'd have to tell the rest of the class where the item was hidden. You could always have another child hide the item after the first child leaves the room, but wrap the picture to add to the mystery of what they are actually looking for when they play this game.

Option #2. Play a matching game with these four pictures and four scriptures. This is a great way to make them think about the scriptures. When they find a match, sing a Christmas song you have associated with the picture.

Option #4. This week's lesson is about how we can prepare to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus again. To tie this into the Christmas-themed nativity, cut out the four pictures above, as well as four blank sheets of paper. The object of the activity is to build a nativity. Children choose from eight envelopes. They will either end up with a piece of the nativity, which they get to put up on the board, or they will end up with one of the four sheets of paper. If they choose a nativity piece, the class sings a Christmas song. If the class is working on a song for the Christmas program, then they sing the Christmas program song, but maybe in a fun different way (staccato, legato, etc.). If they choose one of the pieces of paper without a picture on it, then if they are working a program song, they have to answer a question about the next line of the song. If the class is not working on a program song, then if they choose the piece of paper, they have to name one thing they can do to prepare to live with Heavenly Father again. If they don't understand the question, give them an example, like, "Be kind to others."

Option #5. This week's lesson actually specifically calls out a number of songs in the primary book and is a particularly easy week to combine singing time and sharing time. You could do the same thing as #4 except behind every sheet of paper that is not a nativity, list the song from the lesson plan - I Will Follow God's Plan 164-5; Keep the Commandments, 146-7: Kindness Begins with Me, 145; 103 - When I Am Baptized. Then, ask the children after each song to explain how the song reminds us of things we can do to prepare to live with Heavenly Father again.

December - Week 1 - Unwrapping a Nativity

In an effort to incorporate Christmas (Christ's birth), the lesson, and songs that needed to be practiced to be sung in sacrament on Sunday, the lesson on the first week of December offered:

1. An overall Nativity theme.
2. "Silent Night" melody game, inspired by http://primarysingingtimeideas.blogspot.com/search/label/Seasonal
3. A "He Sent His Son" "guess the picture" game inspired by all the wonderful flip charts out there (I made my own but it used many of the same pictures as other flip charts ... they were just the best fit for the song.)
4. "Samuel Tells the Story of Baby Jesus," sung in several different ways to teach them some basic music formats as well as help them practice this song further.

This was a lot to cram into one lesson so I wasn't able to do everything in junior and senior primary. This is the highly condensed summary of what I taught. There was way too much material here but it's hard to resist all the beautiful Christmas songs that we only sing for one month of the year.

Nativity Theme
I wrapped the individual pieces of a nativity set. I wrote on most of the pieces of wrapping paper with either the name of a song, or the name of a song and a special way to sing it. This gave the children an ongoing theme to work toward. I also made a big deal of telling them I was looking specifically to call on reverent children and asked the teachers to help me choose the children that would come up to unwrap the nativity pieces. I wanted to do this early on so that I could use the Nativity for other activities later in the month, but start with the unwrapping activity. I did not spend too much time talking about the individual pieces because I wanted to save that for later.

Silent Night
Using this recommendation for "Joy to the World," I "drew" the melody lines for "Silent Night," as a series of curves and dots. I then asked the children if they could identify the mystery song. This was a fun introduction to the song. The children knew it really well so I had someone come up and trace the melody lines for me while we sang the song again. I only tried this in senior primary but I want to try it with junior primary next week.

He Sent His Son
I made another flip chart for this beautiful song about how our Father in Heaven sent Jesus Christ to earth to teach us. However, since this song is a series of questions and answers, I put question marks about each question (which was in the form of a picture) and a happy face above each answer (which was also in the form of a picture). In junior primary, I put all the pictures up on the board, then read/sang each line one at a time, and asked children to raise their hand and identify which picture went to that line. For senior primary, I handed out all the pictures and had the kids come up and put them on the board as I read or sang that line for them. I also stopped inbetween for both songs to have the children sing parts or say parts back to me. I did this one a little too fast because we were short on time.

Samuel Tells the Story of Baby Jesus
We will be singing this song on Christmas Sunday, so I wanted to make sure the children had the song well memorized and also sang it well. In junior primary, we practiced singing the song loudly and quietly by crescendo and decrescendo. In senior primary, we practiced singing the song staccato style and allegro (fast) and largo (slow) style. I held pictures up to remind the children how to sing when we varied between allegro/largo and loud/quiet. I was impressed by how well the children did. I plan to practice this with them again next week, this time putting the dynamics where they make the most sense, and maybe talking to the children about dynamics a bit first.