How to choose children to participate - and encourage reverence

Last week, I dressed some of the children who were being reverent in some tunics, to represent prophets. This week, when the sharing time teacher asked what we learned about last week, I was pleased to see that among the raised hands, was every child who was chosen to put on a prophet costume, even the super shy one who NEVER raises her hand. I love that she enjoyed being chosen enough that her hand shot up today.

I usually prefer to pick one of three ways to ask children to come to the front of the room for an activity:

1. I make a big deal about someone that was really reverent and call them up. I try to do this with the next few children, so that I'm not just choosing children who are suddenly being reverent because they see a reward, but because they are genuinely striving to be reverent and were already being reverent before they realized there was a big "reward."

2. I ask each teacher to choose one reverent child in their class, one at a time.

3. I use the "Helping Hands" jar and choose a name - but I tell the children that if the name I pull belongs to a child that was not reverent, I am putting the name back in the jar.

Our new chorister introduced a fourth way that I am enjoying:

4. She stops in the middle of the song and has children raise their hand if they know the next word of the song. She then chooses a child, and they can go up to the front of the room to participate in the activity.

Some of the younger children don't yet understand that they have to take turns and share, but I rarely cave if they complain that they aren't being chosen. I tell them to try to be really reverent and maybe they'll get a turn. If they really try, I try to give them an opportunity to come up.

If a child waves his or her arms and jumps up and down, I'll eventually remind the class (without drawing attention to the child) that I'm looking for children that are reverently raising their hands.

Encouraging Reverence During Singing Time

My primary children, particularly in Junior Primary, have been a little rowdy these last three Sundays. I blame it on the end of summer vacation, the start of a new school year, the three-day weekend, and the start of a new church schedule (which rotates with the school schedule).

When I stood up today, I did a few things to calm them down and it worked beautifully! I've done these things in the past, but not in a while (because my primary kids are usually so reverent for me) so it was so satisfying to see how effective this was in changing the kids from noisy to reverent.

1. First, when I stood up, I pointed out that I could see they were being noisy and wiggly today and asked them to wiggle their fingers extra hard while we sang the wiggle song. When the song ended, one of the primary children was misbehaving so I said we were going to sing it one more time so xx could finish getting his wiggles out. We sang it again. (I rarely call someone out and I would not want anyone to feel bad. This time, it worked where I was gently teasing him but enough to get him to stop!)

2. I showed them the fun activity we were going to do. Everyone's hands went straight up. I said, "I'd like Rosie to come up. She has been so reverent today. Remember reverence isn't just about sitting still, but about paying attention. Rosie had her arms folded all during opening exercise. She paid attention to the speakers when they spoke, and to the children when they came up to share their thoughts (during a different special activity we had before opening exercise ended)." Rosie felt good, and it worked like a charm to get everyone else to sit still and try really hard to be reverent.

3. For the next song, I called up another child that had been reverent BEFORE I had to remind them to be reverent, congratulated her on the things she had done well to show reverence, and let her take a turn in our activity.

4. For the song after that, I asked a teacher to pick out someone that had been very reverent in their class.

In Senior Primary, I did something similar, mostly relying on teachers to help choose a reverent child. The first child I called up was one that I praised for being so reverent the previous week, and that I knew I had not had a chance to call up last Sunday. I also explained why I had called her up. I still had a few joke-ster boys in the corner, but I lead the music standing directly in front of them and that, as usual, did the trick.

After Junior Primary, the child that was misbehaving (for which we had to single the wiggle song twice), came up to me and said, "I don't like to sing very much." I think that was his version of an apology, and that his teacher may have made him apologize. Not everyone likes the same thing, so I think it's fair to acknowledge that some kids don't like to sing. I don't believe in forcing children to sing if they don't like to sing, though I would say I still have an almost 100% rate both in primary and during the primary program. So, I responded, "That's okay, but you still need to be reverent and not make funny noises during the song."
Goodness.

I have the vague notions for a lesson next week to focus on the music in a way that will further encourage reverence. More to come ...

P.S. For those who asked for the potato head ... I am trying to carve out some time to scan it. I work full-time and just switched to a new job role. The ramp-up has been extremely time-consuming. More to come!

November - Week 3 - Thanksgiving Weekend - Tom the Turkey and his Gratitude Feathers

I have been super excited for a few weeks now to do this activity. I actually started working on it before I started the previous two activities, and I'm pleased to say that it went over about as well as I had hoped and anticipated. I plan to pull this turkey out again next year.

I was inspired by Mindy Byrnes' Thankful Jar but instead of a jar, I turned it into a turkey instead of using a jar. This turkey (as with pretty much any hand drawing you see in this blog - everything else was printed off a Google Images search or from a chorister's blog) was my own creation, not copied from anywhere. I'm glad I finally have a good excuse to draw because it's so much fun. I sketched the turkey out onto the poster board, then colored it in with markers. I only had six colors to choose from, but fortunately, they were appropriate colors for a turkey. Since this is a poster board, keep in mind that this is a big turkey. It made it fun for the children to pick giant feathers to add to the turkey. I could only fit two feathers per sheet of paper when I was cutting them out.

I cut the poster board along the top of his wings, up his back, and around his head. I put velcro stickers on the backs of the feathers and on the poster board so that children could tuck the feathers in behind the turkey, then velcro them to the board.

I told the children that Tom the Reverent Turkey was getting ready for Thanksgiving, but he was missing something (feathers!). I used the Helping Hands jar to select names. Children came up and picked a feather. Each feather had a theme on it, for which they were supposed to share something for which they were grateful. Some feathers also had a corresponding song, which we then sang. One example, is that they sang, "Families Can Be Together Forever," after they answered a question about sharing someone in their family they were grateful for, and why.

I tried to remind the children about what the song had to do with gratitude either before or after we sang each song. I also made sure to add some reverence-related gratitude songs to fit the theme for the month. 

November - Week 2 - Puzzle Activity

I wanted to focus on reviewing "Reverence is Love" and "Samuel Tells the Story of Baby Jesus" from the previous week, as well as focus on the monthly theme of Reverence so I made a puzzle out of a Reverence picture that I found online.

I made a puzzle guide for the junior primary, and then removed the puzzle guide for the senior primary.

I gave each teacher a puzzle piece, and asked them to select someone reverent to help put the puzzle together, to see what picture it would make. As each child went up, their puzzle piece in most cases was co-related to a song with a reverence theme for the month. In some cases, I did not have a song to go with the piece just because I didn't think we'd have time for all nine.

With each song, I tried to talk a little about reverence. I took ideas from the Sharing Time manual and other places to do this. For instance, for "Reverence is Love," I talked about how many times the word "reverence" was said during the song, and asked them to put their hand over the hearts each time they sang that word. For "Reverently, Quietly," I asked them to count how many words ended in "-ly" and reminded them of how this song helps them to be more reverent. 

November - Week 1 - Reverence is Love, Samuel Tells the Story of Baby Jesus, Two Happy Feet

Week 1 focused on learning three new songs:
1. Reverence is Love - p.31
2. Samuel Tells the Story of baby Jesus - p.36
3. Two Happy Feet - p. 270

Reverence is Love

The theme for November was "reverence," so after reading the lesson outlines for the children, I decided to teach them a song that some knew, but most didn't know, called, "Reverence is Love." I was going to make my own pictures to help the children remember the lines of the song, but I actually found two different sets that other primary choristers had prepared, and used theirs.

However, I started off with a game. This was also an idea that the previous primary choristor had printed off so I don't know where she found it, but it was probably someone else's blog. I put hints under giant musical notes, which were then taped to a poster. I let children throw a hacky sack onto the poster, which was on the floor. The notes had hints about the song. This was a fun way to introduce a new song.

I was worried that this would be too easy because the children all knew the song, or too hard, because none of them knew the song, but in both my classes (junior primary and senior primary), the children figured out the song after turning over two-thirds of the notes/hints. It was perfect.

I then used a flip chart to introduce and teach the song. I didn't play any special games with the flip chart, since I want to do different things with the flip charts each time. I was going to make my own flip chart but there were several that were good out there so I thought maybe I should conserve my energy for a different song, later.

I combined these two flip charts, using the pictures I liked best from each version:

1. One that I found on SugarDoodle.net who found it at "The Ordinary Adventures of a Primary Chorister" 
2. One that I found on Jolly Jenn's site, who I guess makes a ton of flip charts.

This was a good lesson. The introduction easily caught the attention of the children, and the flip chart helped them to memorize the song quickly.

Samuel Tells the Story of Baby Jesus

I had so much fun introducing this song. It is a very catchy song. My primary president told me that her son was singing it during the week following primary! I was also going to make my own flip chart but I found one online that was so fabulous that I couldn't pass it up. There are actually several really good ones for this particular song but the one I chose worked really well with the children. I have been Googling for 10 minutes now because I can't find it anymore, but I keep finding other really awesome ones ... so if I find it, I'll post it. The one I found used five sheets of paper.

I played a game where I put all the pictures up on the chalkboard, then scrambled it. I had the children unscramble it a few times. Then, I had them point to the pictures while we sang (still scrambled) to see how well they knew it. This was a lot of fun, and the children really enjoyed the concept. This idea was a modified version that I found on Primary Singing Time Ideas which I used in Week 4 of November.

Two Happy Feet

This song doesn't need much explanation. I made up a bunch of movements for the song, and sang it with Junior Primary to help them get their wiggles out, and they loved it. I just wanted to draw attention to it because it is a fabulous, fun song.