January 2012 - Week 4 - Choose the Right "play" and holding up CTR shields

The sharing time lesson was a singing lesson where the teacher taught a brief concept, then we sang a song about the concept, starting with our Heavenly Father's plan to send us to earth so that we could have mortal bodies, and ending with how we can return to him by making good choices.

Therefore, it made sense to combine singing time and sharing time. I didn't want the children to be totally restless by the time the teacher taught the lesson. I could just hear them sighing, "mooooree singing?" Generally, the children like singing time when I do it right ... just not necessarily for 45 minutes.

Our sharing time teacher for the day (KS) had the great idea of presenting that we were in a big production and that they were the cast members. She then framed up each song before having us sing a different song.

To keep things interesting, I had us sing the songs in different fun ways. One of the songs was one the children don't know as well, and that I knew we wouldn't have time to teach. For senior primary, wrote it onto sheets of paper, using different ink colors to indicate if all, boys, or girls should be singing. This was an idea I found on another singing blog, and it worked GREAT. I was careful about how I divided up the singing, and it ended up sounding very pretty and very deliberate. I would like to do this at the end of the year during our primary singing program, if I can do it well. We'll see - I don't want to be too ambitious but I would love to enhance the experience if I can do it within reason and well.

I also had them sing a song with crescendo and decrescendo, and other fun things.

For senior primary, I also incorporated some ideas from my favorite singing blog, the Crazy Chorister, where I had them build a shield. I partially did this because I knew we'd end up having more time in senior primary so I wanted to draw it out a bit. However, it also helps to keep the children focused. We also had to cut songs out for junior primary because we ran out of time.

Oh, we didn't quite finish our game from the previous week in time in junior primary, so first, I had them finish playing the game from the week before.

January 2012 - Week 3 - "As a Child of God" - Choice Board Game

I wanted to spend more time working on "As a Child of God" but after two weeks of it, I could tell the children needed a different approach where they didn't know they were practicing the song.

I came up with a board game that is a more advanced, musical version of a childhood favorite - Candyland!

I divided the room into two halves, using the aisle as the diving line. One side was the Blue team, the other side the Green team.

Object of the game
Move their board piece from start to "home," where they could be with their family. Children did this by selecting "Choose the Right" cards to tell them how many steps they could move forward - or backward. I attached velcro stickers to each space on the board and to the game pieces so that I could put the board up on the wall for everyone to see.

Choose the Right cards
If the scenario on the card had them making the right choice, they were rewarded by going forward a certain amount of steps. If the scenario on the card had them making a bad choice, they went backward a certain amount of steps.

This is where the music part came into the game:
1. If children chose the right "choose the right" card, they were told they could draw a music card, too.
2. If children landed on certain parts of the board, they were told they could draw a music card.

                                     

Music cards
Music cards were an opportunity for children to move several steps forward in the game. Most of the music cards involved singing a verse of the song. I wanted to force them to think about the song and sing it really well so most of the cards had them counting how many times they sang a certain word in the song. Those were the amount of steps they could move forward.

This game worked great because the children were really singing the songs well and participating heavily because they were so interested in gaining points to move forward. The game worked really well in that the two teams kept getting way ahead of each other, only to have the other team catch up. It was very competitive. I did have to remind the children to be more reverent, as there was a lot of loud cheering or loud groaning depending on what card was drawn.

I used the "Helping Hands" can to make sure children had fair opportunities to come up and take their turns, too. I did have a new sunbeam prostrate himself right in front of me because he wanted another turn but at least he wasn't yelling. He did something similar the following week because we wouldn't sing "Happy Birthday" to him (it wasn't his birthday this month), ha. I let the children come up and move their game pieces themselves too.

I had a lot of fun, and more importantly, I felt it made the children feel excited to sing. I had some of my best participation ever, even with some of the older boys that don't like to sing.

January 2012 - Week 2 - More "As a Child of God" - Learn the song game

The primary children learned the words to "As a Child of God" by Janice Kapp Perry last week during singing time. This week, I want to help cement the words of "As a Child of God," in their minds but I want to do it in the form of a game, mostly because last week I said, "Great job. I'll see how well you learned the song next week. We'll play some sort of game."

I have been debating different approaches. I have some ideas I think would be super fun but it would be complex to "build" all the components so I need to plan further ahead. I might save them for later and share them later. For now, I think the baggy idea from Jenny Phillips sounds terrific. In short, you pass out the pieces for a flip chart to groups of kids and have them put it in order themselves.

Since I have already spent a Sunday with the children learning the song, I'm going to make modifications to her wonderful recommendations.

First, I loved all the pictures that Jenny found to make a mini flip chart (in the link above). However, I decided to substitute one of her pictures - a Mr.Smiley-type picture to represent, "I feel so safe and happy because ..." instead of her road sign that said, "Safe." The road sign was awesome but since some of the kids can't read yet, and because I used a smiling face in my object lesson last week, I thought that might resonate better with the great majority. I also added a picture of a girl being confirmed with the gift of the Holy Ghost for the line, "The Holy Ghost helps me to know what is right," since I had used that picture the previous week in my learn-this-song-with-objects lesson.

I might start out by using an entirely different flip chart, but one that is big enough (8x10) for everyone to see from the front of the room. I'll have several volunteers come up to hold the pictures, then I'll have the entire primary help the children to organize themselves into the right order, to see how well they remember the song from last week. We'll sing the song that way one time. Then, I'll pass out the baggies using Jenny's flip chart idea, and have the children sort the pictures again with their teachers. I think it's a little tough to keep switching out the images on them but I also think it'll keep it fresh and fun.

I think I want to take this a step further if there is time, by then calling on each class to bring up the next picture to see if we get them in the right order. I might just hold up each picture after each class is done and have the classes check their work to see if the song is in the right order - and then of course, we'll sing it again.

I think the following week, I might put sticks on these pictures so that I can pass them out. Children can then listen carefully and hold up their stick when it gets to their part of the song. I might do that this Sunday but of course, it means some children won't be able to participate since there are not enough pictures to go around ... so I might just wait until I can get them onto sticks so that I can specifically hand them to reverent children.

I am also considering another idea to make the teachers say the entire song, going around the room. This is tough because as a former primary teacher, I know it's not always easy to memorize all the words to the song that way. However, the fun part would be that I would ask the children to help their teacher remember the words to the song. Then, if the teacher gets the words right - which they will because the children have been motivated to help them - there will be some sort of fun reward for the children, for example, choosing a silly hat for their teacher to wear up front while they sing the song again. I'm not sure ... I'm making this up right now.

I usually make big changes on Saturday but I thought writing this out might help clarify some of my ideas with myself ... so this is just where I'm at so far.

Great resources I found online:


http://www.jennyphillips.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/As-a-Child-of-God_Picture-Helps.pdf

http://sofiasprimaryideas.blogspot.com/2011/12/as-child-of-god-lds-primary-song-helps.html

The Crazy Chorister also has a great new idea for this week but I'll have to consider whether I want to use it on a different Sunday or go with some other ideas I have been noodling over ...

January 2012 - Week 1 - Learn "As a Child of God"

I didn't want to start off the year with another flip chart but I did want to introduce the main new primary song, "As a Child of God," by Janice Kapp Perry. I was pondering different approaches when the Crazy Chorister posted her brilliant idea.

She is definitely one of my favorite singing time resources. It's too easy to spend a bunch of money to enhance singing time activities so I was also looking for an idea where I could rely on things around the house.

This was perfect. I followed her idea to use objects to introduce the song, but have the children choose between the wrong object and right object for each line of the song. I drew names from a jar to have each child come up and help. This is what I used for the "right" objects, except that I see that I left the frowning face that is a "wrong" choice in there.

The children laughed at some of the funny objects. For instance, for the opening line, "I came to earth from Heaven to choose," I had them select whether it was a chart with the word "choose" or if it was a paper airplane representing, "fly," as in "I came to earth from Heaven to fly." For strength, I used the weights and pretended to curl the weight, which amused them.

Just as the Crazy Chorister suggested, we sang each line of the song as we learned it.

Some variations I added to her wonderful suggestions:

I did one verse at a time in junior primary, but showed senior primary ALL of the options, to help make it more complicated for senior primary. I also had senior primary come up and help me hold up the objects to show how quickly they had learned the song once we had figured out all of the correct choices.

I feel like I really had their attention. I will find out next week how well they actually learned the song when I don't have all the objects to hold up for them to remind them about each line ... but I will also make up some other way to help cement the words to the song in their heads.  

December - Week 3 - Practice for Christmas Program and JOY

Our ward primary kids are going to sing "Silent Night" and "Samuel Tells the Story of Baby Jesus" to the congregation beautifully next week, on Christmas Sunday. I have to admit that I felt a little teary when the senior primary was singing "Silent Night." I really felt they were singing the words with their hearts, and hope that I am not wrong. I tried to convey this feeling to them after they sang and remind them about how this song really welcomes Christmas. They will sound so beautiful next week. I really think children can bring the spirit into the room faster than most adults. They were with their Father in Heaven so much more recently than us. They have such deep levels of sincerity.

I have a book that chronicles the history and meaning of all the songs in the LDS hymnbook so I looked up "Silent Night" and shared some interesting facts with them. One, the song is about 200 years old. Two, the song was written in one day, and yet it is one of our most beloved songs. 

We had string instruments come into primary to practice "Silent Night," as well as sang "Samuel ..." with the pianist that will be playing next Sunday. By the time we did the "wiggle" songs for junior primary and practiced the two songs, we were out of time. The junior primary was really wiggly today so I let them sing the songs several times to get all their wiggles out.

For Senior Primary, I had time to use this wonderful idea that Colette shared on SugarDoodle in 2008:

For a Christmas singing time I wanted the children to learn just how fun it is to give. I went to the store and bought 6 small little gifts: gum, candy bar, pad of paper, pen, etc. Then I bought 6 of the small gift boxes. On the bottom of each gift box I wrote a song. On Sunday, they got to pick a present out of my bag and then put the present in one of the gift boxes (they now know the gift and they have wrapped it). Another child then goes into the hall and picks ANYONE to come in. It was so fun because none of us knew who was coming in. 

Colette goes on to give some additional details but in short, I let three children bring in three different adults, we sang a Christmas to them, and then we gave them a gift that a reverent child had helped select and put into a gift box. 

It was perfect because in sacrament the counselor talked about JOY this Christmas season and how it stands for Jesus, Others, and Yourself - the order in which you should be thinking about things. So, I asked for hands to see who remembered what JOY stood for, talked about it a little bit, then went into the activity. I think the children really loved it, and it was fun for the three very surprised adults. 

December - Week 2 - Practice for Christmas Program

The primary has been invited to sing the first verse of "Silent Night" in sacrament, as well as "Samuel Tells the Story of Baby Jesus." They know both songs very well so I worked a bit on dynamics with them. I used a puppet in junior primary to remind them about singing more loudly and softly, and also talked to them about the words in the song and how singing them a certain way would make them more meaningful. That was all it took to run out of time in junior primary.

In Senior Primary, I also added a flip chart of "When Joseph Went to Bethlehem," and also had kids bring up nativity pieces for "Picture a Christmas."

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.