New Song Teaching/Review Ideas

· CROSSWORD PUZZLE 1 – Make up a crossword puzzle for the song you’re learning. The clues would be the key words to the song. (I had the key words to vs.1 all going across and vs.2 all going down.)

· DETECTIVE CLUELESS – Make up a question for each phrase of a song. Reduce font to smallest size possible. Label a large envelope “Classified Files”. Place the questions inside. Dress as Detective with trench coat/hat/sunglasses… Bring a magnifying glass. Make five question marks labeled with the five W’s – laminate, stick magnetic tape on back to place on chalkboard. Five important W’s. All detectives (or reporters) know that they need to ask these questions when looking for clues to solve a case. WHO-- WHAT-- WHEN-- WHERE-- WHY. For each question, call up a child (assistant detective) to read a question with the magnifying glass.

· ENVELOPE GAME – Print out the words to the song and cut them out. Make enough envelopes with song lyrics for groups of 3-4 children. I use pictures for Jr. Primary since they can’t read. As you all sing the song, they put the words (or pictures) in the correct order. Good way to learn a song!

· ERASURE PASS – Preparation: On the board is a list of words in groups of three. Each distinct group includes one word from the song being taught and two words that mean the same or opposite. Example: The song being taught is Seek the Lord Early. I would choose SEEK as my first word and with it place the words LOOK and SEARCH. My next group might be for the word YOUTH. With it CHILDHOOD and ADOLESCENCE. Another group might be FATHER, MOTHER and HOLY GHOST. Stand in front of the children and state the rules: 1 – No talking, 2 – No throwing the eraser, 3 – Give the eraser to someone who hasn’t had it, 4 – Erase only the words NOT in the song. (We want the words that remain on the board to be the words in the song in the order they appear in the song) and 5 - DO NOT STOP SINGING! (You may go through the song 10+ times before all the wrong words are erased.) The children then come up one at a time and erase one word not in the song. Teachers may help non-readers or you may need to prompt when few words are left. Make sure you keep the rules in effect. If a child erases a wrong word, be prepared to write it back on without stopping your singing. After all the wrong words are erased, have the children sing only the words on the boar. Then switch and have them sing all the words except the ones on the board. (This may take a while for them to catch on to. Especially since they don’t know the song to start with. Plan accordingly for time. Don’t use this with a long song!)

· LEPRECHAUNS & SHAMROCKS – This is a poster to help us learn songs. In each of the leprechauns hands are shamrocks that have phrases from the new song. I have also had the letter from each word on the shamrocks and they have to put them in the right order.