Visuals Matching Game

Well, this may be my last post. A new stake is being formed in our area and I've been moved into a new ward. So I have officially been released as our ward Primary chorister. Very sad.

Since I was sick last week, I just got started on "I'll Seek the Lord Early" today. For the setup, I hid my visuals (all pictures: "youth" - a picture of my daughter, "truth" - gavel, "scriptures", "prayer" - child praying, "living prophets" - recent Ensign picture of First Presidency, "commandments" - tablets, "love" - heart) behind numbered construction paper in random order. On the back of one piece of construction paper, I taped a picture of the Savior.

I set everything on the chalkboard ledge. I started out singing only what corresponded to my first visual then had everyone sing that part with me. ("I'll see the Lord early while in my youth") Then I drew a name and had someone pick a numbered paper. I showed them what was behind it. If it matched what we sang, I would put the visual up and move the construction paper up so the kids would know that the visual was gone from behind that one. If the visual didn't match, I covered it back up and we sang the line again, doing this until they found the match. Then we would all sing as far as we had visuals for and I would continue to sing the line for the next visual at the end, then have them sing it all with me, then draw another name and see if they could find the match for the next visual.

Once all of my visuals had been revealed and matched, we sang the entire song and I finished off "I will seek the Lord early and He will be found." Then I told them that all of my construction paper had already been chosen, however, there was one more visual - a picture of the Savior - that they would need to find. If they chose a number that didn't have the Savior behind it, I covered up visuals in order. (I.e. - the picture of the Savior was behind #4. Someone chose #3. I showed the children the back and then covered the first visual with #3 construction paper.) I figured I would cover the visuals in the order of the song, rather than corresponding to the number chosen, as we would have sung the song multiple times with the earlier visuals and didn't want to cover the newer visuals too soon.

This went over really well. We sang the song many, many times. This took us the entire 20 minutes and kept the kids' attention so they could try to remember where they had already seen some of the visuals.