Tuesday, February 9, 2010

February: week 2 (Reinforcement)

REPORT: This activity went much better than expected! (YAY!) We ran out of time, so I'm bringing it back for next week. One thing we did, that the kids loved (probably because it was such a challenge) was we kept singing each phrase the way it was described on the back. For example, the first heart we put together said Girls sing, so everytime we sand the song, the girls sang just that phrase. Then, we added on to that. So by the end of the song, you are doing something different for each phrase. I'm not going to lie, it was VERY confusing, but we all had a blast!

(What is up with the blogging format?! It seems like they went back to the old way. So, sorry this post is formatted weird!)

So, I need to be quicker about posting my ideas. I swear I had this idea before crazychorister posted hers and Arizona fever posted hers, but now it looks like I'm copying. I think we were just all on the same brain waves. :) They both come up with the best ideas! Anyway, this is kinda a mix of both of their ideas.

So, I found out last week, that my primary does NOT know this song as well as I had hoped. So, this week, I needed to do some serious focusing and repetition. I wanted to do something with it being Valentines Day, so this is what I came up with:

I made hearts with part of a phrase on one side, and the remaining half of the phrase on the other. I tried to include pictures to help the younger kids. You can download the word document here and the PDF here. (I seem to have issues with my files, so as always, e-mail me if you have problems and I'll e-mail the file directly) IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS with the FILE, check below at the scribd thing. Does that work?


For Jr. primary, I plan on dividing the board somehow, so that the LEFT halves of the heart are on one side, and the RIGHT sides of the hearts are on the other side of the board. This way, they know if they pick a heart-half on one side, they'll know it's match is on the other side of the chalk board.











(Like my shag carpet in place of the chalkboard?) :)

For Sr. I will just mix them all up together to try to be more tricky.













To play:
I'll have someone come pick the first half of the heart. (I'll try to use the sunbeams for this, so they can take participate)

Then, I'll call up someone else to find it's matching half. Once the match has been found, and the heart put back together, they can flip it over to find out how we are going to sing the song. We'll practice singing just that line of the song a few times, and then sing it with the rest of the song, but sing it "that way" when we get to that particular line. (Is this clear as mud?!)

For example, it might say "whisper sing" on the back of the matched heart, then we'll sing just that line, whisper singing, a few times. Then, we'll sing the whole song like normal, but just "whisper sing" when it comes to that line.

For Senior primary only: we might try singing all the different ways at once. First phrase: boys sing, Second phrase: whisper sing, Third phrase: stand on one foot, etc. We'll see how it goes...


The different ways we will be singing:
Boys Sing
Girls Sing
Clap the beat
Turn the lights off
Whisper sing
Loud Sing
Stand on one foot and sing
Slow sing
Sing to back of room


Broken Heart Game 1

14 comments:

  1. Thank you, it sounds so fun. I like how you thought up something fun for Valentine's Day. I did what you suggested last week. My senior's seemed to enjoy it. Junior's did too but I didn't have enough time to finish with them, so I'll adapt for this week. Thank you so very much for helping to make my calling as primary chorister the best calling ever!

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  2. I think I will do exactly as you have outlined for the Sr. kids but for the Jr. (since we didn't get through the entire song last week),I think I will make each heart pair a different color. It will be super easy for them to find the match but then we can still learn the rest of the song and then sing it in a fun way, as is written on the back.

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  3. I'm planning to stick heart shaped post-it-notes onto the kids who sing well. Then at the end we'll pick a teacher (or maybe the pianist) and give her a "heart-attack" by getting all the kids to stick their hearts on her. Should be fun.

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  4. I absolutely love this idea, I am so grateful that you are willing to share your ideas with everyone. I have never been in this calling before and it is nice to get some ideas from some very creative people. Thanks again. I was wondering why there is a blank heart in the file. There is no pics or nothing, completely blank.

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  5. Thanks for the ideas! I love Miriam's idea on the post-it heart attack, too. :)

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  6. Thanks so very much! I am subbing for Valentine's Day and wanted to do something fun. This fits the bill perfectly! <3

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  7. I used this today and it worked SO well in Senior Primary. Junior Primary needed more time to actually learn the song but Senior loved singing each line differently. Even though we sang the song probably 10 times through, they still wanted to do it again. Thanks so much for the wonderful idea!

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  8. I used your idea yesterday, and it went by SO well with Senior primary. It totally kept their attention and they were singing their hearts out. Jr. Primary had a harder time with it, but thats ok! Thanks for the great idea.

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  9. Senior singing time went very well. Thank you so much! The kids had fun and it challenged them. Matching up the hearts in the way that we did, made them think and I was able to tell if they really knew the song. And they do! We didn't have enough time to sing though the entire song each time, only to sing the specified part in the fun way. However, next week, just for fun, I am going to take your suggestion and have them sing through the entire song changing the way we sing with each phrase, as you suggested. That should be fun. Now, I need to think of something that I can do with them the rest of the month, because they now know the song. I am still only half way through teaching the Jr. Primary the song. They just get so tired.

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  10. I used your idea and it went pretty good with both Jr and Sr Primary, probably better with Sr primary but it went pretty well. The kids seem to have fun but we all got confused when singing the parts different. It is hard for us because unfortunately we don't have a pianoist and we are having to use the ipod for singing time. But we still had fun but ran out of time too. Thanks again for your idea.

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  11. I really like the two halves, that is great. I had already made my hearts and gave them to my sub. If I had seen this sooner I think this would have been better than what I did. I should remember this, two pieces of a puzzle I can do something with this.

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  12. this worked out great for our primary last week. Thank you so much! And we loved singing each part of the song differently (I only did that in the sr. primary). It kept them on their toes!!

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  13. I just wanted to THANK YOU so much for your wonderful BLOG!! There are some weeks, I just really don't know what to do. And you have amazing ideas. It really helps to that I can just go straight to your blog and print something really fast if I need to. THANK YOU!!! You have made a very overwhelming calling for me, a little less difficult.

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  14. I don't speack english, am brasiliam I have 10 years and love your blog, thanks, and follow your blog,

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