Picture a Christmas

I'm still here. Barely.

I was released last Sunday, but am now the first counselor in primary. However, we have a christmas program coming up on December 12th, so they are having me do double duty until that is over.

I would still like to post ideas and flipcharts as they come, so don't forget me entirely!

So two weeks ago, I tried to introduce the song "Picture a Christmas". It was a TOTAL flop. Probably my worst singing time ever. I think I confused the kids more than I helped them.

So, I thought more about it during the week, and came up with something more simple and MUCH more effective.

In fact, we learned BOTH verses very well, in only 10 minutes.

I appologize that these are not *quality pictures. I remembered to take them right before leaving for church, so it was just a spread-them-out-and-snap-a-picture moment.

I found pictures to correlate with the things sung in the song:

Picture a STABLE

Picture a sacred silent, NIGHT

ANGEL, STAR, BABY JESUS, etc.

you can find my file of pictures HERE. I found them from google searches and sugardoodle clipart. 

(NOTE: the pictures are NOT in the order of the song. I just formatted it that way...because I was in a rush and put pictures in when I found them.)

Picture a Christmas

I went through the 1st verse and put the pictures up on the blackboard with a magnet, as we got to each phrase, so they would understand which pictures went to which phrase. 

Then, we sang through the song together. I took a small 5x7 picture frame, and "framed" each picture we sung about. Then, I called up a child to do the same thing. I think it was a sunbeam. She did perfect. Some of the pictures are oriented landscape while others are portraits, so they had to rotate the frame to fit the picture.

After we had done that a few times (each time a different child "framed" the pictures), I mixed them up and scattered them around the blackboard. They did the same process of framing the pictures, but it was more tricky since they now had to "find" the pictures. 

I told the children I was watching for those that "knew" the song really well to come help me. That really motivated them to sing out and try their best. I was thrilled that this activity worked well from the sunbeams all the way to the 11 year olds. We were able to sing it OVER, and OVER, and OVER, and...you get the point. 

Again, this activity could work for any song, but I liked it because we "pictured" each event of the song.

Faith poster

          The song I picked for May, is "Faith". I know MOST of you did NOT pick this song, but I think this idea could work for many songs. This song worked particularly well, because there were 4 main ideas presented. (Please forgive my photography skills. They are very lacking...)

I started by showing them this poster: 

I asked them what Faith is. After I got a few answers, I told them to listen to this song about Faith.

As I sang the song, I used the string behind the poster, to pull up the pictures out of their "boxes"

When I was finished, it looked like this.

Then, I pulled the pictures back down into their "boxes" and asked the kids what was in each "box". I was thrilled with their answers (and listening skills) when they used words and phrases from the song!

Then I called up volunteers to help pull the pictures out of the boxes as we sang the song. I love activities like this, that even the littlest kids can do. 

Here is another poster I helped my mother-in-law make. 

I love the blue!

TIP: use eyelets to help reinforce the holes, so they wouldn't rip

TIP: Put a piece of cardboard on the back of the poster, in between your string holes. This helps to keep the poster board from bending when you pul the string. 

I made my boxes from a 6x6 square of scrapbook paper. Then I scored a line 1/2" inch on three sides, and then another 3/8" of an inch towards the outside of the box.

Cut out the two bottom corners, fold them over each other and glue. 

This is what the "inside" of the box looks like. 

Funny side note:

When I started this blog, my sister was just called as primary chorister.

Then, my Mother-in-law.

Then, my mom 

(well, she's Stake Primary music leader, but ya know...same field..).

Then, My sister got released.

but now...

 my other sister has just been called as primary chorister. 

YAY! 

More ideas!

March: week 1 & 2 (introduce and reinforce)

Sorry this is getting out so late. I had orginally been planning on doing something completely different, but after I had made it last night, it just didn't seem right. I'll probably use it for something else, so stay tuned!

For our primary, I've decided to teach the entire primary just the 1st verse about Adam, and the verse about President Monson (in the March 2010) friend. Then, I'll have 5 other groups/classes sing verses for 5 other prophets. I'll include those below.

Update: I've been getting lots of questions about if I will do both Monson and Adam in the same week. I think I will do Monson first, and then Adam next week, using the same idea. I just don't see how I can put up another set of footprints without wasting everyone's time. Besides, after introducing the chorus, and working on the new verse, I don't think there will be extra time.

To start off, I'll ask the kids to pretend we are going on a hike in the mountains. It is very dark. What tool could we use to help us see better. When they say "flashlight", I'll show them my flashlight. I'll tell them that the light from the flashlight will help us to stay on the path, and not fall off or to go "astray". I'll tell them that to go astray, means to go off the right path.

Then I'll show them a picture of a President Monson, and ask them who it is. We'll talk about how a prophet is like a flashlight, in that he helps us to stay on the path of righteousness, so we can return to our Heavenly Father. Our Prophet can guide us because he knows the way!

I'll sing the chorus to them once, asking them to count how many times I sing "Follow The Prophet."
(six). Arizona forever, posted a great video of ASL for the chorus.

Then I'll show them the board (I'll use the bulletin board) with footprints all over it. At the Top Left Corner of the board, I will have a picture of a group of people (Go to sugardoodle.net for clipart) and at the Bottom right, I'll have a picture of the Prophet we are singing about.

Each footprint has part of a phrase on it, (i.e. Adam was a prophet, Adam was a Bishop, First one that we know, Fifth one that we know, etc.) You'll notice, some of the phrases are found in the song, and others are slightly different.

I'll tell them that we have to follow the footprints to get to the Prophet, but only some footprints will lead us in the right direction. Some footprints have one word that is not part of the song. When we find a footprint with the wrong words on it, we'll take it down. By the time we are finished, we should be left with a footprint path that leads from us to the Prophet. (see picture below)

To play, I'll have a child come and pick any footprint. I'll ask them if those are the right words, or the wrong words. Some are pretty obvious, but others would make complete sense. If they are not sure, we'll sing the verse together as a primary and have them listen extra carefully. Then I'll ask them again if it belongs or not.

Here are links to footprints with the Adam and Monson verses on them. If you are having problems downloading them, it is probably because I have Microsoft Office 2004 and you have a newer version. For some reason, it's messing up the format.

Follow the prophet footprints .doc


Follow the prophet Adam footprints 1 .doc

You'll want to pre-plan your maze route, and put the footprints up in the right spots, or it won't work! :) (see the example below) Remember, to take down the wrong footprints. You should only be left with the footprints that make the path to the Prophet.

Here is a link to some blank footprints, so you can copy as many as you want and write in your own words.

blank footprint.doc

Here are our other verses, that will be given out to classes later. All these were found in the Friend, and I got approval to sing. I'll probably at least sing through them once in the coming weeks, but we won't spend a lot of time on them.

Nephi: (June, 2001 Friend, Page 46)

Nephi was a prophet, tried to get the plates.

He dressed up as Laban by the city gates

With his brothers waiting, Nephi went inside.

He knew God would help him, and with him abide.

Samuel: (June, 2001 Friend, Page 46)

Samuel the prophet, Lamanite by birth,

Prophesied the time when Christ would come to Earth.

Cried to all, "Repentence!", shouted from the wall.

Wicked would not listen, tried to make him fall.

Joseph: (June, 2001 Friend, Page 46)

Joseph was a prophet, first one in our day.

He saw God and Jesus when we went to pray.

he prayed with great faith to know which church was true,

Jesus said to "Join none. Truth shall come through you."

Monson: March 2010 Friend, page 25 written on the picture of president Monson in bottom Right Hand corner)

Heavenly Father loves us, and wants us to return,

he blesses us with peophets who help us to learn.

President Monson humbly leads God's church today.

As we heed his words, we'll walk a righteous way

We will also be doing Daniel, and Noah from the song book.

January week 3: Reinforcement

I'm SO sorry that I'm getting this out the day before Sunday, but we had a death in the family. Yes, our pet hampster of 2 years, passed away. It's been a little emotional over here, and I just wasn't able to get to this until now.


I found this idea, somewhere...  I'm pretty sure it was on a fellow chorister's blog, but I swear I went through every archive and could not find it. So, to whomever's idea this is, THANK YOU.  Please let me know so I can give you credit!


Anyway, here's the plan:

You take a box (I used a shoe box), place a reward inside (I used Smarties') and wrap it up. Then you attach a bunch of tags with ribbons. The orginal idea [insert name of person who deserves much credit here} was to put the names of all the program songs on the tags, and as the kids mastered each song, they would cut off a tag, getting them closer to finding out what is inside the gift.

I'm modifying this idea just a little, to use it for just ONE song. I placed a phrase or two of January's song "I know my Savior Loves Me" on each gift tag. There are 9 tags total. Here are the linkgs to the tag PDF and WORD Document.  files.

I'm going to start with the Chorus, (all on one tag). We'll work on singing it until we've mastered it. This means, no visuals, and no singing help from me. Once they've got it, I'll call a child up to cut the ribbon with the corresponding tag.

 We will work through the song backwards, starting with the last phrase of the second verse FIRST. That way, we can just add on, singing to the end, and not have to stop the song in awkward places.

I'm not sure if we'll finish in one Sunday, (probably not), so we'll finish the next week if we need to.

We have split Senior and Junior singing time, so I have already pre-cut the ribbon for the Senior Primary, and will just use the same tags.

Music Melody Map

I remember doing this for music class when I was in Elementary School.  The teacher made this weird map of lines, symbols, squiggles, etc. that correlated to the melody of a musical piece. I remember specifically doing this for some of the Nutcracker Ballet pieces.

Anyway, I thought I would try it with my kids to teach them "Joy to the World" since it is a fairly simple song, but can be tricky due to holding out words over multiple notes. Using this method, we could sing the song over and over and hopefully keep their attention. You could do this for any song

I told them we were going to learn a new song, then showed them a poster that looked like this:

I had fun with them and asked if anyone knew the song. Of course I got lots of puzzled looks and remarks. So I had our pianist play the first few notes until they recognized it.  Then I sand them for it while I followed the "map" with my baton. (Baton's are excellent pointers...) 

Then I called on volunteers  to help me follow the map while the rest followed  with their fingers in the air. I also shrunk this down and put 4 on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of cardstock, cut them out, and passed them out to the older kids AFTER they had practiced in the air with me a few times.

 I asked for them back, but told them if they wanted one to take home and practice :) they could come by after primary to get one.

After a few repetitions, I'd ask them what words went to the blue marks, or the red marks, etc. They did really well!

How it works:

Blue marks: Joy to the world, the Lord is come!

Purple: Let earth receive her King!

Green: Let every heart, Prepare him room

Red: And Saints and Angels Sing! And Saints and Angels Sing!

Orange: And saints, and saints, and Angels sing!

Just follow the marks with your fingers to fit the words.

If this doesn't make sense, I could make a video...

...but then I'd have to sing a solo...

...and reveal my identity....

...but I would do it...

 ... just for you. :)

 So, let me know if I need to.

P.S. I have the PDF of the little pass out cards if anyone is interested. I really wish there was a way to just post those on here....does anyone know a way to do this?

Teaching rhythm

Another idea by Trisha...

To learn a song that has a strong beat (like How Firm a Foundation), here's another idea.

I made rhythm sticks out of 5/8" dowels cut into 8" lengths. I found 3' and 4' dowels at our local building supply store.

I made enough sets of sticks so that at least half of the children had a set. If a child didn't get a set of sticks first, they clapped. And we switched sticks often so that all of the children had a chance to clap and use the sticks.

First, I had us all clap or tap out the beat. The beat never changes in most of the Primary songs. Each song is usually composed of three or four beats in each measure. The beat just goes on and on. You can talk quite well while you and the children are clapping/tapping the beat. I repeated "The beat goes on and on. It never changes" to the beat a couple times to emphasize the steadiness of the beat.

Second, we all practiced clapping/tapping out the rhythm. For the rhythm, you clap or tap each time there's a note in the song. It usually works out to a clap/tap for every syllable in each word. For example, How Firm A Foun-Da-Tion, Ye Sa-Ints Of The Lord with every capital letter indicating a clap/tap.

When the children had the rhythm under control, I switched it up.

One side of the room kept the beat, while the other side of the room clapped/tapped the rhythm. That way, they could hear the differences between the beat and the rhythm. And then we switched sides.

You could use a teacher or member of the Presidency to lead one side of the room while you lead the other side. I used one of our 11 year-old girls that was musically talented and who was leaving within the next week to attend Young Womens. She loved it. The kids loved it too.

We repeated both verses of How Firm a Foundation several times, but the children didn't seem to notice all the repetition while tapping/clapping the beat or the rhythm of the song.

Teaching scramble game

I'm excited to share something that worked AWESOME for me today. This can be used with ANY song, but worked particularly well with this one, since it wasn't "wordy" and on the slow side.


(This was for SENIOR primary. I'm working much more slowly with the Jr'.s and have been doing more basic activities with simple visuals. I think Jr.'s could do this if there were pictures, rather than words)


Last week I introduced this song with this awesome idea from this blog
Some changes I did were: My pictures were on half a sheet of colored paper, I didn't use Popsicle sticks (just the picture backed on colored paper), and I changed some of the words that were colored to fit the visuals I could find...not change the words themselves of course, but which words were colored. :) For example, I didn't color the word "Obedience" as that was a visual I found hard to find, but colored "Father" instead. I tried to have the same amount of colored words per verse. I hope that wasn't too confusing! :)

Anyway, I felt this song was simple enough to introduce ALL three verses at once. Then I could work on individual verses as needed.

This week, I wanted to focus on the 2ND verse of Baptism.

I cut out 2 1/4" in. strips from a poster board (4 of them) and wrote the four phrases on them, like this:


I took the four strips to church with me. We sang through the 3 verses, using the idea from last week, where the kids stand up on the words of the picture. Then I posted the four strips on the blackboard with magnets, in a mixed up order. I called on a volunteer to put the strips in order while the rest of the primary sang with the poster.

She was able to do it, no problem. So then I challenged them to do something harder. I took a pair of scissors and chopped a few of the phrases up like this:
Then the first volunteer and I mixed up the phrases again and called on another volunteer to come up and put the phrases together and in the right order. They started rearranging the pieces the same time we started singing the verse.

If they were unable to put the pieces back together before we finished singing the "round" was not mastered. I would let them finish putting the pieces back together while we waited (usually just a few seconds), we'd mix them up and call on another person to try. If they DID succeed in putting the phrases back together before we finished singing, it was too "easy" so I chopped a paper or two to make 1 or 2 more pieces.


We have more than 20 kids in Sr. primary and everyone who wanted to have a turn (which was all but one or two) got to have a chance at unscrambling the phrases. They loved it! Sometimes I had to remind the others to keep singing as they were caught up in the volunteer's efforts. I held up the poster with all the words until I noticed that the kids were singing, but no longer looking at the words. YAY! :)

This is how the pieces looked on the board after every turn. I'd have the volunteer who just finished rearranging the pieces, help me mix them up again.

***Towards the end, when there were the most pieces, I brought out my conducting baton (I never use this...I still have it from my band directing days...) and they could just point to the scattered pieces as we sang them. I've heard of people using fly swatters and swatting the phrases...but as this is a more reverent song, I didn't feel that was appropriate.****

Teach and Review with Ker-plunk!

So, it's been some time since I've had any ideas for singing time, but I finally came up with one! I've been trying to come up with an idea that would be fun, capture their attention, but also let us learn and review the song. This is my idea...

I am teaching "When He Comes Again" for the April song, but this idea would work for any song and can be used in many different ways.

Ker-plunk is a game I picked up at toys r us for about $12. If you have never seen it, the basic concept is that a bunk of sticks are placed through the middle of two cups, and then marbles are placed on top of the sticks. One by one, the sticks are removed, while trying not to let any of the marbles fall.

There are three colors of sticks. Neon Pink, Neon Orange, and Neon Green.

I have divided my song into three phrases and coordinated them with the color.

Neon Pink: "I wonder when he comes again. Will herald angels sing? Will earth be white with drifted snow, or will the world know spring?"

Neon Orange: "I wonder if one star will shine far brighter than the rest? Will daylight stay the whole night through? Will song birds leave their nest?"

Neon Green: "I'm sure he'll call his little ones, to gather round his kneee, because he said in days gone by, suffer them to come to me."

I'll call up children to remove a stick. If the stick they chose drops marbles, we will sing that color's phrase. How many marbles drop, will determine how many times we will sing the phrase...up to 4 times through. (so if 6 marbles drop, the maximum times we will sing that phrase would still be 4).

In order to keep their attention through the repeating of phrases, I have visuals for the words, about 3 per phrase. I'll pick three kids to hold them up and get them in the right order. If we need to sing it again, they will pick someone else to hold their picture and get it in the right order. Hopefully I'll be able to use all of them at least once, hopefully more.

I'm not sure if I'll do the same thing with the Sr.'s or not, since they pretty much already know the song, but I'm hoping this will help out my Jr's. :)

My Eternal family...revisited.

I mentioned this on my original teaching post of My Eternal Family, but it worked SO well yesterday, I just had to share again.

I didn't try it for Jr. primary, but it worked awesome for Sr. primary.

The first week of March we introduced the song. The second week was stake conference. So this week, I wanted to see how much they remembered. I had my "scattered visuals" on the board, held up with magnets. I told them we would play a game of "tag". I picked a child to start. She was to find the first picture, and then tag someone to find the next picture, etc. The rest of the primary just sang the song over and over with the flip chart until all the pictures were in order. We got through it 7 1/2 times! :)

I told them that was pretty good, since we had only one week to learn it, but I thought we could do much better. Then I called on 4 kids to come up and work as a team to put the visuals in order while the primary sang. They got it done before we finished the song even one time! we did this a few times, and the kids were edging out of their chairs to have a chance to prove how well they knew the song. We obviously couldn't let the ENTIRE primary do it, so I called up two kids to turn over one picture each. When we sang through the song and came to the picture turned over, I DID NOT SING, to see how well they knew it. We turned over 2-3 pictures each round.

They are really learning this song well. It was one of those activities where even the kid-that's-too-cool-for-singing-time was participating. YAY for successful sundays! :)

My Eternal Family: visuals and plan

UPDATE: For safety reasons (Just trying to be extra cautious and to prevent spam) If you have left your e-mail address in the comments, I'll delete the comment after I send the e-mail. If your comment is deleted and you did NOT get an e-mail of the PDF, please let me know.


TIP: Sugardoodle has an AWESOME collection of clipart and pictures to make your own flipcharts!!but you probably already knew that...


So, I'm going to be honest, and say that this song is NOT my most favorite. And luckily for me, my presidency feels the same way, so we plan on only doing the first verse. I had a hard time finding visuals that I liked for this song, but found one that came close on Sugardoodle (click here) Like Carrie, my pictures came from the sugardoodle clipart file and MSN clipart, and also the one image (the construction man) by Valerie Gardner.

I wanted more pictures than the one on Sugardoodle, because I have lots of kids in Junior primary that would learn better from lots of pictures, than words. This is my version of the 1st verse for a flip chart HERE to download the file. This is my first attempt at the shared file thing, so let me know if it doesn't work for you, or if you'd rather have the file e-mailed. Here is what they look like.
I think I got this idea from the primusic group, but I can't remember. I'll show them this picture and ask them to tell me what this man does for a job. After they tell me he is a "builder" I'll tell them that this "builder" is also my Dad! (He's so awesome and took this picture for me on Saturday night!)

I'll describe the things he has built, i.e. most of the homes I lived in as a child, other buildings, and now oversees the building of LDS churches and temples in the Texas area.

But that is not all he has built. He helped to build a righteous family. (I'll have the latest picture of all my siblings and their families from out last reunion, and tell them that by being a righteous priesthood holder, having family scripture study and prayer, and being a great example to us, he helped build a firm foundation for each of us to start building our own righteous families. Then I will tell them that we will learn a song about how we can be our own builders of a righteous family.

I will then show them the blackboard with the same visuals from the flipchart, only bigger, separated (only one picture per half sheet of paper) and without words scattered on the board. I'll tell them we need to build this song. We have all the right pieces, but we have to put them together to make our song. I'll sing it through a few times to help them hear the melody, while they look at the pictures and try to figure out the correct order.
(the scattered visuals)

Then, one at a time, I'll call up a "builder" (I'll probably bring my son's toy construction hat) let them wear it, and find the correct picture for each phrase. As we find the pictures to complete each phrase, we'll sing through that phrase a few times. If they get stuck, I'll sing the entire verse to them. If time allows (I'm very lucky to usually have 20+ minutes for singing time) we'll turn over the pictures to help them memorize the verse.

If you want the plain PDF file for my "scattered" visuals, let me know in the comments so I can e-mail it to you. This is NOT the flipchart. Just the pictures without words that my kids will listen to to the song to put them in the correct order. The flipchart is in the link above.

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.

Crack the Code

I saw somone from another ward do this, and it really helped me learn the song. I'm going to try it with my Sr. Primary tomorrow.

Preparation: On a dry-erase board (I got mine from walmart for $9!), write out the first letter of each word to a verse.

In Action: Each color represents a different verse, but I'm not telling the kids that. The numbers on colored paper on the left, corolate with the correct verse. When I first show the kids the board, these will not be on it. I'm just going to tell them that I have a code that I would like them to solve, and it has to do with the third verse of the song. (In this case, I Lived in Heaven (CS4)). I will sing it once, then ask if anyone knows how to crack the code? If they don't know, I'll sing it again until they do figure it out. (If I have to, I'll tell them that each letter stands for a word of the song). Then I'll ask them which is the line to the first verse. I'll sing the song while they decide. I'll call on a volunteer to place the "1" by the 1st line, etc.


To memorize, I'll have a giant dice, acutally, this one, but I'll remove the words and put on dots to look like a real dice. I'll call on someone to roll the dice to decide how many letters to erase. That person will erase which ever letters he wants, and then we'll sing the verse, trying to remember what went in the blanks. We'll continue until we have a blank board.

Mystery poster

Audience: Junior and Senior Primary
Preparation: On posterboard, write out words to a verse of a song. Then, prepare blank strips to cover up specific words. On one side, put a question mark, on the other, write the word it is to cover up, lightly in pencil. Tape the blank strip with the question mark over the word.



Put into Action:
For Junior primary, we reviewed the verse we learned last week. Then, I challenged them to see who really knew the song. We went in order of the words, but when we got to the question strip, I would ask who knew what word should go there. I had the sunbeams take off the strip, to keep them involved. After we uncovered a line, we would sing the entire verse. Then we would uncover more words.

For Senior primary, we did the opposite. I had 3 or 4 children come up at a time and pick up the question strips. They looked at the pencil word, then covered up that word on the poster board. Then we sang the verse, covered up more words, sang again, etc. We didn't cover up all the words, but you could certainly do that!

cut up word strips

Audience:

Preparation:
Print out words to a verse in large font, including correct punctuation. Then, cut into little word strips, containing 1, 2, or 3 words. Finally, place in a sandwhich bag. Make enough of these so that 2-3 children have one bag.



Senior primary

Put into Action:
I did this without even going over the verse once with the kids. I breifly gave them instructions that in each bag were words to the verse we would be learning. They were to assemble the wordstrips in order, while I sang the verse. I did not even mention anything about "finishing first". They were motivated enough!

Then I sang. And sang, and SANG! I wouldn't be suprised if I sang it 20 times! The room was silent as all 32 children worked hard to put the verse together. Once, I stopped to get a drink of water, and I heard cries of "sing it again! Sing it again!". My primary presidency was nice enough to come up and sing it with me. As they finished, I told them to sing along with me. By the end, I quized them with the "question poster". (See "teaching" on the side bar for a link to this post)