I just had a couple of random things I wanted to share with you.
First of all, I wanted something to help the kids track their progress in learning the program songs.
You may remember this post, which I used for last year's program to help motivate them to sing out.
I loved the "grading chart" that I have seen in other places, but wanted to simplify it for the younger kids. After all, my 1st grader doesn't really understand what an A+ verses a C- means. So, I kept with the same theme, and used the same smiley faces.
I plan on bringing it out on the 4th Sunday, when we are "testing" the song. I played around with just posting the smiley that they are on, or to keep all the smileys up as they earn them. Still not sure about that, but for now, all of the smiley's are going up. I am leaning toward just posting one smiley per song. So, if they are doing "great" then, that Smiley will be the only one on the row. (The Extra songs are songs our presidency has picked out that we would like to use, in addition to the others, for the primary program)
I like to figure out what songs we are singing for the entire month. I made this chart on in excel, and just update it for each month. Before the first sunday of each month, I'll e-mail the file to the pianist and presidency members. Ironically, I was the one that could never find the paper after I printed it out, so I finally taped it to the inside of my primary songbook. This has been working great for me! I always know where it is!
Here is a close up of the chart:
I mainly pick an opening song, list the songs I plan on using during singing time, a closing song, a birthday song (I get stuck in a rut and can't remember which songs we have sung), a welcome song and then I list a handful of wiggle songs that we can jump too if needed.
Lastly, we are doing the songs of the heart idea. I can't remember where I read about it, but thought it was a great idea. I just cut out a bunch of papers with hearts on them, and asked the kids to write down their favorite primary song. We keep the jar in the closet in the primary room, and I get it out each week. If we have extra time (HA!) we'll pull it out and draw out a song or too.
I went through all the cards and wrote down a list for the pianist with the page numbers. There are a few more "unfamiliar" songs that were written down, at least for our primary, such as "We'll Bring His World His Truth" so I'll make copies of that so we can have that for the kids who don't know the song so well.
