(I know it was the song for May, but this idea will work on other songs as well. My apologies for lack of pictures. My daughter dropped our digital camera in the pool and it is fried. I will see if I can work some miracle with my cell phone to add later.)
I printed out all the words, cut each out individually and backed with colored paper that was cut about 1/2" larger than the white sheet. (Yes, this took some time, but it also made it much easier to prep for the following weeks!)
I left some colored pages blank and utilized the Detective Clueless idea. I wrote scriptures in very small handwriting on the colored pages and told the kids which file to look in to fill in the blank. We would start singing at the beginning of a verse and stop when we came to a blank. That way, we ended up singing through each verse multiple times. We also got to use the scriptures and learn more about Jesus' baptism.
It took us a couple of weeks to get all the way through the song and fill in the blanks. Then for review, since I had all the words on seven different colors of construction paper, we used "exploding water", as my kids call it, and sang the whole thing through 7 times. They love watching the water bubble over and get so excited trying to guess what color will come up next.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Reverence
First - my apologies also for slacking in the posting department. This singing/sharing time took place about 2 months ago but things have been super busy for us.
We were having a little trouble with lack of reverence. Not just the children but teachers too! So our Primary president called and asked if I could teach the children "Reverence Is Love" during her sharing time. Which got me to thinking, "What is reverence? How can I teach this song and keep it fun and interesting while reverent at the same time?" Sign language! So I picked out the main words, looked them up on an online ASL site and memorized the song.
Our president began by assigning a "noise" to each class. For instance, the Sunbeams mooed the next class counted to 10 repeatedly, etc. Then she told them that when she raised her hand, they were all to make their assigned noises and stop when she lowered her hand. She then told of Jesus and the money changers in the temple, raising and lowering her hand at appropriate times. She also discussed the meaning of reverence and how we can show reverence and then turned the time over to me.
I told the children that I wanted to teach them a special song about reverence but that they would have to be reverent to learn it. I'm no soloist, but I did sing and sign at the same time (ask your pianist to slow down if you want to try this!). Then I invited them all to sing and sign with me anything they could remember but to particulary watch for the sign for "reverence". After 2 times through, I asked if anyone noticed what the sign was. Then we went through the first line, learning words and signs. Then added the second line, sang from the beginning. Then added the third line, sang from the beginning. Etc. To finish, I had them sing the song twice through, once with words, the second time only with signs.
The Spirit was so strong. And the kids love the song. We are going to sing it as a part of our program to help the reverence in our sacrament meeting as well.
We were having a little trouble with lack of reverence. Not just the children but teachers too! So our Primary president called and asked if I could teach the children "Reverence Is Love" during her sharing time. Which got me to thinking, "What is reverence? How can I teach this song and keep it fun and interesting while reverent at the same time?" Sign language! So I picked out the main words, looked them up on an online ASL site and memorized the song.
Our president began by assigning a "noise" to each class. For instance, the Sunbeams mooed the next class counted to 10 repeatedly, etc. Then she told them that when she raised her hand, they were all to make their assigned noises and stop when she lowered her hand. She then told of Jesus and the money changers in the temple, raising and lowering her hand at appropriate times. She also discussed the meaning of reverence and how we can show reverence and then turned the time over to me.
I told the children that I wanted to teach them a special song about reverence but that they would have to be reverent to learn it. I'm no soloist, but I did sing and sign at the same time (ask your pianist to slow down if you want to try this!). Then I invited them all to sing and sign with me anything they could remember but to particulary watch for the sign for "reverence". After 2 times through, I asked if anyone noticed what the sign was. Then we went through the first line, learning words and signs. Then added the second line, sang from the beginning. Then added the third line, sang from the beginning. Etc. To finish, I had them sing the song twice through, once with words, the second time only with signs.
The Spirit was so strong. And the kids love the song. We are going to sing it as a part of our program to help the reverence in our sacrament meeting as well.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Hit or Miss Game
This Sunday is the fifth sunday, and I have the entire singing/sharing time. I wanted a game where we could sing like crazy and review songs, but also have fun.
This idea was inspired by someone with the idea of "musicship"...but I can't remember who.
****I just got a comment referring me to the correct site. The Crazy Chorister was the one I got the original idea from. Thanks to Dana who sent this information!****
I tweaked it a little to make it work for our primary and what we needed to get accomplished.
On a poster board, I made a grid: 1-6 across the top and A-G going down the sides. I cut out 3x3 squares of cardstock to fill in the blank spaces. The children will come up (for Juniors) and pick a square and the older kids can just call out coordinates (A2) for example. Behind the square will either be a symbol or blank. If it's blank, we don't do anything, and have someone else pick another square.
I have 3 different symbols on different colors of cardstock; a 4 stars, 11 ships, and 6 flowers. On each of the symbols, I penciled in a song title.
All of the cards will be faced down, as so:
The ships represent the program songs. (I divided up the verses, so one ship would represent "How Firm a Foundation (verse 1)" and another ship would have "How Firm a Foundation (verse 3)".
The flowers represent songs we will be singing at the retirement center in two weeks. These are "non-denominational songs". We have our Father's day songs, one of our mother's day songs, I am a Child of God, Wise and Foolish Man, etc. You could just do wiggle songs for these.
The stars represent "free choice", where the child can pick any primary song he wants.
For most of the songs, I will have a little bag with papers inside, with different ways to sing the song. I thought about bringing my dice, but it's getting hard enough for me to move around without carrying a ton of stuff. These papers might say "sing staccato, stand on one leg, loud and soft (I have sticks with a lion and a mouse that they can alternate during the song), girls sing, boys sing, don't sing words that begin with "H", etc. If they have a rough time with a verse, we'll probably review a little and sing it again.
****It would be fun to have a picture or phrase or something underneath all of the squares that they slowly uncover. However, leaving it blank, you can use the poster over and over, just rearrange the cards and erase the song titles for different ones as needed****
This idea was inspired by someone with the idea of "musicship"...but I can't remember who.
****I just got a comment referring me to the correct site. The Crazy Chorister was the one I got the original idea from. Thanks to Dana who sent this information!****
I tweaked it a little to make it work for our primary and what we needed to get accomplished.
On a poster board, I made a grid: 1-6 across the top and A-G going down the sides. I cut out 3x3 squares of cardstock to fill in the blank spaces. The children will come up (for Juniors) and pick a square and the older kids can just call out coordinates (A2) for example. Behind the square will either be a symbol or blank. If it's blank, we don't do anything, and have someone else pick another square.
I have 3 different symbols on different colors of cardstock; a 4 stars, 11 ships, and 6 flowers. On each of the symbols, I penciled in a song title.
All of the cards will be faced down, as so:
The ships represent the program songs. (I divided up the verses, so one ship would represent "How Firm a Foundation (verse 1)" and another ship would have "How Firm a Foundation (verse 3)".
The flowers represent songs we will be singing at the retirement center in two weeks. These are "non-denominational songs". We have our Father's day songs, one of our mother's day songs, I am a Child of God, Wise and Foolish Man, etc. You could just do wiggle songs for these.
The stars represent "free choice", where the child can pick any primary song he wants.
For most of the songs, I will have a little bag with papers inside, with different ways to sing the song. I thought about bringing my dice, but it's getting hard enough for me to move around without carrying a ton of stuff. These papers might say "sing staccato, stand on one leg, loud and soft (I have sticks with a lion and a mouse that they can alternate during the song), girls sing, boys sing, don't sing words that begin with "H", etc. If they have a rough time with a verse, we'll probably review a little and sing it again.
****It would be fun to have a picture or phrase or something underneath all of the squares that they slowly uncover. However, leaving it blank, you can use the poster over and over, just rearrange the cards and erase the song titles for different ones as needed****
Sunday, May 24, 2009
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.****
(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.****
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Update:
Hi!
I just wanted to put up a brief note about my lack of posting. My main excuse is that I don't have anything original and the ladies with links on the side of the blog have come up with lots of good things.
My second excuse is I'm due to have a baby soon (could come next week...but not due till June) and have not found the energy to do anything elaborate or even worth posting.
I'm not giving up yet, just wanted to explain the absence of posts. I hope you all are finding wonderful ideas to help your sunday's out!
-Trisa
I just wanted to put up a brief note about my lack of posting. My main excuse is that I don't have anything original and the ladies with links on the side of the blog have come up with lots of good things.
My second excuse is I'm due to have a baby soon (could come next week...but not due till June) and have not found the energy to do anything elaborate or even worth posting.
I'm not giving up yet, just wanted to explain the absence of posts. I hope you all are finding wonderful ideas to help your sunday's out!
-Trisa
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Mother's Day
We started learning our Mother's day songs today, and it went so amazingly well. I received a degree in music education at BYU, and have been trying to use the things they taught me in my early childhood music classes. One of the biggest things they tried to emphasize is that
1)Don't try to teach part to whole, but whole to part. In other words, try to sing the entire song 90% of the time, instead of by phrases.
2) Let each repetition have purpose and meaning
I find these things to be difficult to do while holding the children's attention. Today, I think I finally would have made my professors proud! :)
We are singing "Dearest Names" and then going right into the first verse of "Love at home". Today I taught Dearest names.
I picked this one because it is not a familiar one, but I thought the kids would grasp on to it quickly. They totally did!
The words:
I know a name, a glorious name,
dearer than any other!
Listen, I'll whisper the name to you...
It is the name of Mother!
Mother, so tender and kind and true,
I love you! I love you!
Mother, so tender and kind and true,
I love you!
I started out by bringing a duck puppet, but any puppet or no puppet would work. For Sr.'s I didn't use the pupped. I told them my friend (the duck) wanted to sing them a special song about someone, but she was really shy, and would only whisper the name to someone listening very carefully.
I sang the first half of the song. When I got to "Listen, I'll whisper the name to you..." I started walking around the primary with my puppet and bent down to a child to whisper "mother" when the song came to it. Then, I had that child come to the front and we started the song over and we each picked a child to whisper "mother" too. Then the 2 new children, plus the original child and I, went back to the front, where we started the song again. It only took a few times through the song, before each child had been whispered the word.
Next, I had them sing with me from the beginning, and really sing out the special word, to make sure we all heard it right. At this point, I took off the puppet.
For the next half of the song, I showed them the sign language for "I Love you" (you know, the one we all know) and asked them to raise their hand if they knew what it meant. I was actually surprised at how few hands went up. I told them to listen to the next part where I would tell them would the sign language meant. I did the sign language everytime I sang "I love you" then invited them to sing the second half with me, and do the sign language with me. We did this a few times.
Lastly, I asked them if they could stomp their feet, Left foot then right foot, to the word "Moth-er". We tried that a few times. Then, we stomped our feet as we sang the second half and did the sign language to "I Love you." Then I had them listen for three things "mother" is and put their fingers up 1-2-3 as we sang them, WHILE doing everything else.
The next time, we clapped on the words "tender","kind" and "true"., while stomping on mother and doing the sign language.
For Sr.'s we kept going. I had them stomp on mother, but clap on all the "and" words. That was tricky.
Then, I had them pat one leg than the other (right left) for "tender", snap on "kind" and tap their head on "true".
the last time, we did everything above, but added the claps in between the words on "and".
Then of course, we had to sing it from top to bottom a few times. They LOVED it. and you can see how many times we were able to repeat the song.
Sigh, I LOVE successful sundays. :)
1)Don't try to teach part to whole, but whole to part. In other words, try to sing the entire song 90% of the time, instead of by phrases.
2) Let each repetition have purpose and meaning
I find these things to be difficult to do while holding the children's attention. Today, I think I finally would have made my professors proud! :)
We are singing "Dearest Names" and then going right into the first verse of "Love at home". Today I taught Dearest names.
I picked this one because it is not a familiar one, but I thought the kids would grasp on to it quickly. They totally did!
The words:
I know a name, a glorious name,
dearer than any other!
Listen, I'll whisper the name to you...
It is the name of Mother!
Mother, so tender and kind and true,
I love you! I love you!
Mother, so tender and kind and true,
I love you!
I started out by bringing a duck puppet, but any puppet or no puppet would work. For Sr.'s I didn't use the pupped. I told them my friend (the duck) wanted to sing them a special song about someone, but she was really shy, and would only whisper the name to someone listening very carefully.
I sang the first half of the song. When I got to "Listen, I'll whisper the name to you..." I started walking around the primary with my puppet and bent down to a child to whisper "mother" when the song came to it. Then, I had that child come to the front and we started the song over and we each picked a child to whisper "mother" too. Then the 2 new children, plus the original child and I, went back to the front, where we started the song again. It only took a few times through the song, before each child had been whispered the word.
Next, I had them sing with me from the beginning, and really sing out the special word, to make sure we all heard it right. At this point, I took off the puppet.
For the next half of the song, I showed them the sign language for "I Love you" (you know, the one we all know) and asked them to raise their hand if they knew what it meant. I was actually surprised at how few hands went up. I told them to listen to the next part where I would tell them would the sign language meant. I did the sign language everytime I sang "I love you" then invited them to sing the second half with me, and do the sign language with me. We did this a few times.
Lastly, I asked them if they could stomp their feet, Left foot then right foot, to the word "Moth-er". We tried that a few times. Then, we stomped our feet as we sang the second half and did the sign language to "I Love you." Then I had them listen for three things "mother" is and put their fingers up 1-2-3 as we sang them, WHILE doing everything else.
The next time, we clapped on the words "tender","kind" and "true"., while stomping on mother and doing the sign language.
For Sr.'s we kept going. I had them stomp on mother, but clap on all the "and" words. That was tricky.
Then, I had them pat one leg than the other (right left) for "tender", snap on "kind" and tap their head on "true".
the last time, we did everything above, but added the claps in between the words on "and".
Then of course, we had to sing it from top to bottom a few times. They LOVED it. and you can see how many times we were able to repeat the song.
Sigh, I LOVE successful sundays. :)
Thursday, April 9, 2009
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. :)
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