Singing Time Sundays - I Belong To The Church of Jesus Christ

Yep, this was last month's song and nope, I never got my post up. But thankfully ribbon sticks are something you can use for all sorts of songs. I just happened to use them to teach "I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ".
I just bought some dowels, cut some ribbon lengths, seared the ends with a match, then tacked them to the top of the stick. There are definite primary rules when the ribbon sticks come out. Absolutely no flicking the ribbons (could cause the tack to pop out and I don't need a tack in the eye), no sword fighting, no bothering your neighbor, etc. If I see any of this, the ribbon is taken away immediately. No warnings, period. Believe it or not, the kids all pretty much respect the ribbon rules.

Ribbons can be used any number of ways (free movement, to teach leading, nursery kids love them too, etc.) but I chose to use them to teach a ribbon dance. We did specific moves for specific phrases of the song. For instance, "I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ" was a straight up and down movement to the beat. Then "of Latter Day Saints" was a wave over head to the beat. "I know who I am" was a wiggle towards the floor, with "I know God's plan" a wiggle back up to the sky. And so on with a different movement for each phrase. It is really neat and fun to see all the ribbons moving together at the same time.

This is a great method to use for kids who learn best through physical touch and movement. I have never found that having the kids focus on the movement hindered them in learning the words. In fact the opposite is true.