Singing Time Sundays - Repentance

For May my primary is learning "Repentance". I'll be honest, I could not come up with a clever way to teach this, or think of visuals to use. So....I broke the song up into 4 phrases, split my primary into 4 groups, and had them draw their own visuals. While they were drawing, I had the CD player repeating the song so they were hearing the tune and subconsciously learning the words. After they finished, we took it phrase by phrase, discussed their pictures and sang the song.

I think it was a good introduction to the song. We had to mostly focus on our Mother's Day songs as next week we will sing those in sacrament meeting. May is a short month as well because of Stake Conference, but I am confident that the kids will know the song by the end of the month.

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.

Singing Time Sundays - Memory Match

I'm really struggling this month with "Follow the Prophet". There are SO many verses and SO many words in each verse. And even though I've only chosen 5 of the 14 some odd verses to teach, I'm just not sure how to get the kids to know all the words of each one. I think I've finally made the decision to split the primary into 4 groups, each group will get one verse and then the entire primary will sing the verse about Pres. Monson. So I think from here on out, I'm going to just focus on the final verse. (Well, that's the plan as of now anyway.)

Today we did a "Memory Match" game. For the jr. kids I split each verse into two phrases (with pictures and words both printed) and then they had to come choose two papers to try to make a match. (Matching the first half of the phrase to the 2nd half.) I used the same pictures from last weeks visuals, but I wish I would have just printed two of the exact same pictures to match. It would have made more sense to the non-readers I think.

For the sr. kids, I did words only, no pictures. They weren't tricked at all by this (which means they know the song Hooray!) and matched up the phrases no problem.

I also focused on the rhyming words in each phrase, hopefully that will help them remember the words a little better.

Singing Time Sundays -Magic Cups

I have so many fun things to blog about. Snowmobile trip, new nephew, etc, but I promised myself that Sunday posts would be about Sundays. So sorry, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see fun pictures.

This singing time is one of the easiest around. I learned about it from a primary workshop I went to last year. All you need are three matching cups- paper, plastic whatever so long as they aren't see through- (and next time I do it, I'm upping it to 5 for sr.) and a wadded up piece of paper or a cotton ball. Hide the paper under the cups, do the switcheroo mix up of the cups and let the kids come choose a cup. If they choose a cup with the paper underneath, they get to choose the song we sing. If they come up empty handed, I get to choose the song.

The kids LOVE this game. It is a fun one to use when you're just needing some fun singing and not needing to work so much on the song of the month. Like I said before, 3 cups might be a little too easy for sr. (I rarely can trick them, they keep their eyes on the cup with the paper like little hawks.) so I think I'm going to add a few more cups next time.

Singing Time Sundays - Chalkboard pictures

So today was one of those EXTREMELY unplanned days. I didn't have a clue what I was going to do for singing time. In fact I was digging through my stuff during the prelude music to find the hearts from last week to see if I could kind of do a review with them. Well, the hearts were no where to be found (they appeared later at the bottom of the abyss I call my bag) so I grabbed some chalk from the library and improvised.

I let the kids come up and draw a picture to represent each phrase of the song. And then we sang it. Remember last week how I said I didn't feel like the kids knew the song quite yet? Well, they surprised me today. They do know it and pretty well.

They had fun drawing the pictures (I mean, have you ever met a kid who doesn't love chalk and a chalkboard?) and as I erased them I thought, "I really should have taken a picture of these for my blog before I erased them." The kids are such better artists than I am.

We are working on the last phrase of the song, holding the word "ask" the right length and cutting off together so we don't get a bunch of snakes singing. I pretended to judge them like they were in the Olympics for how well they did the cut off. Boy, they REALLY wanted that gold medal. I didn't give it to them right off either. They had to work for, but they eventually accomplished it and I think next week we'll be able to sing the song the whole way through without visual helps.

As a side note, I always throw in a couple of wiggle songs for jr primary. They need it. I'll do it right in the middle of learning the new song if I have to. We get our wiggles out, then calm down and are ready to focus again.

Singing Time Sundays - Football and Hearts

Last week I was out of town and had a substitute cover singing time for me, so I'm not exactly sure how this game went over, but I think it was probably fun. Since it was Super Bowl Sunday, I made a football field, much like this one:
found on Primary Singing Ideas , and then I also made "chips" (because chips are a must to eat during the super bowl) out of yellow triangle shaped papers. On the chips I had what song to sing and how far the ball got to move. (Ex. Sing I Am A Child of God and move 15 yds.) There were also some bad chips thrown in the mix too. (Ex. Interception, move back 20 yds.) The kids took turns pulling a chip out of the bag and following the instructions. If the ball got to the touch down, the kids got to choose a favorite/wiggle song to sing.

This week, being Valentines day and all, I copied the hearts idea straight from the same blog as above.
I mixed the halves up and the kids had to put them together and then learn that line of the song, until all the hearts had been put back together. Then we put the lines/phrases in order and sang through the song in its entirety. For jr. primary, I would sing the song or line as we went to help them out, but the sr. kids wanted a challenge so I didn't sing it at all before they put the hearts together. I think the idea worked OKAY, not great, we still need some serious review on this song over the next couple of weeks before I'd be willing to say it was learned. But this gave us a good start. And I sure am thankful for creative people that share their ideas so I can copy!

Primary Battleship

For primary today I did a version of "battleship" with the kids. I think I found the original idea on The Crazy Chorister and then tweaked it to fit my needs for today.

I drew a large grid on the chalkboard letters down one side, numbers down the other. I had the same grid on a piece of paper with my "secret special locations" that only I got to look at. The kids took turns giving me a coordinate and then if they hit a special spot they got to choose what song to sing. If they missed I got to choose what song to sing.

We were able to review the song of the month, throw in a few fun wiggle songs, and also learn a brand new song all today. In order to make sure no one felt like a loser for "missing", I would say, "You didn't hit a secret spot, but you did hit learn the first line of 'The Hearts of the Children'" -or whatever song I felt like I wanted them to do at that moment.

I think it went over really well. The kids seemed to have a good time with it.

Sundays in Primary

Okay...so I'm thinking I am going to start a new thing on Sundays. I am the primary chorister for my ward (which means I teach the music to the children 12 and under) and I really need a place to remember what I did, if it worked, what I'd like to do next week, etc. And what better place than my blog? This is just for me, but if you feel so inclined, you are more than welcome to read along. And if you ever have suggestions, please feel free to pass them my way. I am always on the look out for a new creative game to play to make singing time fun for the kids.

This month we're learning the song "I Know That My Savior Loves Me". I won't recap exactly what I did earlier in the month -I'll just start with today- but basically I am teaching the sign language of the entire song to the kids. You'd be surprised at how well this helps them remember their words. We worked on the first vs. week one, the chorus week 2, the second vs. week 3, and today was review for the entire song.

Today I brought an apron with 8 pockets filled with ways to sing the song.

• Monkey- sing 00's and ah's instead of words and listen to the melody.
• Picture of a hand- sign language only, no singing. (This was tough, they really had to mentally concentrate.)
• Apple- teachers sing vs, kids sing chorus
• Bouncy Ball- We passed it from person to person each saying one word of the song. We did this a phrase at a time and then sang it. (Worked really well for sr. primary, but jr primary like passing the ball around and it gave them one more chance to hear the song.)
• A plastic "wiggly" worm- A wiggle song or two
• Wild Card - choose your favorite song
• Coin -heads boys sing, tails girls sing (For jr. the choice was for who sang the 1st vs. and who sang the 2nd.) Who ever wasn't singing had to sign.
• The Letter I - don't sing any words that mean "yourself" i.e. I, me, my.

I can't say this is my original idea, the "primary pockets aprons" have been around since I was a little girl. This was my first time using it in our ward, and all the kids voted that they liked it and want me to bring it back another time. I would call it a success, even though a couple of the 12 year old boys didn't participate, but they refuse to participate just about every week, so nothing new there. Still thinking of a way to get them to love singing time, but it may never happen.

Boiled Egg and Chocolate Overdose

We had a very nice Easter weekend. Saturday we dyed eggs (4 dozen) with Grammy. And lest you all think I'm crazy for letting each child dye a dozen eggs a piece, I'll have you know that we have less than one dozen left. We probably lost about 8 eggs with the dropping, spoon racing and what not, but the rest have been eaten by my kids. They love boiled eggs. Carter was so funny when he walked in the kitchen and saw the pot with the eggs boiling away. He said, "Mmmmm....it smells like roasted eggs in here. I love dose things!" But as much as they love the eggs, I'm tired of my house smelling like a sulfur pot, so I won't be sad tomorrow when the last have been gobbled up.

Sunday morning we woke to find our baskets filled and eggs hidden around the house. We all dined on chocolate for breakfast. (Reese's peanut butter eggs for me!) While Carter was hunting his eggs, he found one hidden in a silly spot and exclaimed, "What the hell?!" I think my jaw hit the floor. Proud parent moment there. Nothing like hearing your 5 year old cursing on Easter Morn. Ay-yi-yi....

We had to get a few pictures in our new Easter clothes and with our baskets.

These two girls love nothing more than a good photo shoot. They come up with more poses than you can imagine.

And you better bet your bottom dollar that these two little rascals will demand a photo shoot if the big girls get to have one. The little squirts, I just want to pinch their cheeks off.

After the camera time, we loaded up and headed to church. Which was very nice and quite uplifting. Afterwards, we enjoyed a nice dinner at Jarom's folks house. Now, it's time to pack up the Easter grass and finish off the chocolate. :)

For all you primary choristers out there here is an idea (for senior singing time) that I used today and have used in every ward I've been chorister in. It has been a hit in all 3 wards. I just pull out the songbooks (and so far every building has had a big stack of them, either in the library or the primary closet) hand them to the kids and let them sing with the words right in front of them. You would be surprised at how much they like this. You can sing all the versus of songs they barely know (which works well for holiday songs that are rarely sung) and the kids really will sing along. It's a nice change for them to just be able to read the words and sing, instead of trying to memorize.