Musical symbol cards

Many years ago I made myself a batch of musical symbol cards from a cut-up poster board. I drew and printed the signs and words by hand, and believe me, they are not fancy! But I've used them more often than any visual aids I have.

Since repeating a song many times, over many weeks, is the best way to lodge it firmly in a child's mind, contually varying the repetitions keeps things interesting. It's also fun to teach children musical language, and they enjoy learning strange symbols like fermatas and crescendos, and the cool Italian words that go with them.

After briefly explaining what each word or symbol means, I like to hold up different cards as we sing a song, and change them without warning so everyone pays attention. It's fun to sing staccato notes, then change to legato in the middle of the phrase. Flip the crescendo (getting louder) sign upside down, and it becomes a diminuendo (getting softer). Hold up the fermata sign and everyone keeps singing the note they were on right when you flashed the sign.

The cards in the illustration above are just a few of the many cards you can make. Accelerando and ritardando (speeding up and slowing down) are really fun. You'll be able to think of others.

It's a good idea to put the signs or words on both sides of each card, if your pianist sits behind you, so he/she will be able to see the instructions and quickly make changes as you sing. I like to hide the cards on a music stand so they can't be seen until I raise them up.

Have you ever tried incorporating musical symbols or language into your primary music? Please share your thoughts or experiences!

Put them in order

One tried-and-true method to present a song is to use out-of-order pictures. This works nicely with the Get their Attention, Direct Their Listening method I talked about in an earlier post.

I recruit as many helpers as I have pictures (or objects) and line them up in front of the primary, each holding one of the pictures, making sure the pictures are in the wrong sequence.

Then I give the children a listening assignment, and sing the song to them. For younger children, I might ask them to be "picture detectives" (or something equally dramatic) and listen to see if the pictures are in the right order. For older children, I'd use a greater number of out-of-order pictures to complicate things, and be a bit more vague about what they need to discover. I might even be devious and give them a red-herring assignment, like listening for how many times I sing the word "the." Since older children love to point out a teacher's mistakes, hopefully they'll notice that the pictures aren't in the right order, and enjoy pointing this out to me. I congratulate them on their brilliance.

Next I recruit a helper to come rearrange the children (I personally like this better than just swapping the pictures to different children) to put them in the correct order for the song. No help from the audience! Then I sing the song again to the children, as they check to see if the picture order is now fixed. This allows me to sing the song at least twice so that the children clearly hear the melody and words. We then sing it together. (If I use this method to review a song the children already know, I have them sing with me the entire time.)

A variation: have the helpers, after listening to the song, rearrange themselves in the correct order, with the primary children voting on whether the helpers got it right.

In my experience, a sequence of about 3-5 pictures works well for Junior Primary, for Senior Primary, 6-8.

Can you guess what out-of-order song the stick figure children are demonstrating in the illustration above? Have you ever used this method to introduce or review a song? Please share your experiences!

Conduct with me!

In general, I think using conducting patterns as a primary chorister is over-rated. Eye contact, the ability to move freely around the room, and hand motions which indicate words are all more important to me. But I've found conducting patterns to be very helpful as a way to get primary children actively participating as they learn.

"Conduct with me!" or "Let's conduct together!" works really well with both younger and older children.  I start by saying "be my mirror," and I conduct backwards using my left hand, moving my arm for the inner beats in the reverse direction from the diagrams above. This way, if the children follow me exactly (as though they were looking in a mirror), they'll be conducting correctly.

It's easiest to try this first with a 3/4 song like "I Love to See the Temple." I tell the children to make triangles in the air – down, out, up – and demonstrate in a rather rigid, geometric way. As they get comfortable following, I gradually modify what I'm doing to add in the curves and the little bounce that shows where the beat happens (the "ictus") without needing to explain; children copy very easily.

With 4/4 I start by demonstrating "down, across (the body), back (the other way), and up;" first rather rigidly, like drawing the side and bottom of a box in the air, then adding in the curves and ictus bounces.

If you try this group-conducting approach, be sure to notice and add in any up-beats which happen at the beginning of the song so that your down-beat (beat 1) always comes on the first beat of the measure, right after the bar line. For example, "I Love to See the Temple" starts with an up-beat (beat 3) so that the down-beat (beat 1) happens on the word "love." Being careful about this isn't just useless persnickety-ness; the strongest beat of every measure is always on beat 1, which needs to coincide with the strongest physical action, down.  If your conducting pattern gets "off the beat," half of your children and teachers will get twitchy and discontented, because it just feels wrong.

For variety, have the children conduct in very large movements to match strong singing, and in tiny patterns while singing very softly. Have them conduct with one finger, or one foot, or with their noses. Conducting in various ways keeps children entertained as they practice the song the many times required to learn it well.

Conducting together is fun! And here's a bonus: you're training future church music leaders. Have you tried this in your primaries? Please share your experiences!