Calling all choristers! A question and a share –

                       

Tonight I received a great email from Sister Bonni M. in the I.C. First Ward:

"Hi Marilyn!

"I need an idea, and I’m hoping you have one (or somebody in the stake) . . . . In return, I will share something that worked well for me in our Primary for singing time.

"First, the idea I need help with . . . .  I need something that will show the children how loud or soft they are singing.  As we prepare for our program in a month, I want the children to practice projecting their voices.  Somehow, putting my hand behind my ear to signal that I want them to sing louder only works for a few seconds.  Any ideas for something simple and cute that can encourage them to project their voices?  Also, I think it will come in handy to have something they can see from the back of the chapel to show them how quiet or loud they sound to me from far away.  I don’t like to carry around bulky things or spend a very long time on something crafty."

Great question! Okay, EVERYONE, pitch in and share some ideas! Great ideas, lame ideas, any sort of ideas!

Here's Bonni's very fun teaching idea (I threw in the clip art for fun):

"OK, here is my share.  This can work well with several Primary songs, but I used it to teach Baptism (100-101).  I told them that I like to read and a good author always includes 5 important elements to their story:  who, what, when, where, how, and why.  When they pick up a book to read the story wouldn’t feel quite right if any of those details were missing.  Sometimes, when we read a mystery, some of the details are left out on purpose for us to discover, but by the end of the story we know all the answers.  So, with Baptism, I made signs for each of those questions and put them up on the board.  I wore some very funny glasses to make me look like an official nerdy author.  We started with the first phrase, “Jesus came to John the Baptist.”  We stopped there.  I had a child come up and wear the glasses.  We then asked the child, “Who?” We sang again.  They told us the answer and we wrote it on the board under the “Who” sign.  This went on through the first two verses of the song.  The third verse is the “moral of the story.”  After we learned all the words and answered all of the questions, we sang it all the way through as I pointed out the answers we had found (wearing the funny glasses, of course).  At some point, I also chose children to come up and wear the glasses and point to the answers.  When I wanted everybody involved, I had them all point from their chairs to where we would find the answers.  It went very well.  We took two Sundays to learn the song.

"This activity (answering the big 6 questions) can also be done as a detective or news reporter. You could dress up as a detective and carry a magnifying glass or a news reporter with a microphone."

THANK YOU, BONNI!

Stop and Sing

On one side:

On the reverse side:

This is an easy review idea with a lot of possible variations, and in my experience it works well with both junior and senior primaries. You can format your cue-card as a hand-held poster that you just flip around, or you can slip a paint-stick in between the front and back sides and turn it into a rotating sign for you or a child volunteer to hold.  I simply printed my two pictures on cardstock and glued them back-to-back. 

I chose a stop sign and a singing bird for the two sides because they're colorful and dramatic, but you could use any sort of stop-and-go visual that strikes your fancy:  a red-light/green-light, a lion/mouse, a sound/mute sign (the little symbol on your computer keyboard that turns off the sound), an open-mouthed-child/closed-mouth-child, or whatever appeals to you.

Explain to the children that when the singing bird side is showing, everyone sings. When you abruptly flip to the stop sign, everyone immediately becomes silent as the piano continues to play. Everyone thinks of the words silently as they listen, and the minute the sign switches to the bird side, usually right in the middle of a line, the children immediately resume singing aloud. It keeps them on their toes, and makes them feel clever.

Older children love the power of being the sign-holder, and deciding when everyone will be silent or sing. You may need to set a limit on how many times the sign can rotate per verse, if the child-in-charge is flipping it every other word. 

Have you used an idea similar to this in your primaries? Please share your experiences, or variations that worked well for you.

Power-ups

I'm coming out of summer hibernation to share with you a terrific, simple little idea I learned from Brandon Davies, who has been subbing in our primary for several weeks. He has many years' experience doing primary music, and I admired the simplicity and effectiveness of this little technique, which he called "Power-ups."

While reviewing a song in Junior Primary, Brandon told the kids (after they had sung the song once) that he thought a "power-up" might really help the singing to sound more fabulous. A "power-up" consisted merely of standing up, turning around, and sitting back down again. Everyone stood and "powered-up," and the singing improved quite magically! The children were amazed.

I love this little idea. Everyone gets to move, while staying engaged and personally invested in the outcome. Brandon let the children decide how many power-ups a song needed: ("This song is pretty complicated. Do you think we might need two power-ups? Or maybe even THREE?")

Pure genius. Thank you, Brandon!

Do you have an easy review idea you'd like to share? Please comment!