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!
Bonni, one thing that worked quite well for Catherine and me when we were joint primary choristers several years ago was to bring in an "impartial" judge to evaluate each song as we practiced in the chapel before our Sacrament Meeting presentation. It works best if the judge is introduced as someone who is very clever and very hard to please, and if the judge actually is pretty picky in his/her evaluations. They can be equipped with a set of signs to hold up (anything from letter grades to smiley faces to animals to pictures of the weather--whatever entertains you and matches the personality of the judge) which indicate how well the children are singing. They can hold up the signs as the children are singing, or wait to the end of the song to say something SHORT to explain why they held up the sign they did ("the people in the front were all singing, but several in the back weren't paying attention" or "that time I heard screaming instead of singing")--they need to be hard to please, but also able to tell if the children are getting discouraged. You can dress them in something funny or give them a fake, highly pretentious name if that seems entertaining. The nice thing about having an independent judge is that it puts you on the same side as the children--you're working together to please this hard-to-please person.
ReplyDeleteI love this idea of having a hard to please person be the judge. We have used a Sing-o-Meter in our primary and the kids love it. It was made (thankfully) by a previous crafty chorister and is easy to transport and store. It has levels of singing ranging from very poor to outstanding with an arrow that can be moved. The kids love taking turns controlling the Sing-O-Meter and it's amazing how the others watch the arrow and improve their singing to get to the highest level or "off the chart"!
DeleteThanks, Elizabeth! I saw your Sing-O-Meter in action when I was in Fairfield, and it was wonderfully effective. I remember looking hard at it to think how I could make one myself. I particularly liked how you let the kids be in charge of it. The kids really did sing their hearts out for the Sing-O-Meter.
ReplyDeleteSep 10 update: I helped for a little while in the IC 2nd Ward primary last Sunday, and they used a simple, VERY effective way to give the children feedback about how they were singing as they practiced for the first time in the chapel: a helium balloon on a very long ribbon. The person manning the balloon sat in the back of the chapel, and when the singing was strong and clear (heard easily from the back of the chapel), the balloon rose high, even as high as the ceiling. Very exciting! And very easy! When the balloon began to sink, the children instantly improved. I was amazed at how instantly effective it was, with both older and younger children.
ReplyDelete