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!

Get their attention, direct their listening

"Get their attention, direct their listening" is the song-teaching method taught in the excellent church video How to Teach a Song to Children, which is no longer in print, but is still available in many meetinghouse libraries, including the library at the Iowa City Stake Center.  The elements of this method are taught on lds.org:

lds.org> resources> music> resources> Using the Songbook> How to Teach a Song to Children

(When I get back home to my computer in Iowa I'll replace this link-path with an actual clickable link.)

"How can I capture the children's attention? (Perhaps with an object, a picture, a scripture, an experience, or simply a whisper.)

"What questions can I ask that will encourage the children to listen to the song? (Ask questions that help the children understand the gospel message—for example, What? Where? Who? When? Why?—and state the questions in such a way that children can discover the answer as you sing the song.)"

Let's take a look at how I could teach a specific song this way:

It's singing time! I stand up, and hold up a flashlight battery. 

"What is this? Do any of you have things like this at your house? How do they work? What are they used for?" Or I could hold up a flashlight,  take the batteries out, and ask similar questions. Without getting into a big discussion–this part of the process should be pretty quick–the children figure out that the battery contains energy, and powers the flashlight.  (This is the "get their attention" part.)

"Listen and see if you can tell what kind of power we all need every day." (this is the "direct their listening" part.)  I sing, "Scripture power - keeps me safe from sin;" and the children respond that the power is "scripture power."

I now ask another question or two, which will allow me to sing the phrase for them at least one more time. The goal is for the children to listen to the phrase at least twice before they sing it themselves. I could ask all sorts of things: "Listen again and see if you can hear three words that start with 's'." "Listen again and tell me what word is on the very lowest note." "Now the very highest note."

Now I ask the children to sing with me, and give them a variety of things to do as we sing the line several times.  We could pitch-conduct together (my horizontal hand places the notes in the air as we sing, going higher or lower as the melody moves), clap hands on knees along with the rhythm, sing very quietly, sing very loudly, stand up or hold up scriptures on the word "scripture."

Now would be a great time for a brief discussion about how the scriptures keep us safe from sin, and then we sing the phrase again. And then we move on, with questions (for which they'll need to listen for answers) for the next phrase. 

"Scripture power gives me power to do something. Listen while I sing the the next phrase, and tell me what that something is." I sing "scripture power is the power to win." They answer that it's the power to win. Since this phrase is so similar to the first phrase, I then might ask them to listen while I sing both phrases, and tell me what the two rhyming words are. Then they would join me in singing, as we repeat, repeat, repeat, doing something different each time to keep it interesting. And we'd continue through the chorus, learning a phrase at a time.

To start teaching the beginning of the song, I could hold up something like the owner's manual of my washing machine, and ask what it was, and what it was for, and what might happen if I tried to wash clothes without knowing how to use the machine. Then I could say, "What user manuals tell us how to live our lives?" and sing "Because I want to be like the Savior, and I can, I'm reading his instructions, I'm following his plan." What are the instructions? I could ask them to listen for who I want to be like, or what two things I need to do, etc. And then we'd sing it together, and repeat it many times, varying each repetition with movements, conducting, dynamics, etc.

Notice two great things about this teaching method:

• The visual aids can be very simple things you have lying around your house.  You spend your time learning the song rather than laminating and assembling complicated flip-charts.

• The children learn by answering questions, not just by rote repetition. When children choose to participate by thinking and answering questions, they are active, not passive, learners.  An active learner is more likely to feel the Spirit because they are exercising their agency. The Holy Ghost teaches us more effectively and individually than anyone or anything else can.

Have you tried the "Get their attention, direct their listening" method of introducing a song? Please share your experiences!

Lift up your voice and sing!

When you introduce a song to your primary children, sing it to them.

What? You're not an opera singer? You have a goofy, squeaky voice? You wouldn't be caught dead singing in front of anyone? 

I admit that I felt conspicuous the first time I sang in front of my primary many years ago, but I wouldn't go back to saying the words instead of singing them for anything, even though I have a completely boring, ordinary, never-sing-a-solo voice. When I sing the words instead of saying the words I accomplish several important things:

Children pay attention. They're already used to tuning out the endless talking of adults, but not many adults sing to them.  Perhaps their innate tender-heartedness kicks in as you demonstrate your willingness to be vulnerable by singing in your very ordinary voice.  They also pay better attention because words with music are more interesting than words alone.

Children learn songs much more quickly. You may think that it's more confusing to learn the words and the music at the same time, but it works the other way. The tune helps you remember the words, and the words help you remember the tune.  This is why all those TV commercial jingles you heard 20 years ago are still stuck in your head.

Children sing out more confidently when they see that you enjoy singing and are happy to be heard. Singing is a wonderful blessing of being human.

Being willing to sing to your primary children is an important element in the teaching method we'll be discussing next time, "Get their attention, direct their listening," which is my favorite way to teach a primary song.  I learned it in the excellent church video "How to Teach a Song to Children," which is still available in many Meetinghouse Libraries, including the library in our stake center.

If you've never sung to your primary children, give it a try.  It's less scary than you think!

Let them move!

Children need to move. Sacrament meeting was long, and the benches didn't fit. Sunday clothes feel weird. A little social anxiety has set in, now that Mom and Dad have left. There are good reasons for those wiggle songs.

But more importantly, moving is an important part of learning. We all learn differently, but it's generally true that the more ways we learn something, the better we remember it. (An obvious example: when you put music to the Articles of Faith, you remember them better.) When you incorporate motions into the songs the children are learning, not only do you ease their fidgets, but you help them learn more quickly.

Many songs lend themselves easily to specific motions, like "Whenever I hear the song of a bird. . ." (cupping your hand behind your ear, opening and shutting your fingers like a beak). Other songs, less "picturesque," can still have lots of movements added to them. You can invent actions ahead of time, or you can have the children help you devise some on the spot. If you let the children help you think of actions, learning becomes a group project, which is always more fun, and helps those oldest children (who are getting ready to burst out of primary) feel invested in the song. Another thing that's fun for older children: classes can join together to quickly invent motions for a specific phrase of the song, with you assigning different phrases to each group. Then notice how each class lights up when it's time to sing "their" part.

In my experience, children love learning sign language, even the youngest ones. And it seems cool, and wonderfully complicated! Even if you only incorporate a few signs (please forgive me, all you ASL folks, for slaughtering your language), children rise to the occasion and learn detailed signs to go with their singing.

Movement is not just for wiggle songs. Children will learn songs more quickly and more joyously if you introduce motions into the songs you teach them.

Please share some ideas of how you use movement in the songs you've been teaching!

This video is worth more than a thousand words

Janet Checchio, 2013 Auxiliary Training

If you haven't watched this video recently (or ever), I heartily recommend it.  It was put together for the 2013 Primary Auxiliary Training Meeting held in SLC, and demonstrates wonderful gospel music teaching.

The Church tends to update lds.org really frequently, so watch this before it disappears when the 2014 auxiliary training materials go online. You'll be glad you did, I promise! Just click on the link.