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!

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!