Singing Time Week Two: Board Games

For the second week in singing time we did:

JR PRIMARY:

I explained to the kids that since we sang their favorite songs last week we would sing mine this week. We played "memory" while we sang. On the board I had about twelve pairs of clip art pictures, two of each image. They were backed by thick card stock and stuck to the board with magnates. (You can also do this by placing the pieces of paper in sheet protectors and tying a string through the page protector and taping the other end of the string to the board if you don't have a magnetic board available). I gave the pianist a list of songs and we simply began singing. I would watch for a 'reverent-participating" child and tap them on the shoulder as we sang. They would then go up to the board and search for a match. We just kept singing from one song to another. If somebody found a match we paused and let the match-finder choose their favorite primary song to sing. This worked pretty well, and because we pretty much sang the entire time there wasn't much option to get distracted.

But SR PRIMARY this week was definitely my favorite:

We played Jeopardy. I created four different categories with 100-500 point questions in each. Each question corresponded with a song. I split the primary into two teams, Team Nephi and Team Lehi, then we just played jeopardy. After answering the question we sang the song that corresponded with the question. I will put the categories I used below, but this can be reworked for any theme. The kids loved it. I am planning to do this again when we have to begin practicing and reviewing the program songs for next year.

• Category: "I am a child of God" For these questions I just picked one line out of a song and asked them to say the line that follows. IE: In this Primary song what comes after these words: "We have been taught and we understand"
• Category: "I am Thankful" (because it is November): Question--Name 5 reasons you are thankful for your Mother. Song: Love is Spoken Here
• Category: "Articles of Faith" (I continue to be amazed that the kids can actually sing these un-singable songs) Question: Recite the 5th Article of Faith Song: 5th article of faith.
• Category: "Name that Tune" (This was absolutely my favorite) For this category the pianist would simply start playing the song and the kids would raise their hand to guess what tune it was. After they guessed correctly we would sing the entire song.

This was an absolute hit. We played right up to very last second of Primary, and even then the kids didn't want to leave and kept saying, "Let's just do one more question." The biggest thing with this lesson is to just have all the songs neatly prepared and listed for the pianist so she/he can follow along easily.

I just wrote out the categories on the chalkboard and used note cards to read the questions off of. Really fun.