'Lest you think...

I have gone inactive or quit the Primary. The holidays were crazy, the start of the new semester (I teach at the college here) was crazy and I am just now catching up. The following posts give a brief glimpse of our last few weeks - I will work harder to stay updated from here on out. I hope your new years and new songs are all coming along nicely!

Line by Line

This worked so well today for SR Primary! I will definitely have to do this again. We learned the second verse to "How Firm A Foundation" and practiced both the first and second verses together. I assigned each row a color and then held up posters with the words to each verse written out. S few words were written in each color and the concept was that whichever class was assigned that color would sing those words. After mastering that I then had the children stand and sing when the words were written in their color. I was so happy with how hard they concentrated and how well they sang!

Boys, Girls, Loud, Soft

Today in JR Primary we learned the second verse of "How Firm a Foundation" and practiced with the first verse some more. I brought these four little pictures and as we sang I would choose one child trying really hard to come up and cue the primary using the pictures as we sang. If the child held up the picture of the little girl -only the girls sang, the picture of the lion we sang loud, picture of mouse-we sang softly, picture of the boy - boys sing.

Song Bird Review

I have started carrying a little stuffed bird in my Primary bag each week. I have used him for several different activities, usually to review a song and give the kids some sort of game to focus on. Most recently we used our "singing songbird" in the following ways:

You Sing-I Sing: This works well for both SR & JR Primary. As we sing a song I toss one child the songbird. When a child has the songbird the primary has to sing without my help. When the child throws the song bird back to me I have to sing. We do this through the duration of the song.

Pass Along: While we are reviewing/learning a new song I hand the songbird to the first child on the first row - as we sing the child can hand the bird to their neighbor. They may only hand the bird off if they know the words and are singing. We see how far the bird gets by the end of the song.

My Body is a Temple

January focused on the premortal existence and the plan of salvation. For singing time I covered a picture of the temple with puzzle pieces that looked like a little girl (the lesson was 'my body is a temple'). During singing time I had kids come and pick a puzzle piece off the picture. On the back of each piece were various prompts to sing songs or answer questions.