Actions to Nephi's Courage

"Nephi's Courage" isn't our assigned song until June but i thought i'd post this now in case anyone wants to learn the actions or you have some extra time this month since we already know "Stand for the Right". Anyway, we sing this song A LOT because the primary LOVES IT and really love doing the actions. It's nice to have another song that allows the children to move while singing.

Years ago, when our children were young, my husband made up actions to this song to teach our children one night at family night. It was an instant hit and i have since taught the children in primary. They learned it immediately and often request this song.

Here we go: i'll try to be as visual as possible...

-The Lord commanded Nephi (raise hands over your head towards heaven as if receiving instruction from Heaven)

-to go and get the plates (hold out your hands like for Book of Mormon stories)

-from the wicked laban (scrunch up your face into a mean look and place your hand over your eyebrows and then pan the room while singing)

-inside the city gates (with palms facing you, touch the tips of your nails of one hand to the tips of another to make a gate)

-Laman and Lemuel believed he should not try (open one arm to the side when you say each name.

-Nephi was courageous, this was his reply (flex muscles with arms bent at the elbow into a 90 degree angle)

-I will go, i will do (pump your left fist across your body for "I will go" and the right fist across to your left side for "I will do")

-the things the Lord commands (same as the beginning...arms up towards heaven)

-I know the Lord provides a way (take your arms down from heaven and have them form a path to one side of you)

-he wants me to obey (fold arms)

repeat chorus....

I hope this makes sense. It has been a great way for our primary to learn this song and it was nice to teach a song without printed visuals for a change.

If you're interested, I'll post actions to the 2nd verse later....

"Primary Colors" and more.....

Today, we learned "Primary Colors". I saw an idea somewhere on the internet (sorry-i can't remember where...) and it led me to make these...

Simple, but they worked great. I had 3 children hold the circles with the numbers facing outward, then turn them around when it was time. It was fun to learn a song from the "olden days". We also sang "This is God's House", "Dare to do Right", "Give, Said the Little Stream" and "Called to Serve".

They didn't do very well on "Called to Serve" because they were too busy being silly so i took a minute to tell them about the song and asked the teachers about singing that song on their missions and how they felt about it. Then, I put my husband on the spot and asked him to come up and sing "Called to Serve" in German while we sang it in English. The kids were so enthralled, they all stopped singing about halfway through just to hear him sing it in German. It was fun and i'm so grateful for my sweet husband who was a good sport, although now i think I'm in his debt.... :)

I also made flipcharts on Word for "This is God's House" and "Dare to do Right", but i don't know how to upload them to this site. Any tips??

I Kneel to Pray

I want to teach the song, "I Pray in Faith" to Junior primary (senior already knows it). I found this idea here, which i liked. I'm just going to include a poster as a visual for my young ones. I'm going to have them "make the poster" as they build the song. I wrote the first word of each line on the poster as seen above.I'm going to tell them that i didn't have time to glue on my pictures so i need their help. The 8 clipart pictures will be jumbled up on the chalkboard for them to choose from as we learn/build each phrase.

I'm going to ask these questions for each phrase:

*What position are we in when we pray?" KNEEL

*how often do we pray? EVERYDAY

*who do you talk to when you pray? HEAVENLY FATHER

*Why do we pray? HE HEARS AND ANSWERS ME

*How do we know this is true? FAITH

As they guess the right answers for each line, i will sing it several times while a few children choose the correct pictures to put on my poster. Then we'll all sing that line together. We'll continue until all 4 lines are complete and our poster will look like this:

*I feel like i need to explain a couple of my pictures: I couldn't think of anything for "answers" so my 14 year old son suggested i use 2+2=4. It may be too abstract for the little ones but it's the best i (he) could come up with. My FAITH is in a shield because when i taught the 2nd verse of scripture power i did it this way and i like to be consistent with words that are in different songs. Hopefully the rest are self explanatory-happy singing!

Freeze Frame

I'm always looking for new twists to the standard wiggle songs. This morning, while watching a cartoon with my daughter, i thought of this: while singing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" i'm going to shout "Freeze!" at which point everyone holds their current pose but the pianist keeps playing. Then i'll shout "go!" and we'll pick up singing from wherever the pianist is at in the song. I plan on having the pianist play the song through 2 times so we can stop and go several times. This activity would work with any song really, as long as you assign an action to be done during the song. I love how it requires us to pay attention and follow along in our heads with the pianist so we'll know where to start singing again when i say "go".

*i had another chorister send me a cute idea for popcorn popping. In portuguese, popcorn is pipoca (pronounced pee poka). When you use that word instead of the English translation-popcorn-it becomes quite a tongue twister! Try it!

Fill in the Blank

Today i just wanted to review "Search, Ponder and Pray". Our primary only sort of knows the song. I wrote the words on the board and left several blanks. We sang it through once and i told them to pay attention to words that would go in the blanks. Then, I had 4-5 children come and write in the right words. We sang it again and i had 4-5 children come up to either erase and correct a word (there were a few mistakes from the 1st round) or fill in a blank. Then we sang the song again. What i liked about this is 1)the simplicity, 2)it involved several children and 3)they learned the song great!

i know the words, do U-NO them?

Our ward knows Scripture Power but mumbles their way through the 2nd verse so i decided to spend most of our time working on that song. I decided to play UNO. I saw the idea somewhere several months ago but couldn't remember where i saw it so i just came up with my own version. This works GREAT for learning (or refreshing) a verse or new song. Basically, the idea is you sing whatever phrase is on the poster color that matches the card played. I laminated the colored squares on the poster so that i could easily interchange song phrases without ripping the poster. In senior primary, i gave each row (whether there was a teacher on that row or not) 7 cards. We played just like the game. Each row took a turn placing a card on the board. If red was played, we sang the phrase on red. If a green was played, we sang the phrase on the green. I had them sing fast, slow, just boys, just girls, etc. just to shake it up. When the "specialty" cards were played, this is what we did: DRAW TWO: the class that played this card chooses 2 classes to sing that phrase with the matching color. SKIP: Sing the phrase skipping every other word (this was HARD!!) WILD: the class that plays this card gets to pick what color to sing and also chooses a "sing like A..." card to determine how we sing it. (eyes closes, holding tongue, etc) DRAW FOUR: Choose the color and begin singing the song (from any point in the song) and when you cut off in the middle of the song, the next class has to sing the following 4 words. REVERSE: Sing the line previous to the one that matches the color played OR start singing and cut them off and the next class sings the previous phrase from where you cut them off.

I prepared several word strips for different songs so that we could switch up the songs we were working on. You can just use words but i used pictures since i already had the pics for junior primary.

For junior primary, i had taped colored squares of paper under each chair. They found their papers and we did diff. activities for each color. Ex. those with blue papers sing the words on the blue line, while those with red papers hum. Or those with yellow papers sing words on yellow line while those with green papers clap. I tried to involve all the children so they wouldn't get bored. We have a VERY young junior primary and keeping their attention is difficult. You could even have them swap colors with their neighbor. We also sang songs like head shoulders knees and toes and they could only use their hand that was holding the paper to touch the diff. body parts. Anyway, there's so much you could do with this for junior primary!

I was impressed with how quickly they learned the 2nd verse of scripture power using this method. And they seemed to have fun. I will use this method again to teach other less known verses. Although, next time i'll probably "stack the deck" better for senior primary and put all the specialty cards in the stacks i give each row. It made it more fun to have those cards played yet we never seemed to have enough of them played. Anyway, have fun!!!

Pioneer Day!

Since i'll be gone on pioneer day, i decided to start our pioneer singing time next sunday the 17th and have it be something the substitute can continue to do on the 24th if she chooses. I saw this idea here and thought it'd work great for a 2 week pioneer singing time. I am making a wagon wheel spinner (as seen on various chorister blogs-if i remember when i'm done-i'll post a picture) Anyway, have different pioneer graphics on each wheel space that will indicate how the song is to be sung. (if you use the blue tack you can change the pictures without ruining your wheel) Here's the graphics i'll use(thank you ordinary adventures of a primary chorister!):

Ox-sing very slowly-pioneers used teams of oxen to pull their wagons and they went slowly since they were so heavy.

Rabbit-sing very fast-Pioneers saw lots of rabbits on the trail and they were fast!

Pioneer girl-girls only. (have a girl come up and wear a bonnet/apron etc.)

Pioneer boy-boys only sing. (have a boy come up and put on a vest, hat, etc.)

Snake-sing quietly. They encountered many snakes along the trail. sing quietly so you don't disturb the snakes!

Native American child-children trade seats during one phrase of the song. The pioneers saw many many indians on the trail and would often "trade" items for food or other things they needed.

Ax and chopped wood-sing "choppy" (staccato). Pioneer children often had the job of collecting firewood for campfires.

Beehive and bee-have a child hold a picture of a beehive in the air and everyone hums. when the child hides the picture, sing the words. The bee symbolized how busy the pioneers were, just like bees! Ant-children stomp to the beat. When their camps were invaded by insects, they'd have to stomp them off!

Cow-a child leave the room. Someone hides the cow. The child returns and the rest of the children sing loud/soft to indicate when he's close/far. If a cow wandered away from the camp, sometimes the children would help search for them and bring them back.

Mountains-echo sing. Divide the children in two and have the first group sing a phrase of the song, while the second group echoes them. (have the pianist play each phrase twice throughout the entire song) When the pioneers finally reached the mountains they discovered places in the canyon, between 2 mountains, that would echo what they said.

After each picture has been landed on with the spinner and used in a song, replace it with a new picture. (this is why i thought it'd work great for 2 weeks-there's enough pictures to use to keep us busy!) You can choose to sing pioneer songs or program review songs and you can even sing a song multiple times for different spins.

I also liked the idea of using "Fun to Do" by using pioneer phrases. For example, crossing the plains (pretend they are riding a horse), riding a wagon (hold on and bounce up and down or drive the wagon), forging a river (make swimming motions), milking a cow (hold hands in fists and move up and down), walking to zion (swing arms and pretend you are walking). Another fun song change i read about was, singing p. 261 Here we are together and change the words to "we're crossing the plains". I plan on using a combination of program songs and pioneer songs. Happy pioneer day!

"Give", Said the Little Stream

Today we took a break from program songs and sang songs that remind us of spring/summer. For example, "The prophet said to plant a garden", "Birds in a tree", "In the Leafy Treetops", "Oh what do you do in the summertime", "My Heavenly Father Loves Me", and "Give said the Little Stream". It was fun to sing different songs. For, "oh what do you do in the summertime", I had several children come up and imitate the different parts of the song. I had them decide how to portray the summer activity i assigned them like fishing, gazing at the clouds, swimming, etc. It was a quick and easy way for them to learn the song. After we sang it i asked who had heard the song before and NO ONE had ever heard it. I was shocked. It was a staple when i was younger. So strange to me that that song isn't so widely known anymore-but it was fun to sing. Anyway, I digress. My topic wasn't "oh what do you do in the summertime", but i couldn't resist putting in a plug for that song.

A previous chorister in our ward used to sing, "Give", Said the little stream as a wiggle song so i thought i'd try it with senior primary. Every time you sing a word that starts with a "G", you stand up (then sit down quickly). Every time you sing a word that starts with a "S" you clap your hands. What a workout! It was lots of fun and a nice change to sing a different wiggle song that was a challenge for senior primary. (and for me! The ups and downs made me feel old!)

Try it in your primary and see if it wears them out! :)

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

My pianist pointed out today that at the end of this song in the songbook, there is a suggestion on how to sing it. I don't know how i've missed that but it says, "...sing slowly and move parts of the body as they are mentioned. For example, nod head, shrug shoulders, bend knees, stand tiptoe, and so forth." So, instead of pointing to our body parts, we sang it this way today and the kids really loved it-especially because i messed up a few times-it takes concentration! I love my pianist, she points out many useful things and has great ideas!

Praise to the Man posters

Ok, so i have taught this song the past couple weeks without a poster but junior primary was struggling a bit so I finally decided to make one. Besides, the president told me she liked posters because then we can just pull them out anytime to sing, either with a substitute or a couple years down the road. So...i made a simple poster. I like to be able to cover up different portions as we learn the song and it helps the young ones have a solid visual to stick in their heads. I used these today and i was amazed at how much it helped junior-especially with the big words! (i put "ascended" going up to remind them that it means "going up" and "vain" is in stair steps down to remind them to sing 4 steps on that word-i'm going to go back and put a fermata on "tyrants" too)

Praise to the Man

Ok, so i am behind. Really behind. We've had general conference, stake conference, I was gone on vacation last week, and today our ward had all the women attend R.S. I feel like i haven't been in primary in a long time and I MISS IT!!! Anyway, with all of this and learning our mothers day songs, I haven't had a chance to teach Praise to the Man yet. But i am ready now. And excited.

I attended a stake leadership meeting last month and decided then to start by teaching the chorus. At least to junior primary. Which i'll do next week. I will bring rhythm instruments to learn the rhythm first and then hopefully add the words. I don't plan on even making it through the whole chorus this first sunday teaching it. I don't want to overwhelm them and we have a VERY young jr. primary so i plan on easing them into it. I will eventually teach the verses to junior primary too but, in the end, if all they know is the chorus, i'll be happy.

For senior primary. I want them to use hymn books the first time we sing it. I want them to feel the power of this song from the very first time they hear it and sing it with their own voices. I'm going to have them stand and sing. Then i'll briefly tell them the history of the song and have them play this matching game to help them understand the meaning of the harder words/phrases. I think the 2nd week i teach this i will use this idea from Brittney. (i love having so many great resources out there-thanks everyone!) I am excited to finally be able to teach this song! It is so powerful and what a great song to allow us to testify of Joseph Smith and the cause he died for. I love it!

Mother's Day

Since April is general conference and also stake conference for us, I knew i needed to start teaching our Mother's day songs that we will be singing in sacrament meeting. We're singing the 1st verse of Love is Spoken Here (p. 190) followed by verses 1 and 3 of Mother Dear (p. 206a) I thought of several different ways to teach the songs but ended up choosing the poster method. I REALLY want the children to learn the songs well and posters seem to do the trick for our primary. The good thing about posters is that it helps junior primary learn the words while visualizing and we can use the blobs to cover up different portions of the poster as we practice. Most of all, this way of teaching a song is easiest for me. :) Are you singing in sacrament meeting? I'd love to hear what songs you chose to sing......

Potato Head Play

So, i can't even begin to give credit for this idea since I've seen it on numerous websites, but just know that the idea isn't my own, just the adaptation. Anyway, i used this for junior primary. I wanted to do something light and fun, thus the potato head. I took off the face pieces and had a child pick one. He then got to place the piece anywhere on the potato head and we sang the corresponding song. I figured that junior primary would like this but i didn't count on how much! They laughed and giggled so hard when the pieces were placed and already want it back. It was so fun to listen to their giggles. Here are the songs I used:

EYES: Popcorn Popping (i looked out the window...) or I love so see the temple.

NOSE: Head, shoulders, knees and toes (sing it several times, omitting the nose, touching the nose without saying the word, backwards, etc.)

MOUTH: Smiles

EAR: Listen, Listen

EAR: If I listen with my Heart

Another way to use the potato head would be for "head, shoulders, knees and toes". Just arrange the pieces on the face in the order that you'll sing the last 4 body parts of the song. (starting top to bottom) Very silly and sure to bring giggles.

Hello song

Since my blog is new and lacking in the number of posts, i thought i'd occasionally post a few ideas i've used over the past few months. Each sunday we sing a hello song to new and visiting children. I like the "Hello" song and when i was called, it was the only one our primary knew, but singing it each week was getting stale. Then i came across an idea on several chorister blogs to try singing hello in different languages. So I made these language signs with flags on them. The visitor or new child picks 2 languages. (or if there's 2 visitors, they can each pick one. For multiple visitors, we usually sing "here we are together") Anyway, 1/2 the primary sings 1 language, the other 1/2 sings the other language instead of "hello". The kids seems to like it and it gives variety. Of course, true to form, i botch several of the languages, but thankfully, many teachers and even primary children know the correct pronunciation!

Chalkboard erase addition....Stand for the Right

Like I said in my earlier post, today in senior primary we did the chalkboard erase game to learn Stand for the Right. They did great but the fun part was when a few girls suggested an idea for a way to make the game more challenging. After we had erased 10 or so words, one side of the primary sang all the words that were remaining on the board. Then we sang it again with the other 1/2 of primary singing only the words that had been erased. Then, the third time through, we combined the two groups. Not only did they have to pay attention to when it was their word(s) to sing, but I had to really pay attention on who was supposed to sing so i could point to the right side when it was their turn. They did great and it was lots of fun!

Latter-day Prophets

This sunday's "focus" song is short, and I don't think it will take the entire time. (which i love by the way because the more songs we can sing each week the better!) Anyway, since the theme is centered around prophets i thought it'd be fun to re-visit "Latter-day Prophets". This idea came to me based on a Price is Right game. (hey, inspiration is all around us, right?) I have a 81/2 X 11 picture of each prophet from Joseph Smith to Pres. Monson. I will place them randomly on the board and while the rest of the primary sings the song through, one child will come up front and attempt to put them in order before we finish singing. I am anticipating that they will not recognize all the prophets and will have a difficult time completing this the first time around. If they have some wrong at the end of the song, (which i'm sure they will), i will pick another child to come and build on what's already been done. (I'm thinking i'll have a button like from the taboo game for the child to press when they are done and then i'll reveal to them how many they have right, but not which ones are right) The child up front can only use their class for help since the rest of the primary will be singing the song repeatedly. I am excited to learn this song since the last time i sang it the prophet was Pres. Kimball. I guess it's about time i learned the updated version!

Stand for the Right-SR.

I've been thinking about this all week and finally decided that I would take the simple road. The song is short and i think it will be easily learned. So, i'm going to use an oldie but goodie teaching idea. I will write the words on the chalkboard/whiteboard and then have a few children erase a few words at a time each time we sing it until we are comfortable with the song. After we've done this a few times, i will ask the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN questions from the Children's Songbook Companion to help them internalize the meaning of the song. WHO has some words for us? (Our prophet) WHAT are the words? (Be true) WHERE shall we be true? (At work or at play) WHEN should we be true? (In darkness or light)

Stand for the Right-JR.

So, i have to admit, teaching a new song isn't my strong point so when i saw this idea i was glad to adopt it for junior primary. Since this month's song is short, i knew it wouldn't take much more than a ton of repetition for junior to learn it. But how to sing it a million times without them getting bored? Taking the idea from here, I made a leg dice with 6 different ways to stand while we sing the new song. I found different clipart to represent standing. (i chose standing with hands on hips, holding hands, sway hips while standing, standing back to back, stand on one leg, stand on tip toe) I made the dice using a box as close to cube shape as i could find. Now, after i introduce the song and talk to them a bit about what it means to stand for the right, we'll just roll the dice to see how to stand while singing "Stand for the Right".

Book of Mormon color sing

I taught the song, "The Books in the Book of Mormon" on sunday and used 2 methods. First, i had them open their BofM to the table of contents and we sang the song with everyone following along in their scriptures. (i wanted them to get familiar with the table of contents)After a few rounds of that, we put the scriptures away and sang to my second method. I saw this idea on www.bellaonline.com. It was such a hit-who knew the kids would have so much fun with it! I wrote the books in the book of mormon on a posterboard rotating color every couple words. (i used red and blue) I assigned 1/2 the primary to be red, the other 1/2 was blue. When it was their color, they had to stand and sing. Everyone sang the parts that were written in both red and blue. They got a great workout standing up/down and learned a new song at the same time.