I received a new calling in church - Primary Chorister! I am excited to teach the kids through music and use the teaching part of my brain again. Singing time was always my favorite part of church when I was in primary.Here's the catch to this new calling...with the exception of the last few months, I have never served in the primary. I'm a little rusty. So if you have a favorite singing time memory from your days in the primary, can you post it for me? Or if you have recently/are currently serving in primary and your chorister does something awesome with the kids, could you post that too? I'm interested in games/activities/strategies that motivate the kids to pay attention and to help them learn words to new songs. I should have this kind of thing down by now, but my expertise is with teenagers. Jr. Primary makes me nervous.
Thanks for any ideas!
(Hope you all had a great mothers day!)
10 comments:
how fun! you will be awesome at that calling. if only I had any good primary memories . . . I'd share them with you ;o)
ooh I would love that one!
Congrats! That seems like it'd be a really fun calling.
I serve in the nursery right now. When the Chorister comes in for singing time with the kids she sings lots of fun songs. Eensie Weensie Spider, Wheels on the Bus, Popcorn popping. Then the last song is always "I am a Child of God" and we have the kids fold their arms during that song to be reverent. It's great because we do the lesson just after that and the reverence will (sometimes) carry through for a little bit.
Go to sugardoodle.net It has the best ideas! Good luck! That calling frightens me.
I would be terrified to have that calling! Sugardoodle.net has tons of ideas but I can't remember anything at the moment. Good luck and I'm sure you will be great!
Layne is just starting to really learn songs in primary. The turning point seemed to be this "I am a builder, working each day to build a family..." song. It is not in the song book, but they are practicing it for their Sacrament program.
Anyway, the chorister had a bunch of tools and kids up front acting out the song with them. I am guessing the boys are harder to captivate. Layne was chosen to use the tools and has been singing it everyday since.
Congrats on your calling! I served in that position last year for a little over a year and loved it. It takes work to create the activities/pictures for the learning process, but it's so rewarding to hear the children sing songs that without you they never knew!
Sign up with the yahoo groups, "primusic" or "primarypage" for lots of ideas for each program year songs, and upcoming holiday songs.
They have a link for jollyjen, who basically does all the words with pics for every song for the program each year so a lot of the work is done for you, should you choose to use it. I did her stuff pretty often, but also added in a few extra pictures when I thought the wording went too long without another pic.
Another great thing is for when the kids start getting crazy, I just stop the song immediately and quickly say, "hands on your head", "touch your belly", etc. until I have their attention again. Just saying "shhh...be quiet" wasn't enough. Kids can't just stop doing rowdy things without being replaced with something TO DO. That's why I would quickly have them do what I said to get them back on task, and they always responded SO fast and then we were able to continue with the song.
One of my fav games with them was bringing a bag full of dress up clothes and whenever the children sang a song really well that we've been working on, then they get to choose an item out of the bag. The goal was to sing either a 1,2, or 3 level, 3 being perfect (well, pretty close to perfect). They could choose the amount of items for me to wear depending on the level of performance they just did for the song. By the end of primary, I'm usually wearing almost all the dress up clothes and we're all having a great time.
In senior, you'll most likely run into the older boys, who think they're "too cool" to sing or pay attention. I found out what makes them excited, which was these collectible mini skateboards (size of matchbox cars) and had one kid bring a few in to primary. We set up a long church table and had a contest over which person could race their skateboard closest to the end without going over. They LOVED this and thought I was so cool. Even the girls had fun too. And everyone participated in the singing so they could get a turn.
Sorry, so long! You'll do great! Hope this helps!
you will do great.
One thing the kids liked when I was in primary was the stop and go signs. One kid gets to stand up front and hold the sign that has green for go on one side and red for stop on the other. When the kid up front turns it to go the kids to should sing the song and when the kid turns it to red, they should hum. When the kids are restless I loved using this because they get really into it and forget they are singing!
i think there's a book you can buy at desert book with activities in it for singing time. good luck! you will be GREAT!!
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