Primary Singing Time

I have been our ward's Primary Chorister for one and a half years now.  I love my church calling.  I get to sing, and laugh, and play games while the rest of you look up scriptures and listen to lessons.  I have found so many cute blogs by primary choristers who share their brilliant ideas with the cyber world.  Some of them have saved me at 11 pm on a Saturday night.  So I want to share some of my Singing Time philosophy on my blog.

• First: I keep it simple.  Simple props and games.  I use things that I normally have in my house.  I use the chalkboard almost every Sunday.  Most of the time if Junior primary loves something the Senior primary will love it to.  I am often surprised at how fast Junior primary will catch on, even if I think an idea is too challenging or if they have to read.  I rarely change things for the 2 different groups.  My favorite way to teach a song is to draw pictures on the board that represent the words or phrases of the song.  Each time they sing it I take something off.  By the time everything is erased everyone knows the song.

• Second: FUN.  If it isn't fun I get a little scary.  I like to have the children sing in different voices, or pick songs in different ways.  I like to move and call on as many kids as possible.  My favorite trusty tool is a set of crazy cubes that our pianist made and let me use.  They are a styrophome blocks covered in fabric with little see through windows.  I put little cards in the windows for my selections that week.  I have one for the song and one for the way to sing the song.  The only drawback to this is you can't always choose appropriate ways to sing the songs.  Hillbilly did not go over very well with some of our teachers. 

• Third: Repeat.  We sing many of the same songs for the entire month.  I want my primary to learn as many songs from the songbook as possible, not just the ones suggested for the program or the standards everyone knows.  We do the same opening/reverence song, article of faith, and activity song every Sunday for a month.  By the end of the month the kids know new songs.  My primary president suggested this idea for the reverence song and I loved it so much I expanded it to several songs.  Fast Sunday is the hardest with this idea because it involves me singing and the kids listening to learn 3 new songs.

If I have something turn out well in the future I will post it.  I learned so much as a new chorister reading about what other people do.