Saturday, December 1, 2007
Calling help
I was just called as the Primary Chorister. Does anyone have experience with this calling and have advice/tips/hints to share? I'm especially concerned with how to go about teaching songs to the older kids. For the younger kids I can think of a lot of fun games and things... things that they older kids might roll their eyes at. Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)
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13 comments:
I have this calling and I LOVE it! I was so scared when they called me-I'd never done this before! I've been doing it for a year in our ward and I'm sad I'll be leaving it soon when we move.
With the older kids, I think the best thing is to make them THINK! So we play games where they have to find the missing words or unscramble words in the verses, jeopardy, memory, name that tune, stuff like that. The younger kids are happy to just pull a song out of a box/off a tree/in plastic eggs, etc. but there are other things I've found.
Don't feel like you have to entertain the older kids-they still like the "younger kid" games like fishing for songs, stuff like that.
One of my favorite things I did was make dice. I got square boxes from michael's, decorated them with scrapbook paper and one die has numbers and the other has actions like hum, boys sing, loud, soft, fast, slow, girls sing, etc. They roll the dice and we sing what the number is in the style the other die says. It's so easy when you don't have time to prepare much!
The younger kids are sometimes timid singers. I made a "sing-o-meter" that goes from good to outstanding and have kids and teachers grade how well they sing. That has helped a lot and they love doing well! I also have cards on popsicle sticks that have loud on one side, quiet on the other (boys/girls, fast/slow, hum/sing) for a kid to come up and help "direct" how we sing. All the kids love doing that!
I don't make posters to teach the new songs. I don't like them. I use 8 1/2x11 pictures-mostly from the gospel art kit. My presidency doesn't like the cartoonish pictures so this is how I make it work.
Two of my favorite websites for this are: http://members.aol.com/jollyjenn/singing_time.html
and
http://www.christysclipart.com/singing_ideas.html#HIDE%20THE
Sorry, that was so long! You're going to have so much fun! The biggest thing I've learned is to not let them know you're scared and smile and have enthusiasm-you don't have to know anything about music, just be willing to be silly and have fun and love them!
Thank you SOOO much!!! I'm quite scared about this calling. I've never had a calling like this (I've always been the ward organist, R.S. pianist, etc... very low people interaction and preparation involved) so I'm pretty nervous. But I love kids and I love the gospel, so hopefully that will get me through :) But this is a big job... I don't know about anyone else, but the only thing I remember from Primary are the songs-- which are jammed packed with doctrine so teaching this to children is a fairly large responsibility!
But again, thank-you thank-you thank-you!!!!!!!!!!! I love the dice idea! Very fun!
Just want to second the motion that Sr. Primary kids love fun ways to learn songs too, maybe even more so. They are still elementary school kids.
You will do great!
One thing you might want to do is to work on some of these ideas with the Primary Pianist. Honestly, I've NEVER felt so invisible in my life as when I had that calling. I would have loved to have a little bit of say in to what I felt comfortable playing...and it would have been nice to know what songs we were singing BEFORE I got there each week.
You'll do great. There are some awesome ideas here!
I have never taught singing time but I have been in primary a lot and I have noticed the older kids still like to play the silly games. But one of the most common things we did was write the words of a new song on the black board and gradually erase words. They love it.
I forgot another thing that was invaluable! Last year, they learned a few songs I wasn't familiar with-so I downloaded the songs from the church website and made a CD to listen to and learn the songs. The church music website is also very very helpful!
I don't know if you know how things work in Primary these days...but every year the General Primary Presidency decides a theme for Primary that year and what songs the Primary children will learn. So, sometimes you'll be teaching songs that you've never heard of before! But..it turns out really fun. I would ask the Primary Presidency that you work with for a copy of the Primary theme booklet that they get each year so that you can follow along with how the songs you teach go along with the theme.
Also, I love the CD idea. We do that in our Primary and we actually make copies for all of the kids in our Primary, the Presidency and the teachers. It helps us all so much to be able to listen to the songs and learn them together.
One of my favorite things that I saw at a Primary leadership meeting was a Primary chorister put pictures in a 3-ring binder so that she could just turn the pages in the binder to hold up the pictures to help remind the words of the song. I LOVED that! So many times I've seen choristers drop pictures or get the pictures in the wrong order and then we have to stop singing to get it fixed and I loved the simplicity of the binder thing. She had one for each song that she had pictures for. I thought it was a great idea.
Also, I saw a chorister teach a new song to the kids by having them make a music video. She had them listen to the words of their song and then choose appropriate costumes/props and they each got a scene and then afterwards they watched the video with the music playing, so they were their own reminder of the words. It was super cute.
Finally (sorry this is so long), the kids in our Primary LOVE the game hot and cold (where you hide the object and then sing louder or softer as a person tries to find it). Seriously, when we tell them that we're playing this game...young or old..they get so excited. :)
Good luck with your new calling! I'm sure you'll be AWESOME!
Oh...one more thing. This is the teacher in me saying this. When you're teaching I think that it is very important to not let the kids walk all over you. What you're teaching them is important and they should listen! So, (I'm not saying be mean or anything) but if they're being rude or loud or something, wait for them to stop before you keep teaching. Or ask them to stop in a way that's comfortable to you. But, if you let one child talk over you, pretty soon the whole Primary is going to be talking and not listening. The teacher in me has a hard time when I see choristers/teachers preaching to a primary of kids not listening....
I'm glad you said that last part, Tiffany, because sometimes i feel like a mean chorister! I DO wait for them to be quiet and when they whine about the rules or the games, I tell them like it is-usually "well, I make the rules, so you have to play my way!" but gently! :)
I did the binder thing and I loved it too! It kept me so much more organized! One other thing (are you sick of me yet? :) I also remembered is that I was encouraged to make the games NOT competitive. The most competitive I've let it get is teachers vs. kids and I don't do that very often. But pitting the kids against each other is just not fun! I also did a "singing bee" this year before the program and we had a blast with that! I was meant to be a singing bee game show host!
Ha ha, How do you do a singing bee?
Thanks for all of the comments!!! I had my first Sunday today, and it was great!!!! I was really surprised at how much fun I had with the sr. primary. I made some changes in what I did for jr vs. sr primary, but it went well!
Tiffany, thanks for the comment about order during singing time! I think I'm going to have a tough time of it! We have a roudy jr primary and I'm not sure they are used to being quiet. I've found a LOT of great information in "Teaching No Greater Call" and I'm glad the church doesn't leave us alone to guess in the dark about important aspects of our callings.
Thanks again for all the help!!! Lots of good suggestions and ideas that i will definitely use!
Jen L
For your "rowdy Jr. Primary"...
It is not realistic for us to expect Jr. Primary kids to sit and not talk or move through all of church. They need structured opportunities for moving! Break up your singing time with them with movement. It could be one of the activity songs in the Primary book (Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, Snowman, Do as I'm doing), or it could be marching to the steady beat of a song (or marching in a circle around the room). My favorite way to grab kids attention while getting wiggles out and giving them an opportunity to concentrate on me is to do rhythm echoes. Do some kind of body percussion for four beats and they echo those four beats. You can mix up the rhythm pattern as long as you stay in four beats. Use claps, stomps, snaps, anything fun or crazy like patting your head or belly, jumping, vocal sirens, random consonants, etc. They love it, they have to focus, and they get to move. I feel strongly that kids shouldn't be expected to always sit!
DEMAND quiet. I totally agree with what has been said. It doesn't mean you have to be mean, it means being assertive. You never have to raise your voice. Tell them you're waiting for quiet or do the trick where you quietly say "If you can hear me pat your nose". I love to bring attention to classes who are listening and ready to go. Positive reinforcement! (I sure hope your teachers are helping remind their kids as well.) This used to be my weak point in teaching and once I got out on my own, I totally changed and now I'm always the strict one in Primary, but kids don't hate you for it, most of them are actually very grateful for your leadership. You can't just smile and say "Okay everyone be quiet." Your face has to be serious, your eyes big and scanning the room and you show that you will wait. Then you can switch to happy teacher mode again.
Another thing that promotes a bit of excitement and also focus is to allow opportunities for solos, duets, small groups to sing. It encourages better singing too! I love to provide opportunities for kids to see that singing is WICKED COOL!!!!
I'm not the music teacher but the discipline advice has been very helpful and I'll be trying it in my sunbeam class this Sunday!
I had this calling and really enjoyed it. When the new chorister took over I sent her a Word Document with website names, game ideas, etc. in it. If you are interested in it, email me at brettandhope@gmail.com and I'll send it to you.
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