We are singing this song with the choir for Easter Sunday. The children sing the 1st verse, the choir the 2nd verse in parts, and the children sing the third verse while the choir does ahhhs and oohs in harmony.
Last year I printed off a flipchart, but this year I found a fabulous idea that I'm using for the 1st verse. It's a seed puppet and it's so cute! Laurie McBride shares her idea on Sugardoodle explained in detail. But where I first saw the idea was on the blog Singing Time Saver. She has pictures on there of her puppet which I really liked, but I wanted to make a few changes. So here's my version of the "Seed Puppet".
Side 1 - Awake seed
Side 2 - Asleep eyes
When it's "sleeping" you fold your fingers over so that the sleepy eyes are over the awake ones like this:
(hint: make sure your marker is dry before you do the other side, or do flower first so that you don't get ugly marker stains on your felt like mine did!)
Then the seed "awakes" to side 1 by just opening your hand.
After the seed has seen "the day is bright", on the phrase "with all your might" I turn the puppet inside out on my hand and show "the flower" side for "push upward to the light".
It only takes a few times practicing to get the hang of it. The Jr. Primary was crazy about it! I was a little worried about the Sr. Primary but decided to try it because it's creator, Laurie said even her Sr. Primary liked it. So I did, and while all I got from the older boys was some interest (that's something!), the girls were all saying, "again! again!". :) Success!!!
After we'd done it several times with the puppet, I went back to the flipchart because that's what I plan to use in Sacrament Meeting, but they seemed to remember it a lot better!
UPDATE:
I'm so excited that I ran into a FB Primary Music Leader friend Rachelle Taylor Jensen that shared with me her ideas for verses two and three of this song! I did my verse two puppets very similar to hers, adding a tombstone but ended up doing different ones for verse three. (I absolutely loved her cute verse three flags but I needed something more consolidated.)
So here are the puppets for verse two:
"On a golden springtime, Jesus Christ awoke and left the tomb where he had lain; the bands of death he broke".
"Awake, awake, O sleeping world! Look upward to the light. For now all men may live again.
"Look upward to the light". (Her sun was all felt and very cute, I didn't have any yellow felt so I improvised. Lol!)
Note: The sun puppet is also used in the other two verses for "to the light" and "glorious light".
Verse three:
"On a golden springtime, in a forest glade"
"The Father and the Son appeared as Joseph knelt and prayed"
"Awake, awake, O nations all! Receive the gospel light! The gospel true is here for you"
("Receive it's glorious light!' - see sun)
