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Sunday, September 9, 2012

Who, What, How Review

As program time is quickly approaching, I know that many of you are looking for new ways to review the songs you've learned.  This was one of my favorites that I read somewhere, that you can use several times and the kids never get sick of it.



Choose cans or jars that have wide mouths so that you or the children can reach in to choose.  Cover with whatever you choose.  I just used wide strips of scrapbook paper and made labels with more paper.  I printed the words from the computer all on one page and then cut them out.  I chose to do the jars in the Primary colors (red, yellow and blue).  I cut out matching slips of paper to put the choices on.  You could type them and print them too, but I just wrote them out by hand. (I accidently switched the red and yellow paper when I took this photo, oops!  So just pretend).

The "Who" jar says who gets to sing the song or verse.  I put the following choices:  boys, girls, teachers, everyone, left handed, right handed, blonde/red hair, brown/black hair, blue/green eyes, brown/hazel eyes, birthday Jan.-Jun., birthday Jun.-Dec., first name A-M, last name A-M, first name N-Z, last name N-Z, favorite colors red,orange yellow or pink, favorite colors green, blue, purple or black, wearing anything white, wearing anything black, dog lovers, cat lovers, horse lovers, pizza lovers, and (my personal favorite) chocolate lovers.

The "What" jar has every song you're working on for the program.  Songs with more than one verse get split up so there is only one verse per paper.

The "How" jar has different fun ways you can sing a song to make it interesting.  (I tried to be careful not to let a somewhat rowdy "how" be chosen for a really quiet sacred song.)  Here are the choices I put in the "How" jar: Standing, turn right, turn left, with eyes closed, standing on left leg, standing on right leg, very fast, very slow, kneeling, marching, hands on head, turn around, very high, very low, laying down, happy, sad, whisper sing, hands folded, swaying, with no blinking, patting your head and rubbing your belly,  head hanging upside down, Tabernacle choir, popcorn popping (random popping up and down from standing position), with Frogs (see post about frogs on a stick), find spot (hot and cold game with a large circle), missing word (missing word game), with traffic signs (signs of slow, stop and go), slinky (I used a slinky to have them sing soft to loud - closed to completely open).  You could add in any games you have played with them.

As time allows, you have kids come up (or you can) and draw one paper out of each jar and lay it down in front (as pictured).  Read each of the three choices out loud to the whole group. (Sr. Primary or older Jr. Primary can read their own).  Then the people chosen sing the song chosen in the way chosen!  The more choices you can put in the Who and How jars, it makes each time different and something new. :D

Song Chooser Visitor

One thing that works really well in choosing songs (especially in Nursery) is to invite a "visitor" for singing time.  When I first started working in Nursery it was wintertime, so I invited a stuffed snowman similar to this one to choose our songs:


Sometimes I would do a voice for him and have him talk directly to the children, other times I have him whisper in my ear.  The little kids LOVED it!  I have penguin one for winter too.

You could adapt this for any season. I brought a Leprachaun for March and a bunny for spring.
I went to the local $ store and purchased a few puppets a ladybug, a bee, a frog etc. for summer (although I haven't used them yet because we have our Primary Chorister coming in now.)

You could easily find a scarecrow or pumkin or something for fall.  Really fun!