The Fourth Article of Faith

Like many of you, I chose this song for June because it goes so well.  I found a really great flipchart for this song and I can't find where I got it from!  I wasn't going to do one, because they know it pretty well.  But I notice that the Sr. Primary knew it a lot better than the Jr.  So, I printed one and it has really helped!  I let five kids come up and each hold a part of the song.  The first week I wanted to sing it several times through, so I had each group go tap a new person to come up and hold pages.  Since we're split, we got through everyone in only few rounds!  Here are some other nice charts you can use that are on Sugardoodle.  If I ever find mine again, I'll add it to the post. :)

Book of Mormon Songs

I'm really excited about an idea that I'm going to use tomorrow.  It's so simple, but I think it will be really fun!  I'm first going tell the kids that we're singing about a special book today.  Then we'll sing the "Books in the Book of Mormon" song and put up a timeline that coincides with the books.  Then I'm going to add to the time line pictures that go with the stories that are in the verses of the song "Book of Mormon Stories".  We'll go down the timeline and as we get to each picture, we'll lift it up and there will be the words to the verse that go with it. (I'm going to print each verse on a sheet of paper and attach the verses behind the pictures ahead of time and put them up with the picture when I put in on the timeline.)  I think it will be fun for the kids to see them in order.  I was going to add "Nephi's Courage" at the beginning with a picture of Nephi, then I found a verse for him that a lady named Emily Rosengren has made up, so might do that.  I guess you could do both! :)  She did several fun extra verses that you can find here on Sugardoodle. For the Sr. Primary, I think I'll add in all the "extra verses" So the order is:

• Books in the Book of Mormon
• Book of Mormon Stories (BOMS) verse #1

 

• BOMS extra verse - Nephi

 

• BOMS extra verse - Enos

• BOMS extra verse - King Benjamin

• BOMS verse #4 - Abinadi

• BOMS verse #3 - Alma

BOMS verse #5 - Ammon

• BOMS verse #6 - 2,000 Stripling Warriors

• BOMS extra verse - Moroni

• BOMS verse #7 - Samuel the Lamanite

BOMS verse #8 -  Christ

• BOMS extra verse - Jared's Brother

• BOMS verse #2

I've realize a little problem.  The stories in the Book of Mormon are not in chronological order! For example, the story of the brother of Jared on the timeline comes BEFORE the story of Lehi and his family but for the Books in the BOM song, the book of Ether needs to be in the right place.  Another example is that in the book of Mosiah the story of King Benjamin comes before Abinadi and then the story of Alma the younger however, chronologically it goes Abinadi and then Benjamin and Alma are at the same time.   So what I've decided to do, is for Jr. Primary, only do the books in order, put the pictures in the books they go in.  For the Sr. Primary, I'm going to do the timeline first and then "compile" the stories the way that they appear in the BOM to sing the songs. :D

D'net Layton made a Book of Mormon stories wheel that I think would be cool to print of and assemble with an arrow with a brad.  The Junior Primay would get a kick out of finding the right picture on their wheel that goes with the verse we're singing!  Here are some actions you can do with the verses. I'm not sure who made them up, but they're posted on Sugardoodle.  We may not get through all of them, but we can save extras for another day. :)

On A Golden Springtime

UPDATED! 3/7/2018

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)

He Died That We Might Live Again

For our program song for April we will be learning "He Died That We Might Live Again".  Once again, I found some great ideas on Sugardoodle.  A lady named Bonnie shared the idea she read of a perfect introduction to the song.  She refers to this story, "Plane Crashes Into The Potomac"  and of the bravery shown by a couple of men to save other's lives.

I'm going to use the "Who, What, Where, When, Why, How" idea with wordstrips from Becky (same Sugardoodle link) for the Senior primary.  But for the Junior I think I'll do an Easter song introduction idea that I found on Teaching LDS Children.

Update 4/10/11 - I didn't end up having time yet to make the Easter song introduction box, hopefully I can for next week. The word strips worked so well though!  I've only done the first half of the song because we're also working on another song for Easter.  We'll finish it next week. To do the matching game, I printed the question words (who, what, where etc.,) on colored paper.  Then I printed the phrases on white sheets. I ended up doing a phrase on each sheet that I printed.  Before we began, I magneted the question words on the board.  For the Jr. Primary, I did them in order.  As we sang each phrase, we discussed which question it answered.  For the Sr. Primary, I mixed up the questions words all over the board.  Then as we sang each phrase, they had to figure out which question it answered and put it in order. As we learned it this week, I divided the phrases one way, but I'm going to change them for next week to this:

WHY: "He died that we might live again"
WHO: "Lord Jesus, our Redeemer true"
WHERE: "He died on Cal-v'ry's lonely hill"
HOW: "His life he gave for me and you"
WHEN: "He rose from the grave on Easter Morn"
WHO #2: "Our Savior and our King"
WHAT: "He showed his love for all man-kind"
WE CAN: "For his great love, give thanks and sing
                 "Re-joice! Re-joice! and sing, sing, sing."

For Junior Primary, after we learned each phrase, I picked a child to look for a plastic Easter Egg (I had hidden several around the room before we began) and we repeated and repeated until they found an egg -then we had to stop and go on to the next one.  They LOVED it!!!

Update 4/17/11 -  I forgot to take my list with me to church today.  (I hate it when I do that!) So when I got there I ended up rearranging all the question words because I couldn't remember what I had put down.  It still worked though.  Here is a picture of how it ended up at the end of today.

We continued our Easter egg hunt this week.  I went ahead and did an Easter egg hunt with the Sr. Primary too because they begged last week once they found out that the Jr. Primary had done one.  It's amazing how much more the children pay attention and sing well when they want to be picked for doing a good job. ;)  By the end of both singing times, they knew the song really well, and I had their attention most of the time! Yay!

Scripture Power!

I've been trying to find something I really love for the song "Scripture Power" and today I ran across this fabulous idea from Teaching LDS Children.  It's only for the second verse, so I still need to come up with stuff for the 1st, but it inspired me!



(Visit their site to get the pattern!)

Easter Ideas!

I really love this simple "Ways to Sing in an Egg Carton" that I found on Precious Primary.  As I find or come up with other Easter ideas I like, I'll add them to this post.

Here is a great Easter song introduction idea and really fun Easter egg song review at Teaching LDS Children.

Songs for General Conference

Every Sunday before General Conference I have to sing prophet songs.  Two of them that are my favorites and absolute musts are:

Latter-Day Prophets - I read this idea somewhere to do small and decided it would be fun to do big too!  I have taken 16 sheet protectors and taped them together side by side, then I inserted an 8x11 picture of each prophet in order from Joseph Smith to Thomas S. Monson.  I also printed little strips of paper with their names on them so you can read them better and slid them inside the sleeves to the bottom in front of the pictures.  Then you fold it up accordian style.  You could use it as a sort of flipchart but what our Primary likes to do is hold it out long with helpers (it takes about 8!) while we sing it.

Modern Day Apostles (As I Have Love You) -  I also read this one somewhere years ago.  We sing the last names of the First Presidecy and the Quorum of the Twelve to the tune of "As I Have Loved You".  I put all their pictures up in order with a strip of paper taped to the front with just their last name large so it's easy to read.  It's a fun way to review who they'll be listening to the next weekend so that they're more familiar with their faces.  So it goes like this:

"Monsen and Eyring, Uchdorf, Packer Perry, Nelsen, Oaks, Ballard, Scott and Hales, Holland and Bednar, Cook, Christofferson, Anderson, these are the modern-day apostles."

We often also sing "Follow the Prophet" and this year I added the 2nd verse of "If I Listen With My Heart" since we'd learned it.  It was perfect!