Baptism Medley- Baptism and When I Am Baptized Part 1

For the Primary program I have decided to teach the children a Baptism Medley arranged by Monica Scott.  The medley is of the songs Baptism and When I am Baptized, both from the Children's Songbook.  I chose to teach this song because our primary is mostly junior children and it is difficult to teach songs with a lot of versus to them. This arrangement only uses the first verse of Baptism, which is learned easily.  Plus, our primary sang When I Am Baptized for the program in 2018 so the children know it pretty well.  You can hear the music HERE and purchase the music for this song HERE for a very reasonable price.  This arrangement is fun because you sing the first verse of Baptism and the second verse of When I Am Baptized together.

If you decide to just teach Baptism this lesson will work as well you will just need to continue on with the lesson to include the 2nd and 3rd versus. 

To teach this song I used THIS technique posted on Camille's Primary Ideas. I did not use the real t-shirts but just printed, cut and laminated the t-shirt illustrations Camille posted on her blog. The t-shirts had the words who, where, when, what, how, and where written on them.   Before primary started I hung up all but one of my white t-shirt print outs on a "clothes line" that I had hanging across the chalkboard.

Music Lesson: I showed the white t-shirt that I hadn't hung on the line to the children and told them this story.

Max's mom gave him a brand new white t-shirt to wear to school one day.  At lunch time Max got out his peanut butter and jelly sandwich and took a big bite.  The sandwich was pretty full with his favorite raspberry jelly and some oozed out and fell on his white shirt (at this point in the story I used a red washable marker to color on the shirt to represent jam).  After lunch Max went out to recess and decided to play soccer.  The field was kind of muddy and as he ran mud splattered up onto his white t-shirt (make mud splatters with a brown marker on the t-shirt).  When school was over Max went home for dinner.  His mom had made his favorite, spaghetti with meatballs!  Max dug right in,but in his excitement a meatball fell from his fork and hit his white shirt (make another red mark on the t-shirt). Then Max's mom brought out his favorite dessert, blueberry pie.  Max ate his entire piece, but not before he dribbled a little blueberry filling on his white shirt (make a blue mark on the t-shirt)  By this time Max's shirt was pretty dirty.  So what do you think he did?  Did he throw it away? No his mom put some stain remover on it (spray with some water) and put it in the washing machine (wipe with a paper towel until the marker comes all the way off) and hung it up to dry (add the now clean t-shirt to your clothes line).

Then I told the children that we were going to learn a song today that teaches a gospel principle that is like Max's white t-shirts and asked if anyone had a guess what the song would be about.  Several children guessed baptism and we discussed how after we are baptized we are clean from mistakes, but we will make mistakes again that will make us dirty like the t-shirt.  When that happens we can repent and our wrongs will be washed away and we will be clean again.

I then played a recording of just the first verse of the Baptism medley. I asked the children to listen for the answers to the questions as we listened to the song.  I stopped the music after each phrase was answered and hung a corresponding picture under the t-shirt with that word on it.   After we had listened to the entire first verse and had the pictures in order we sang through it with the piano a couple of times.

Then I gave each child a rhythm wand and taught them an action to go with each phrase of the song.  Putting a movement to phrases helps the children learn and remember the words faster and helps them not get bored while singing the song over and over.

These are the actions that I taught the children using the rhythm wands: