Did Jesus Really Live Again?

I chose to teach "Did Jesus Really Live Again" as a scripture song for the month of April.  You can see how I am implementing scripture songs into singing time this year HERE.  When I teach "scripture songs" I try to spend more time focusing on the doctrine the song is teaching rather than memorizing the words.

I love how this song asks questions that people might wonder about and then provides the answers to the questions. The entire song seems like a conversation between two people.  So I printed out the questions and the answers to the questions on separate pieces of paper.  I led a discussion with the primary children talking about the three questions the song asks and the answers.  We briefly discussed the events that happened when Jesus was resurrected.  Then I held up the paper with the questions and we sang it.  I followed this by holding up the words to the answer and we sang that.  We sang all three verses this way.

Next time we sing this song I am going to have all of the teachers stand together facing the children.  Then the teachers will sing the questions and the children will sing the answers. After a few times through we might switch parts.

You can print the word strips that I used HERE.

Have a Very Happy Birthday

For 2019 I am going to have the primary children sing the third verse only of this song to the primary teachers when they have a birthday.  We will be using THESE finger lights.

Before starting the song hand out a finger light to each child and wait until they have them on their fingers.  The first time this takes a few minutes,but it gets faster as they learn how to do it. To teach the hand actions the first time just sing through the song once having the children watch you and then have them join you on the second time through.  It's easy and the children pick up on the actions quickly.  I would suggest teaching this song during a review or activity week before you need to use it for the first time.  That way you don't have to take a lot of time teaching the song while the birthday person is waiting to be sang to.

You can see my actions in the video below.  It's a little hard to see, but I do have a red finger light on my right hand.  At the end of the song while all of the children have their candles (hands with finger light) in the air have the birthday person give a big blow as if they are blowing out all the birthday candles on a cake.  Once they "blow" them out the children put their hands down.

Easter Egg Match Review

For April I wanted to do something around the Easter theme, but we are only meeting twice in Primary (due to General conference and in our ward Stake conference), so I didn't want to spend a week not working on program music.  In March I reviewed all of the songs we had learned this year in a Primary Jeopardy game and realized that the children still needed help on learning the words to  one of the songs I had already taught( Holding Hands Around the World).  So I decided to combine an Easter activity with reviewing that song. If you wanted to use this activity, but need to review a different song just use the blank eggs and add your own words and/or pictures to them for the song you want to review.  You could also use this activity to sing a number of different songs or Easter songs the same way. 

Activity Directions: Print out the Easter Eggs HERE for Holding Hands Around the World and HERE for blank eggs to make your own.  Then cut the eggs in half like the picture above to make it look like the eggs are cracked.  Before primary I hung half of the eggs on the chalk board and hid the other half around the room, but you could also hide all of the eggs around the room if you wanted more children to be able to find them.  Then we sang the song line by line asking the children to listen carefully to see if they held one of the egg halves that matched the words we were singing.  Once found we put the two halves together and continued to the next line.  We did this until all the eggs were matched together and then used them to sing the song several times through.

If you are using this activity to just sing a number of different songs there are many different ways you could do it, just be creative.  One suggestion is to write half of the title on each egg half and then have the pianist play the song while the children try to guess what it is and find the halves that make up the entire title.  Once matched sing the song.

Heroes of the Scriptures

This is a great song published in the Friend magazine in 1998 you can find it HERE.  This song teaches about scripture heroes and I love it because in just a few words it identifies a characteristic that the chosen scripture hero has and how we can be like them.  I taught it to my primary children as a "scripture song" see my post HERE on how I am using scripture songs in my primary this year.

Music Lesson: I began by asking the question, "What is a hero"? I gave the children an opportunity to answer and of course got a lot of talk about avengers, capes and super abilities. :)  But the children were also able to identify character traits in every day people that could be heroes as well.  The definition I wanted the conversation to eventually get to was "a person who is admired for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. Someone that we look up to or want to be like".  

Then we identified people in the scriptures who we thought could be considered heroes and why. 

To teach the song I posted the following pictures one at a time on the chalk board.  We briefly talked about each person's story and then sang their line of the song with the picture before adding the next line.  

                                         

Download all of the pictures HERE

I only taught the first verse of this song, but the children liked it enough that I could have definitely taught the other two verses the same way.  

Scripture Songs

With the new Come Follow Me  for Primary came many changes.  One of those changes is that we no longer have Sharing Time Outline that tells us what song to teach each month for the primary program.  Instead we now have a list of "Music for Singing Time" that correlate with the Come Follow Me lessons both in primary and at home.  I really like this new change and love that we have a little more freedom to choose which songs to teach for the program.  Even though it isn't possible to thoroughly learn every suggested song on the list I still wanted to work in as many as possible during singing time.  So I came up with the "scripture song".  Each month I choose one song that we focus on as a Scripture Song.  This is a song that focuses on principles that we can learn by reading and studying the scriptures.  For most of the songs I chose a song that is either from the"Music for Singing Time" list or goes along with the same principle, but isn't the song I am teaching for the primary program.   To make this a little more fun I created a puzzle out of gospel art pictures and at the end of every month the children add a puzzle piece and identify the scripture principle the song teaches.

Most of the time I don't "teach" the scripture song.  The expectation isn't that the children will memorize it or know it perfectly.  The goal is to introduce or review primary songs that support the gospel principles we are studying in classes and at home during the month.  This is also a great way to remind the children that as we read the scriptures in the Come Follow Me curriculum we are learning important truths.

On the first Sunday of each month I introduce the new scripture song.  I usually just post the words
(Camille's Primary Ideas has a great suggestion on how to do this that you can find HERE) and if needed have the pianist play the song through once while I sing it and then the primary joins me.  We sing the same scripture song at the beginning of singing time each week for the entire month.  On the last Sunday of the month I choose a child to add a puzzle piece and we review the gospel principle that can be found in the scriptures.  Even though I'm not spending a lot of time teaching the song by the end of the month the children usually know it pretty well.

My list of monthly scripture songs has transformed over the last few month as I've learned along with everyone else how to best use the Come Follow Me for Primary.  This is my revised list of scripture songs that I plan on using for the rest of the year, but might not stick to at all. :)