Teaching How Firm a Foundation

Here are the posters for verses 1 and 3. They are stuck on with velcro so I can take the words on and off easily. I think i'll get an easel from the library so that I can have them right next to me, instead of back on the chalkboard. Easier to see, and closer to the kids that way. For the younger kids I did my best to use as many illustrations and such as I could. I want them to be able to follow along.

This week (Feb 8th) i'm beginning How Firm a Foundation. After discussing this with the Primary President and going back and forth about different verses, we've settled on 1, 3, and 7. This is really such a fascinating hymn, and just to date myself, I still hear "You, Who unto Jesus" in the first verse.

I made up 3 posters with the words on cardstock, some with illustrations. I got the idea from the Arizona blog I read, to make the posters, it was a great idea, but I used adhesive velcro and put that on the backs of every word, that way I can pull some words off to see how well they remember. This took the better part of this morning, or really about 4 hours. It was a lot of work, good thing I may need this for the next few months and I have a feeling the other ward will see this in the closet and "borrow" it on Sundays.

My next dilemma was thinking about different ways to sing the same song, or verse, over and over and over without burning the kids out. My mother got an idea from her Primary music leader to send someone out of the room, have all the kids decide on a particular word and then hum that word instead of sing it. The person who has been outside has to decide which word was missing. I thought this was a great idea, it makes it into a game. So how many other ways are there to make repetition fun? I've gotta think about this.

1. Play skip the word game.
2. Hide the bear, sing loud and softly while someone looks for it.
3. Scramble the words and then unscrable them to sing.
4. Divide the room in half and have them take turns singing during the verse (using the magic wand to tell them when to sing - of course)
5. Use all those loud/soft, slow/fast, stop/go signs - or if i'm feeling really musical pull out the forte/piano signs.
6. Let the kids conduct.

Hmmmmm. There must be more, I really do have to think about this.