I had about 12 min with the Senior Primary (I had about 25 min in JP....usually these numbers are switched.) While I was listening to the sharing time presentation by the counselor I started feeling that I needed to condense or change my plans somehow, but I wasn't sure how I could do that. The first half of the song presentation was tweaked a bit and it went really well. After singing through the 2nd verse with the kids, I held up the GAK picture of Christ and the children and explained that the verse was talking about this, and similar situations, in Jesus life. I emphasized Jesus' love for children and then invited the children to close their eyes and imagine, as it suggests in the verse, that Jesus was blessing them. The Spirit was very strong at this point.
Unfortunately I chose to stick with my puzzle and scripture plans for the last 5-8 min and this activity is just much too-involved for a short singing time. In fact, it would probably be better-suited for an integrated sharing and singing time. The kids did get to sing through the verse 4 times throughout the singing time and we did talk about 2 scripture stories of Jesus so I don't feel it was a complete loss. I do think for an "introduction" Sunday this was not the greatest lesson plan. I was reminded through this experience that keeping it simple is usually the best policy unless you have the full 40 min to teach, sing, and "play" with the kids. I will not soon forget this and hopefully reading about my experience (mistake) will help someone from making it in the future.
Of course I have not been able to stop thinking about the woulda, shoulda, couldas with this Senior Primary singing time. Here is one idea I had thought about doing while planning last week and now realize I probably should have done to help the kids really learn the words. I call it "Sing by Letters" and it is based on the memorization technique that involves writing the first letter of each word to trigger your mind to remember, and eventually memorize, the words. Here is what it looks like:
So I would have put the letters on the board and challenged the kids to sing the song, without explaining what they were looking at or what song it was. After giving them a few seconds, I explain the memorization technique and run through the entire song introducting the words and tune. Once the kids have sung through the song once, I invite a child to come up and pull a letter out of a bag. We then erase that letter from our letter board and either sing through the song or sing through the song while completing an activity that begins with the selected letter. You don't even have to have letters for the kids to pull out of the bag, yesterday I could have had the kids pull the shapes and used the first letter of the shape they pulled. You can also pick objects that apply to the song, time of year, sharing time or monthly theme, etc. You continue doing this until all the letters are gone or the time is up. Here are some ideas for activities:
"T": teachers sing
"C": close eyes or circle lead (draw circles in the air as you sing the song)
"S": sing slowly or "slinky singing" (more on that in a later post!)
"R": raise and lower arms as you sing (follow the leader)
Those are just a few letters, you get the picture. There is another similar idea with this game here: http://primarysingingtimeideas.blogspot.com/2009/01/crack-code.html . There really is a ton of stuff you can do with it!
So....moral of this story is that you should always follow those thoughts or feelings that you get as you are sitting in Primary and it is probably best not to plan too much to begin with (this has always been a downfall for me). The other lesson learned is that even if you think your singing time was horrible, as long as you helped the kids feel the Spirit, it was a success!!!! There is always next week.
Happy Singing!!!!!
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