When to prepare for your weekly singing time…isn’t that the weekly question you often ask yourself? If you wait until the last minute to prepare you may find yourself hating your calling and your weekend!! You’ll also find that your primary kids may not be too happy as they usually can tell when you planned your singing time during Sacrament Meeting (am I right?) !!
With no lesson to plan this week, I thought I’d discuss when I try to plan my Sunday lessons. Sunday mornings are totally out for me as far as lesson planning goes…we have 9:00 church with Primary first and I’m the opening act. I also have 4 kids under the age of 4 (the twins are almost 5 yay!) and myself to dress for church with hubby gone to early meetings. Let’s just say I get as much done before Sunday morning as possible!
I used to think Friday afternoon was early enough to plan my lesson until it started getting interrupted with weekend activities as well – a long holiday, kids got out of school early, hubby wants to go to lunch (I can dream right?), I’m just burned out from my week, the excuses go on. So I changed it to Thursday afternoon. If you notice, most of my posts happen on Thursday. Besides, I feel like if I got my stuff put online late Saturday night, most people would probably already have an idea together and I’d be of no use to anyone.
My house on Thursdays are all about Singing Time: getting my lesson firmed up (I usually toss ideas around in my head all week), updating this blog, pulling needed items out, my binder all organized, and getting my bag all ready to grab ‘n go Sunday morning!
So if you are struggling with your Sunday lessons, I’d strongly suggest not doing your planning on the weekend. And if your weeks are crazy, try planning the next week’s lesson the Sunday before, after your meetings.
What are your tips/advice for planning your weekly lessons? Leave a comment!
5 thoughts on “Finding Time”
I totally agree. I'm a new Primary Music Leader and I've had to figure this out quickly! I find that I'm most "in the mood" to think about it on Sundays when our house is quiet (kids in bed). I work on at least thinking about the next Sunday's theme and ideas. I email our pianist the opening exercises/singing time songs on Thursday (my own idea, and my own self-given deadline) so she can prepare and so I know I have to at least plan that much by Thursday! I find if I leave much for Saturday, I feel really stressed. And part of preparing well for the Sabbath doesn't include stress! So I try to have a firm idea by Thursday and finish up any minor work by Friday or Saturday morning.
I plan my music a month at a time, which means that after a few hours on the last Sunday I am done for the next several weeks. I also print up all the music for the coming month (including Opening, Wiggle, Welcome, etc.) and email to the Presidency and Pianist so everyone knows what's coming — and I'm covered if I have to leave town. While planning the coming month I look at the rest of the year to see what projects might be coming in the future that will need more prep — like the month of May, for which I have already picked the medley my kids will sing for Mother's Day and am looking for the right visuals. I'd go crazy trying to plan only a day or two in advance!
I appreciate your advice and good example. Not only is it the Saturday before Easter, but it's also my daughter's 9th birthday and here I am trying to figure out what to do for tomorrow. I love your ideas and am so glad you're so good at your calling. Thanks!
Going on 3 years and I still usually prepare on Sunday morning before church. Its super stressful, but I guess I'll never learn 🙂 As tomorrow morning is Easter I'm actually surfing around for ideas Saturday night. Once or twice I've prepared well ahead of time and it was lovely. Blogs like yours save the day every week! Thanks for posting!
I like preparing in advance, but the only problem I've found is that if I want to look for new ideas, they're usually not posted until later on in the week. Where I still feel new to this calling, I really appreciate looking to blogs (like yours!) for inspiration. So that's my only problem for a non-creative mind like myself with preparing too much in advance. By the way thank you for your ideas!! We're using the cd challenge idea and it's so great!