I’m going to work with the kids on He Sent His Son, but we’ll be doing a LITTLE musical theory and implementing it into our song!
Now, don’t let the word THEORY scare you! I’m no major musician (a little high school choir and piano/violin lessons from my mom is all) but I know enough and can hold my own.
Pat Graham in her last workshop talked about putting the finishing touches or the “feeling” into the song. A part, that sometimes gets skipped over for lack of time {I’m totally guilty of doing this}. We get those words memorized and the melody familiar and we are good to go, right?
So I wanted to try to learn the feeling with He Sent His Son this week with the senior primary. For junior primary, I’ll just be using my review necklaces I made HERE but I’ll be adding wands (see below!). You can also find my original lesson plan HERE for this song.
So for Senior, I blew up the music for He Sent His Son so the original 2 pages now print on 12 sheets of paper (6 sheets for each original page):
Download the document using my access button at the bottom of this post. The margins overlap so you will want to trim off some excess borders to get it to hang properly. Or, if you have a really big primary where no one would be able to see, hand out a copy of the sheet music (front and back to save on paper!) and each child can mark up their own copy with a colored pencil. You can get a PDF version also at the link below.
Before Primary, hang all 12 sheets of paper on the chalkboard using magnets or tape. Then pull out some colored markers to mark up the whole thing in some fun COLOR!
First we’ll talk about how the song should be sung. The author of the song says “expressively” [that’s located just above the first measure!]. I’ll circle “expressively” and ask the kids what they think that means to them. We’ll demonstrate singing it – non-expressively (slumped, hardly singing, I’ll have my pianist help too), then sing it expressively (lifting our eyebrows, showing emotion with our faces, again, the pianist helping, etc.).
Then I have a metronome I’ll bring in so we can figure out and play with the speed or TEMPO [see, you do know some theory :)]…
If you don’t have one, borrow one from a neighbor, or any music store or Amazon sells them:
We may sing it through faster, then slower, then the right tempo.
Then we’ll talk about the time signature and for this song it’s 3/4. I’ll bring out my wands and let the kids conduct the beat, making a triangle, and always starting down when we’re on the first count. This song will be fun because we usually don’t start singing on the first beat!
(find more information on my wands HERE)
**I will probably let the junior kids use the wands and as each question/answer group sings, they will get to move their wand, then freeze when it’s not their turn!**
There is a fermata in the song [above the word “Son” in the sentence, “What does he ask? Live like his SON”]. We’ll locate it and I’ll color it with a marker. We’ll practice holding the fermata, taking deep breathes, maybe even how we should sit up straight and breathe from our diaphragm instead of shrugging our shoulders. Taking deep breathes shouldn’t involve shoulders, your tummy should expand.
We’ll talk about all the crescendos and decrescendos located all throughout the song. These indicate where the song should get louder and softer. I’ll color those with another color. Then we’ll sing the song and really focus on following where we should gradually sing louder, and gradually sing softer.
The song also has lots of slurs (those rainbow-looking lines on the top). I’ll color those, and also add breath marks in between each. We’ll follow our breathing with those. The slurs indicate legato (or smooth). Maybe we’ll even take our wands and make rainbows as we breathe, inhaling at the end of each rainbow and exhaling/singing as we make our rainbow.
We’ll pick out the harmony on “Live like His son.” and have the girls sing the higher notes and the boys on the melody.
Time permitting, we could hum the song while a child reads the scripture that is suggested and I’ll circle it. A great time to give a brief testimony about the validity of Jesus Christ and the Book of Mormon.
I’ve put all these theory notes in a document you can download below to take to church if that helps! This is how I’ll remember everything I want to cover!
So hopefully by the end, we have a nicely colored chart, the kids have learned a little musical theory and been able to repeat the song several times!
Check out this quick tutorial video for accessing the Resource Library:
These printables are filed on my Resource Library page under Song Title > He Sent His Son.
5 thoughts on “Putting the “Feeling” into He Sent His Son”
You are AWESOME!!! Thanks so much for sharing! I am totally using this tomorrow.
Doing this today! I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks for sharing this! I did this in senior primary. Really surprised how many kids knew some of the musical terms. Then it opened my eyes how much my pianists processes when she plays. My senior kids really, really liked it, I felt it challenged them and engaged them. I had a beautiful, colorful song, and I felt the kids enjoyed the songs more. I did.
I watered it down for Junior primary. THANKS for sharing as always!
(I couldn't find the FB post so I am commenting on the blog post.)
How did you make the large copy of the song? I might want to do this other songs.
I did comparisons of songs, like different moods of songs, different song tempos. etc.
I added the rit (spelling…hello), and the key signature (when the piansts plays black keys).
THANKS!
Hi Marla!
I'm glad the lesson plan went well for you too! To enlarge the document, I downloaded (I may have purchased it for like $6.00) a program called Mindcad Tiler (after doing some serious Googling!!). It lets me insert any PDF document and add as many pages as I want. I've used it quite a bit.
I hope that helps!!
~Camille
You can make posters online from this website: http://rasterbator.net/
No download needed, and it's free!