Last week I introduced Praise to the Man using my lesson plan HERE. Senior primary went FANTASTIC! They were engaged in the entire activity and really enjoyed matching up and discussing definitions, singing, the whole nine yards!
Junior primary was a different story. They had their rhythm instruments and were pretty much too busy to do anything else. I suppose they got some listening in, but even that was pretty minimal. I’m chalking it up to one of “those” weeks. For those of you struggling with the littles and this song, know that you are not alone!
SO…I’ve decided to push ahead with Senior primary as originally planned, incorporating last week’s lesson plan into this week’s. However, I’m thinking Junior primary needs more movement in order to connect with this song. Instead of re-creating the wheel, I decided to use Sharla Dance’s simple actions that she’s come up with. You can find her actions for the 1st verse and chorus HERE and her 3rd verse actions HERE (the chorus is different for the 3rd verse but I’m going to simplify and only teach the chorus taught with the 1st verse. Jenna put together a video HERE which is exactly what I’ll do).
I think to implement the actions, I’m just going to have the pianist play the song, the teachers and I will sing, and the kids will simply follow my lead, picking up what actions and words they can and I’ll keep the pace slower. If need be I’ll walk through a few of the actions, but I really want to keep that to a minimum. If they just follow me, I think they will stay more engaged. I’ll try to challenge them to have the actions memorized by the end of singing time, maybe encouraging them to try it with their eyes closed or turn face the back wall, etc.
As for Senior primary, I’m going to play 4-Corners with them:
It’s simple and can be used to review any song! You’ll need the visuals I created last week with the words posted on various colors of red, blue, green and yellow paper, posted on the chalkboard in order. Then you’ll divide your primary chairs into 4 “corners” with each section assigned a color (red, blue, green and yellow). I will just hang a blank piece of matching card stock on a wall in each section of the primary. If you have a large primary, I’d recommend just having the kids stay where they are and not creating physical groups of any kind, the kids will just be randomly assigned a phrase of the song to sing.
I pulled out corresponding color cards from my kids’ Candyland game, but really, any cards will do that have the 4 basic colors (Uno, Rook, make your own, etc.).
Before primary, hang the visuals on the bulletin board and assign each corner a color. For the activity, pass out a card to each child. The color they receive is their assigned corner and they are to move to that corner. Once everyone has relocated to the correct corner, each corner will sing the phrase that matches their color. So if they are in the red corner, they will sing all the phrases on the red paper on the board. Then we’ll repeat, assigning the kids a new color, with new groups, a new corner and new phrases to sing. As we repeat, I might turn phrases over so they can’t read them, thus memorizing the song.
If you have combined Jr. and Sr. primary and are struggling, I’d maybe recommend combining both actions and the 4-corners activity. When it’s a corner’s turn to sing, they do the actions (by simply following you) in addition to singing their assigned phrases.
3 thoughts on “4-Corners Review”
Well that was probably my most successful day in primary ever! Junior primary loved the actions and even the sunbeams stayed mostly engaged. Senior primary really responded well too, I handed out uno cards to everyone and then they would stand up when it was there time to sing. After going through the whole song they had to use "Pit" tactics to find a color that they did not have before. I felt like both groups learned the song really well, thanks for pulling these ideas together, what a relief.
LOVED the four corners idea! My senior primary had a great time!
It was so much fun in Jr Primary, that we decided to ask the Sr primary if they wanted to learn the motions also. The vote was about 50-50, so I went ahead and did it with them, and most of them really liked the motions. It works out well since many have siblings in Jr. Primary.