Find my most current year’s CD HERE.
Every year for Christmas, our primary hands out a primary music CD as our Christmas gift. It contains all of next year’s program songs plus an extra 2 songs for each month (36 songs total – 3 songs per month).
I’ve gone through the 2017 outline (find my outline summary HERE) and picked songs for each month that go along with that month’s theme (usually I fill the CD with the extra songs found in the outline but I ventured out this year with a lot more unknown songs that still relate to that month’s theme).
I figure a CD with only 8 songs is kind of a waste so I include a few for each month which I will eventually sing in primary as all our opening songs throughout the year.
If you feel CD’s are a thing of the past, I’ve seen other primaries create digital playlists and email them out to families. If you’ve done that for your primary, please feel free to share the details on how you did it! My preference is a CD – simply because it’s a more tangible gift. If families don’t do CD players anymore, the CD’s can always be downloaded onto the computer and put on digital music players.
To start, I create a document that contains all my songs. You can download my document using the button below. I submitted it to my Primary President to get everything approved.
For easy viewing, below is my song list (I chose When He Comes Again for April, and Every Star is Different for July as my “your choice” songs and Dare to Do Right for March’s song to include in a medley with Stand for the Right since we learned that song last year):
Here’s my 2017 Primary Music CD List:
January
1. As a Child of God 2017 outline
2. I Know My Father Lives p. 5
3. I Will Be Valiant p. 162
February
4. Choose the Right hymn #239
5. I Need My Heavenly Father p. 18
6. Hum Your Favorite Hymn p. 152
March
7. Dare to Do Right p. 158
8. Choose the Right Way p. 160
9. I Pledge Myself to Love the Right p. 161
April
10. When He Comes Again p. 82
11. Jesus Said Love Everyone p. 61
12. Help Us, O God, to Understand p. 73
May
13. When I Am Baptized p. 103
14. Faith p. 96
15. Repentance p. 98
June
16. Nephi’s Courage p. 120
17. The Word of Wisdom p. 154
18. I Want to Live the Gospel p. 148
July
19. Every Star is Different p. 142
20. The Wise Man and the Foolish Man p. 281
21. I Believe in Being Honest p. 149
August
22. I’m Trying to Be like Jesus p. 78
23. Remember the Sabbath Day p. 155
24. The Chapel Doors p. 156
September
25. Keep the Commandments p. 146
26. Kindness Begins with Me p. 145
27. Quickly I’ll Obey p. 197
October
28. The Priesthood is Restored p. 89
29. Love Is Spoken Here p. 190
30. A Young Man Prepared p. 166
November
31. The Things I Do p. 170
32. We’ll Bring the World His Truth p. 172
33. Called to Serve p. 174
December
34. Jesus Once was a Little Child p. 55
35. Picture a Christmas p. 50
36. Once within a Lowly Stable p. 41
Once approved, I created a playlist using iTunes with these songs. I own all the Primary Songs on CD which I’ve uploaded to iTunes. But if you don’t own the CD, you can download all the songs in the Primary Songbook HERE, Choose the Right can be found HERE and As a Child of God can be found HERE (make sure when you download, you select “Vocals and Music”). **Make sure you allow plug-ins from LDS.org as a browser settings or you won’t be able to view/download the music.
I bought CD-R’s and jewel cases from Amazon:
(note, these aren’t the cheapest that Amazon sells but I prefer the Sony brand compared to the no-name. For some reason, it makes for easier burning and I have less “non-usable” cd’s – just my experience!)
Then I started burning {a million} CD’s! Once burned, I simply took a Sharpie marker and wrote “2017 Primary Songs” on the actual CD. I did take a few random CD’s and put them in my CD player to make sure they burned correctly.
We give one CD per primary family. For our Primary it’s about 30 so I’ve burned 35 to have as a few extras to keep in the cupboard just in case we have move-ins, someone loses theirs, or sometimes a few families ask if they can have another copy, etc.
For a 2017 Primary Music CD cover, I created this…
You can download the document below along with a blank one without the song list (just in case your songs are different than mine). To use the blank one, I suggest typing up a list that looks similar to mine (the font I used it just Times New Roman, font size 9), trimming your list so it will fit within the blank square space and taping it on. When you make photo copies, you will never know that you literally copied and pasted.
UPDATE: I was asked for a Spanish cover that you can also access
I do like the black and white cover only because I can make free copies at the library. I also tell the kids they are welcome to color their CD cover to make it more personalized. The artwork I chose is from LDS.org found HERE.
Once I have my copies made, I cut around on the black lines with the exception of down the middle. I fold it there and simply slide it into the cd jewel case. The size, once cut out, measures 5 inches and 5.5 centimeters both across and down, making it a perfect square.
I then tie on Christmas ribbon and attach a treat of some sort for each child (we’ve done ring pops, tootsie roll suckers and Now & Laters, etc.). A family with 4 nursery/primary aged kids would receive one CD tied with 4 treats. I also attach a tag (signed by our ward’s primary name in the space provided):
I hole punch the top and slide it onto a ribbon.
Find my previous years’ finished products all HERE. Our primary president offered to package them so I don’t have photos of the finished product this year.
We’ll pass these out Christmas day (or maybe the Sunday before since Christmas lands on Sunday and we won’t have primary that day) and deliver them to the kids who are not/less active.
And that’s that. Pretty simple and nothin’ fancy but if you know me, you should expect that ;).
Another option instead of doing a CD is a DVD. They would be similar to the lesson I did HERE for our 2016 Program Showcase, but using 2017 video flip charts.
These printables are filed on my Resource Library page under Category Title > CD > 2017.
17 thoughts on “2017 Primary Music CD”
Thank you! This saved me so much time last year, so I was excited to see it already up for 2017!
Thank you!! We put together a slightly different list but love the idea of having three songs per month. I'm so excited about handing these out this year.
Thank you!!! I'm adding in the Articles of Faith and Books in the (insert scripture canon) to ours. As a new chorister and recovering procrastinator, I visit your page daily and just am so grateful to you!
This maybe silly but how do you edit the pdf? Thanks
Hi Anneski,
You can't edit a PDF unless you know Photoshop – the only way is to use my blank copy and print it out. Then create a new document (in Word or something similar) and type up your information so it would fit inside the blank box on the CD cover. Print out your list then cut it out and physically tape it inside the blank box on the cover. Once you make photo copies, you'll never know there was tape there.
I hope that helps!
~Camille
Camille! I love you! You are an inspiration! Thank you for all of your work and effort!! We are going to do the Dare to Do Right Medley as well. Do you know where I can get the mp3 of that, or sound recording? I have the sheet music, but I want to put it on the CD for the kids. Are you including a recording of that on your CD?
Hi Alicia!
My original thought was to just not put the medley on the CD…call me a simpleton (or lazy!). But if I can find a recording, that may be a good idea – I just would hate to infringe on copyright so I really try to say with the music I can find on LDS.org. If I ever find one, I'll post it.
~Camille
Ok. Awesome. I'll keep looking too. I couldn't find any recording of it either. Good luck! And thanks again for everything!!!
I found a recording of the medley of Stand for the Right and Dare to Do Right. Hope it helps! http://texansusan.com/children.html You just click on the green musical note next to the song to hear it.
Hi The Doutts!
Too bad, I just burned all my CD's but thank you for the link! Hopefully it will be able to help someone else out!
~Camille
When I click "here" for as a child of God" it just takes me to a blank lds.org page. I have found it before but they speak the words and not sing it. Do you have a link where they actually sing the song? Thank you!
Hi Bonnie,
This is the link:
https://www.lds.org/music/library/music-for-children?lang=eng
It's working for me, sorry you are having trouble. I did have to allow plug-ins from this page in order to view the content. I hope you can get it to work for you.
Otherwise I'd do a site-wide search for the song and see if you can find it there. Or, follow the website above:
lds.org
music
library
music for children
~Camille
https://www.lds.org/callings/primary/sharing-time-2012?lang=eng
FROM THE 2012 OUTLINE
Bonnie – I had the same problem trying to access the songs at lds.org . I had to change my browser setting (Google Chrome) to include ALL plugins.
Hope this helps.
Camille – Thanks so much for your work on this! It really saved me some time typing and formatting everything myself. I also really appreciate that it's FREE. Really thankful.
MUCHÍSIMAS GRACIAS CAMILLE!! ����
The Spanish cover look AMAZING!! You made more than 200 Spanish Choristers from all over Latin America very happy!!! Tons of love your way!! Merry Christmas!!
Thank you Camillie! As always. You are so wonderful for sharing so much 🙂