Ever heard of March Madness? The NCAA basketball tournament that takes place every year in March? No worries if not! This singing time MUSIC MADNESS puts a spin on a tournament centered on primary songs instead of basketball teams! Primary songs compete to be the final song in the tournament!
If basketball isn’t your style, no worries – the only correlation is the bracket setup! It’s super fun and super simple – perfect for singing or reviewing any 8 songs! Esther shared her idea HERE and I love it!
Her poster board is amazing! But if you want to keep things even easier, utilize the good ol’ board! I did create this little music madness header to jazz things up a bit but it’s totally optional! The clip art is from Susan Fitch HERE.
Access my printables at my Resource Library. Instructions for accessing my Resource Library are found at the bottom of this post.
Choose your Competitors
You need 8 songs to compete against each other! I chose the 3 songs we have learned this year for our primary program, April’s song we will learn next month, 2 songs relating to General Conference in a few weeks, and 2 other well-known favorites.
Here’s my list (to be written on the bracket in this order!):
- I Know My Father Lives p. 5
- Latter-day Prophets p. 134
- Follow the Prophet p. 110
- Living Prophets Song (sung to the tune of The Books in the Book of Mormon p. 119) more details HERE
- Help Me, Dear Father p. 99
- I Am a Child of God p. 2
- Redeemer of Israel hymn #6
- Do As I’m Doing p. 276
Once you have your songs determined, you need to create your bracket. Here’s what you need to draw on the board:
This is also in my Resource Library as a 20×30 poster. If you think you’d use this every year, it might be worth printing and laminating so you can re-use it. Or don’t laminate and add pieces of paper with the songs (similar to Esther’s poster above). Just make sure you have 2 of each song for the winner to move on.
But drawing it all out is pretty simple and no storage required ;). Once you have your songs chosen and your bracket drawn, add in your 8 competing songs and game on!
Music Madness Activity
Begin round 1 with songs 1 and 2. These songs for me are I Know My Father Lives and Latter-day Prophets.
Have the children vote on their favorite. On Esther’s thread, I LOVE how Antoinette did her voting:
… vote with either a jump shot or a low dribble. So basically standing and sitting. I had two male teachers be the referees, so they were in charge of counting and determining the winning song. So fun!
But you can easily have kids raise their hands instead. The song with the most votes moves on in the bracket. Write the name of the winning song on the winning line. Then sing the LOSING song!
Continue round 1 with lines 3 & 4, 5 & 6 and 7 & 8 so you have 4 winners and have sung the 4 losing songs. Round 2 consists of 2 winners, having sung 2 losing songs. And then the final round determines your winner! Sing the winning song!
Additional Movement
If you want a little more music madness, add some additional movement as you sing your songs! Here’s what I suggest with the songs I have listed above:
- I Know My Father Lives: use the chart HERE and either play the bell chords or don’t sing the words on each page
- Latter-day Prophets: use actions HERE
- Follow the Prophet: use chorus actions HERE
- Living Prophets Song: pass out a picture of each man and put them in order as the name is sung (these ones HERE are printer friendly)
- Help Me, Dear Father: raise hands when you sing “freely forgive” and “truly repent” or shake eggs to the rhythm
- I Am a Child of God: fold arms
- Redeemer of Israel: show the sing along video from the Gospel for Kids app (more details HERE) or pass out hymn books and sing from them (non-readers can just hold a book!)
- Do As I’m Doing: do basketball actions like dribbling and jump shots
It might be a long shot {pun totally intended!} but I think Do As I’m Doing will win in my primary! If you use this lesson plan, in the comments let me know what songs you sing and what song wins!
Make sure to check out all my other review activities HERE.
Check out this quick tutorial video for accessing the Resource Library:
These printables are filed on my Resource Library page under Category Title > Music Madness.
6 thoughts on “Singing Time Music Madness”
This was a HUGE hit with our primary kiddos! I used a mini basketball hoop and ball and it kept things so fun!
What a great idea … to bring in a hoop and ball!
So cute! I am thinking to do the same, or a garbage can and small ball. How did you incorporate it? I was thinking to have balls to determine how we would sing a song… I’d love any ideas you may be willing to share!
Thanks!
Bringing balls with the names of songs or different ways to sing is such a great idea – the ball that lands in the basket is the song that gets sung or a fun way to sing the song. Love it!!
~Caille
We’ve been doing this for Christmas each week in Senior primary. The first week we sang each song (because they didn’t know several) and then voted by raising hands. This week we were down to 8 songs and changed up the voting. One time I told them I’d know their favorite by which one was the softest. We started the song and everyone sang so loud I knew it was the loser. Then we sang the next song and it was mostly quiet except a few strong singing kids. So fun. Then we did which song they look the happiest would win- such fake happy smiles and then oh what morose sad crying faces through Mary’s lullaby. I’ve never laughed so hard! My kids said it was their favorite primary day ever! And then we voted by loudest song, and then because we were out of time a raise of hands again. So much fun!
That’s a great idea, thanks for sharing!!
~Camille