Thursday, January 15, 2009

Primary Singing Wheel



Preparation:




Make a wheel out of Card board, laminated paper, or the hard board you would have used for a flannel board, but it was really late on a Saturday night and you decided to forgo a flannel board for now and sacrifice it to the Primary Singing Wheel.

A Sweetheart of a husband to cut it out for you


  • Heavy duty foam board to mount the wheel on
  • Colored paper to make it interesting
  • 2 sets of labels to put on the wheel. Ideas for these labels could be: Boys or Girls sing (allow the child to choose), Sing Staccato, Whisper, Face left, right, or back of the room, Become Primary Chorister for a verse (you go sit in the child's chair and let them lead), Go without picture helps, Choose a different song, Teachers sing, Start in the song where you want too, Choose a word to leave out of the song, etc...


I am teaching the children "I lived in Heaven". Our goal in Primary this year is to have the children be "word perfect" on the songs for our Sacrament meeting program. In order to do this, I needed to create something that would allow for the repeated singing of a song without the whole thing getting too boring.


I had a teacher pick a reverent child from their class. The child came to spin the wheel. What ever it landed on, we followed those directions to sing the song. Since the song has three verses, we sang one verse with each spin of the wheel...and continued to sing verse 1, 2, 3 until our time ran out. I held up the visuals prompts with each verse we sang to help them remember.


It was a huge hit. I made the board so I can reuse it for other activities similar to this later on. I also brought an extra set of labels to change out the ones we landed on to give more variety just in case they landed on that piece again.
*Originator: Bits and pieces from to many sources to list that I pieced together
**adapted by The Crazy Chorister

5 comments:

G-mom said...

so creative!!! I love your Ideas

Meredith said...

Thank you for your ideas! I have been racking my brain all month on ways to teach I Lived in Heaven--especially to my junior primary. We have around 50 kids in jr primary alone, 20 of whom are sunbeams. (YIKES!) There are three big sections and I find it very hard to include all three at the same time as I lead. Any ideas? Thanks for sharing!

brenda said...

this was perfect. i hope it's ok i'm checking your blog out - i was just called as the junior promary chorister and i'm scared to death. this wheel thing is a great idea. however, i am a complete moron when it comes to crafts. do you think you could explain to me how to attach the wheel to the foam board so that it will spin?
again - thanks for taking the time to share all of your ideas. you are now my official favorite primary helper web site.

brenda said...

ps - we're having a stake primary meeting where i have to share ideas in getting the kids excited about singing. do you mind if i use this idea for my meeting?

Melanie said...

Brenda, yes..please use all the ideas you want. That's why I do this.

As far as the mounting of the wheel, if I remember right, my husband took a screw, put a washer on it, stuck it through the wheel, put another washer on it, stuck it through the foam board, put another washer on it and then put the nut on that. Let me know if that helps...I can have him explain it better if it doesn't. I too do not have those kind of skills and hence why I have my husband do that kind of stuff.