I'll Walk with You & Chair Hopping

One of my favorite Primary songs has always been "I'll Walk with You" (p. 140). There wasn't space for it in our program, but I decided to teach it to our kids anyway. Not surprisingly, they love it too. My toddler and preschooler also love it and often request it. It's easy to learn and easy to remember, and it teaches a vital lesson about loving one another.

If you don't walk as most people do,

Some people walk away from you.

But I won't! I won't!

If you don't talk as most people do,

Some people talk and laugh at you.

But I won't! I won't!

I'll walk with you, I'll talk with you;

That's how I'll show my love for you.

Jesus walked away from none;

He gave His love to everyone.

So I will! I will!

Jesus blessed all He could see,

Then turned and said, "Come, follow me,"

And I will! I will!

I will! I will!

I'll walk with you; I'll talk with you;

That's how I'll show my love for you.

In that vein, I love this post at Divine Secrets of a Primary Chorister about children with special needs. As adults, we have long since learned that we should accept and love all people, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, their personalities or seeming lack thereof. But it is still hard sometimes, especially if we don't always know how best to communicate with them or, if we're asked to, how to teach them. What Primary leader hasn't been in a Primary room with "that one kid" who just can't sit still? Sometimes it's a discipline problem, and sometimes the child physically cannot stay calm or keep from being a distraction to others, unless he or she has some help from loving and caring adults.

Back to the song. When I first taught it to the kids, we talked about being kind to everyone, regardless of whether they are able-bodied or not, clever or slower to learn, funny or annoying. It's easy to put labels on people, but once we get to know them we can learn to love them. We don't have to be best friends with everyone--but there's never any reason to be unkind to anyone.

My favorite way to sing this song is Chair Hopping, an idea which I think I found at Sugar Doodle. Chair Hopping works great for any song that repeats the same word or words several times--the first time we tried it was with "The Church of Jesus Christ," which repeats "I" and "I'll" several times. It also works with "I'm Trying to be Like Jesus," which repeats "I" and "I'm."

"I'll Walk with You" uses the words "I" and "you" over and over. So every time we sang the words "I" or "you," the kids would move chairs. To do this, make sure you have an extra chair at the end of each row. You can do either everyone goes left to right, then right to left; or everyone goes toward the aisle, then away from the aisle. The key is of course that everyone in a row should be moving in the same direction at the same time, or you will quickly have a dogpile! Senior Primary kids are great at this because they are disciplined enough and having enough fun with it to make it work perfectly.

As you sing, the first time a key word appears (in this case "If YOU don't walk...") the kids all move in the same direction so they're on an entirely different chair. The next time a key word appears ("some people walk away from YOU") they move back to the chair they started in. So it goes left, right, left, right, etc.

If YOU don't walk as most people do, some people walk away from YOU, but I won't! I won't! If YOU don't talk as most people do...etc. etc.

This game is really fun and everyone gets into it, even the teachers. It gets our blood moving and it makes us pay attention to the words...not to mention helps us remember the words in the future because we have been using our bodies along with our brains.

(Something to think about, of course, is that if you do have a child or children with special needs that impact mobility, this might not be the best activity for your Primary, unless you can think of ways to modify it that everyone is comfortable with.)

Chair Hopping is a bit much for the Junior Primary, so instead, I have them sing the song standing, and every time a key word appears they step from side to side while holding hands; or they can alternate standing up and sitting down when a key word appears.

Side note--we realized quickly that we should only move chairs on "I" and "you," NOT on "I'll," because moving on "I'll" is practically impossible since it's right next to "you." ("I won't! I won't! I'll walk with you, I'll talk with you...") Talk about dogpiles.

Lesson learned for me: I try to remind myself in difficult moments, if it seems like no one is absorbing anything: Love your kids (even if it takes some work...) and they will love you! (even if it takes some time.)

Keep the Beat - simplified

For the second week of August, we reviewed the first and second verses of "Did Jesus Really Live Again?" with a technique I found on Divine Secrets of a Primary Chorister: Keep the Beat. (Good for reviewing songs and also good for introducing songs.)

It's common knowledge and scientific fact that the more parts of our brains we use while learning, the better our brains retain the learned knowledge--hence the popularity of mnemonic devices in memorization. Rhymes, music, and rhythms make it especially easy to memorize words. We already have rhymes and music on our side when learning Primary songs; adding rhythms just locks the words even tighter into our brains.

Keep the Beat is especially good for teaching more boisterous songs like "To Be a Pioneer"--in fact, when I taught that one for Pioneer Day, we did use Keep the Beat, but that's a topic for another post. Anyway, I thought it could also be useful even in more reverent songs like "Did Jesus Really Live Again?"--but instead of making it complicated (which I will detail in the "To Be a Pioneer" post, yet to be written...), I made it as simple as possible. Junior Primary was especially simple, and Senior Primary was a little more advanced.

Junior Primary:

I divided the kids into two groups and assigned a 4-count beat to each group. The group on the left had lap-clap-lap-clap ("lap" being slapping their hands on their laps); the group on the right had lap-lap-clap-clap. It sounds really basic but it was more than enough for the majority of these kids--the bulk of our Junior Primary are 3, 4, and 5 years old.

Then I did a variation on the Teachers vs. Kids theme of the previous week, by having the 2 halves of the room each sing a line in turn. Left side of the room sang 1st line, right side of the room sang 2nd line, left side sang 3rd line, etc. And of course we added the beats. The left side sang their lines with lap-clap-lap-clap (done twice for each line). The right side sang their lines with lap-lap-clap-clap. It was great and everyone got into it.

Another note: most of the lines of this song begin on the upbeat, and we didn't clap until the downbeat. So that gave us a chance to talk about upbeats and downbeats.

Once we had done that a few times, I had everyone sing every line and do the corresponding beat for that line--two 4-count beats for each line. To wit:

(lap-clap-lap-clap) Did Jesus really live again?

(lap-lap-clap-clap) Yes, when the third day came.

(lap-clap-lap-clap) He wakened and He left the tomb;

(lap-lap-clap-clap) He called Mary's name.

We did it a few more times until they really had the first 2 verses.

With the remaining time, once they had settled down from all the clapping and slapping, I explained that the third verse was an especially reverent verse because it talked about the nail prints in Jesus's hands. We reviewed the ASL sign for "Jesus" and talked about how it represents the nail prints. Then I had them touch their side as we did the line "and a spear wound in His side." Then we asked the question again: Did Jesus really live again after He had died? And the answer is not just "Yes" but "OH yes--and so shall I." We sang it a couple of times through (no beats) until they had it.

Senior Primary:

I divided the kids into two groups and picked a leader for each group. Each group then had 2 minutes to come up with a 4-count beat--and I asked that it not be too complicated. So our pianist played "...Live Again" for 2 minutes while the groups auditioned to their respective group leaders. When the 2 minutes was up, I invited the 2 group leaders to come up and demonstrate their 4-count beat to the whole room.

Then I did a variation on the Teachers vs. Kids theme of the previous week, by having the 2 halves of the room each sing a line in turn. Left side of the room sang 1st line, right side of the room sang 2nd line, left side sang 3rd line, etc. And of course we added the beats. The left side sang their lines with their particular 4-count beat (done twice for each line). The right side sang their lines with their 4-count beat.

Again, I talked about upbeats and downbeats, going a little more into detail with the older kids than I had with the younger kids and making it more of an interactive discussion.

Once we had done that a few times, I had the group leaders come up again so they could help demonstrate their beats. I had everyone sing the entire song, alternating the beats again, but this time everyone had to sing each line and do the corresponding beat, even if it was the opposing group's beat. Since I have no idea whether I explained that correctly, here's a breakdown--remember, each line has a 4-count beat done twice.

Beat 1. Did Jesus really live again?

Beat 2. Yes, when the third day came.

Beat 1. He wakened and He left the tomb;

Beat 2. He called Mary's name.

It was tricky...especially because the kids had come up with fancy beats! I knew that they would do complicated beats despite my instructions--that's why I only had them sing in 2 groups and do 2 beats, because 4 groups and 4 beats would have been a little too much. Examples of beats these kids have come up with:

Lap-clap-snap-stomp

Stomp-bam (right fist hits left side of chest)-snap-snap

Tap head-tap shoulders-snap-clap

Clap-snap-stomp-stomp

For verse 3, I did the same as I had with the junior kids, letting them calm down and then talking about the 3rd verse before learning it and singing it (without beats).

As complicated as it was to explain on a blog post just now, it was really not very complicated at all to explain in person or to do. And, no bulky visual aids to cart around church--even better!

Did Jesus Really Live Again?

The song we chose for August is "Did Jesus Really Live Again?" (p. 64). It's short and simple and to the point, and very easy to teach.

To introduce the song, I talked about various miracles that Jesus did (the topic for August is miracles), and showed pictures from the Gospel Art Kit--Jesus healing the lepers, raising Lazarus and Jairus's daughter from the dead, etc. We talked about miracles He had done and I asked them what the greatest miracle was that He did on the earth. The answer: His suffering, death, and resurrection so that we can all live with Him again someday.

I picked several pictures from the Gospel Art Kit to represent lines from the song: Jesus appearing to Mary, the empty tomb, Jesus showing His hands and feet to the apostles, and the painting "The Second Coming." (If I had had enough ink in my printer I would have found clip-art online so that there was a specific picture for each line.) I invited kids to hold up the pictures as we sang the song. Often when I introduce a song, I talk about the words first. It was easy to concentrate on the lyrics for this song because of its simplicity. Some lines are even in a question-answer format: Did Jesus really live again? Yes! When? When the third day came. What did He do next? He wakened and He left the tomb; He called Mary's name. The second verse is similarly arranged.

Once we had talked about the lyrics, I said we would be dividing up into teachers vs. kids. The teachers sang the first line, the kids sang the second line, teachers sang the third, kids sang the fourth. This way, everyone only had to remember 2 lines at a time, but also got to hear the other lines each time we sang it.

Clearly nothing fancy, but it did the job and the kids learned all the words to the first and second verses in that 20 minutes.

If the Savior Stood Beside Me

It took me 16 years to discover this song. Where was I all that time? It was in the 2008 Primary program (clearly a memorable one for me since I can't recall hearing this song before 2009...) and it was actually first published in the Friend magazine when I was a "Merrie Miss" (when they used to have Merrie Misses). Yet somehow I missed it. Here is a version by a Young Women choir performing at a general Young Women meeting a few years ago.

I prefer to have my own Primary kids sing this song at a much faster tempo so that it is not quite so "dirge-y." But I still love this video. I love looking at all those girls' faces--I remember so clearly being that age and all the struggles that come with being a teenager. You alternate feeling self-conscious and confident, awkward and flirty; depressed one day, sure of your own worth the next. Definitely a roller-coaster.

Primary kids are so innocent--for the most part, they haven't yet been exposed to the barrage of the world that teenagers contend with every day, and they haven't yet made the same mistakes or learned the same lessons. But I still see innocence in the faces of these beautiful young women. They constantly struggle to stand apart from the crowd (whether they want to or not); they make mistakes and sorrow over them. There can still be innocence there, no matter what they have seen or said or done, because even if they have made wrong choices, they know how to repent; and if they do repent, that sorrow is mercifully washed away. I knew those feelings as a teenager too. I'm sure if I had heard this song back then, I would have wept just as I did the first time I heard this song as an adult. He is always near us, and He does watch over us.

Go here to learn more about the song--written by the prolific Sally DeFord--and find a variety of arrangements, as well as additional verses not previously published.

The score of this particular version (the one used in the video) is a bit fancy for the Primary crowd, but it has the key change in the third verse and again in the fourth verse, which makes a fabulous impact. I wonder if I could figure out how to simplify that for my Primary pianist so that we could utilize the final key change. Sounds complicated. But I love it.

First post.

I've been a Primary chorister for a little over a year now and realized I have almost zero record of the activities I've done for music time. That's 50+ activities, the details of which are lodged in some dusty corner of my hippocampus. So this blog is an attempt to record what I can remember having done in the past and what I'll do in the future--hopefully it will be helpful to me if I am lucky enough to keep this calling for a few more years or to get this calling again;and maybe even helpful to other struggling choristers someday.

I gritted my teeth and winced a little when I was asked to serve as the Primary (kids aged 3-11) music director early last summer. I had not taught music to a large room full of children before. I had a large and complex performance to prepare the kids for and many songs to teach them. Everyone I talked to who had done the job assured me that it was the best possible job, that it was a complete blessing and that I would love it. I rolled my eyes (when they weren't looking, of course) about a hundred times.

So, big surprise, it turns out that I absolutely do love teaching music to Primary kids and thinking about Primary songs all week long, coming up with games and ways to teach the kids music and concepts and to show them my love for them and Heavenly Father's love for them. I needed this job and the perspective it would give me. Blessings have been poured out on me and on my family because of it. Spending so much time with kids who are older than my kids (who are both nursery age) has triggered ideas, thoughts, emotions, and inspiration about how to mother my own children, what to teach them and when. I guess I have to thank the parents of the Primary kids for that. These kids are smart and faithful, fun-loving and well-behaved. They soak up knowledge like loud, gangly little sponges. I am amazed at how fast they learn and how much they love to learn.

I guess I should keep this experience in mind the next time I am asked to do something I am completely sure I have no capacity to do.