PRIMARY BACK-TO-SCHOOL SINGING KEY SHEET

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BOOK A mini Children's Songbook would be great to use for this. Have a few bookmarks placed in the songbook under some selected songs (or written on the bookmark if you are not using the songbook) and have the child pick one of the bookmarks. Then sing that song. Instead of bookmarks, you could have the child pick their favorite song to sing. Or have the children read the song by saying the words instead of singing.

CALCULATOR Choose a word in a song that is used several times and have the children count how many times that word is sung in the song. Have the JR hold their hand(s) up while they sing and count on their fingers. For SR, at the end of the song, have them hold up the number on their fingers when you ring the bell to see how many are right.

CRAYONS OR MARKERS (set of 8-10 colors) Hold half the colors in one hand and the other half in the other hand. When one hand with the crayons/markers is held up, the children wearing those colors sing while the other children hum, la-la or oooooo and vice-versa with the other handful of colors. Take turns switching between colors. If you prefer, you could just select a few colors for each hand instead of using all the colors.

ERASER(S) "Erase" one or two words from the song by not singing them. Preselect the word(s) in the song you want to omit from singing. If there are 2-3 words to select from, then you could write each of the words on a different eraser and have the child pick one to determine which word to omit. This is a good one for a sign language song; although they would omit singing the word, they would continue doing the sign language.

FLASH CARDS (Directional Singing Bird Cardssee 7/6/12 blog post) Put several of the Directional Singing Bird Cards in a stack and as you flash the cards over, the children sing according to the flash card. You may want to manually sort them in the stack to help control the order for how they sing.

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GLUE Have them "glue" themselves in some pose that they have to hold through the song or for a more reverent song, have them glue their hands together or arms in a folded position.

MAGNETIC LETTERS Have a child pick a letter from the little bag or box you have the magnetic letters in and while singing, they must omit singing each word that begins with the letter that was picked. In preparation for this one, look ahead at the song you have chosen for this activity and select several magnetic letters to put in your container that have several words using those letters in the song. This would mainly be for SR's since this would be a little difficult for the JRs.

NOTEBOOK OF PAPER Pass out a piece of paper to each child from the notebook and have the children snap the paper to certain words, for example for the song "Choose the Right" you could have them snap the paper whenever they sing the words "choose the right", or they could play their piece of paper by holding it in one hand and hitting it with the fingers from the other hand to the beat of the song while they sing.

NOTEPAD & PEN or CHALK or SMALL DRY ERASE BOARD & MARKER Give the notepad and pen, piece of chalk or dry erase board and marker to a child. While singing, randomly stop the song and the child must write what the next word is on the notepad, chalkboard or dry erase board. Pick up singing where you left off and repeat stopping another time or two during the song. Have the child write down each word after each stop and check it after you finish the song or you could have a different child come up each time.

PENCILS Have a pencil for each child to pitch lead or conduct with as you sing. You could let the children keep the pencils afterwards.

PENCIL SHARPENER Sharpen the words in the song by enunciating each word as you sing while slightly exaggerating the mouth.

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RULER Who rules? Boys or Girls? Have a boy and a girl come up front. When you point to the girl with the ruler, the girls sing. When you point to the boy, of course, the boys sing. The girl and boy who represent the teams must of course also be singing to help represent their group. Or have the girls and the boys each sing the song separately to see who rules. Or you could measure the volume by moving the ruler up and down: raising the ruler to increase volume (crescendo), lowering the ruler to reduce volume (decrescendo) and moving it to mid point for normal volume.

SCISSORS Have everyone stand still while singing and as they sing you walk around "cutting out" the non-singers and wigglers by tapping them on the shoulder or head to sit down, but they need to keep singing. For SR I like to make it more challenging and to help prevent the goof-offy kids from wiggling on purpose so they can sit down by telling them that any that get "cut out" get the privilege to come up front and be a mini choir and re-sing the song.

TOY: JUMP ROPE, BALL OR OTHER SMALL TOY = RECESS TIME You will need a bell for this. When the bell rings, the children take a "recess" from singing the words and then when it rings again, they pick up singing the song where the music is. (The music continues to play when they are on "recess", so they have to keep singing it in their heads so they know which word they are on when they start singing again when recess is over and the bell rings.)