Easter Singing 2013

Because the theme and the song of this month emphasize Jesus Christ as our Savior, my mind has been turned toward how I could testify of Him.  Easter proved itself a wonderful opportunity to finish up the month with a strong testimony of the Savior and His Resurrection.  A beautiful spring morning helped me ease my way into singing time, too.  We talked about how the earth is coming alive and what we can see that shows us.

We hunted for Easter eggs with symbols of life in them.  Some applied to the Savior and some applied to Spring.   I matched each symbol with a song in the songbook.  We sang each song a couple of times with actions or signs and then used the songs for a game.

Symbols and their Songs:
  •  Jesus Has Risen (pg. 70) - an empty egg
    •  I signed power words: Jesus, risen, friend, joy, hearts, lives, praises, Savior, divine)
  •  To Think About Jesus (pg 71) - a cross (I made it out of two twigs tied with string)
    • invited 2-3 children to sit up front and show the other children how to sit reverently during the sacrament
  • Popcorn Popping (pg 242) - a couple of popped kernels
    • traditional actions 
    • the children just sang "pop" to the tune, too, and that was fun
  • In the Leafy Treetops (pg. 240) - a tiny tree (mine was an evergreen but the kids didn't notice)
    • traditional actions
  • Birds in A Tree (pg 241) - a bird
    • traditional actions noted in songbook
      • The previous chorister chose three children to come up and be uncracked eggs in a nest, one child to be the father, and one child to be the mother.  They then acted out the verses to the song.  It's mostly in the second verse that they act it out but it's so short anyway that it's fun.

I packed Easter eggs with the symbols.

Here are the palm leaves I used for "Hosanna".
http://www.dltk-bible.com/crafts/mpalm.htm

We then played hide the Easter egg.  One person exited the room (the child who was going to find the egg) while another child hid it.  As soon as it was hidden the child finding the egg re-entered the room.  The primary children then sang "If the Savior Stood Beside Me" loudly or softly, depending on how close or far away the finding-child was to the egg.  As soon as the egg was found the child got to peek inside for the symbol.  Whichever song matched the symbol, we sang it a couple of fun times, and then used that song to find the next egg.  It continued until all the eggs were hid and found.  I didn't realize it at the time but the empty egg was a smaller blue egg and turned out unattractive to the children, so it ended up being chosen last.  Because of this the game ended on a reverent note, really beautifully, with "Jesus Has Risen".  It turned out a great segway into an ending testimony of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

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