Singing time with a twist

My singing time today was crazy! I was greeted at the door by my Primary counselor. She wanted to know if my pianist had gotten hold of me. She hadn't. She wasn't going to be there, had found no one to take her place and I found that there was no one available in our ward to play for Primary (pianists are scarce in our ward).

Any ideas? I play the piano. So the first thing I did was to send my counselor to find my assistant activity day leader to help with the first song. We had been practicing The 4th Article of Faith song in Activity Day and had planned to have the girls teach it to the Primary today. I know that she is capable of leading it at the last minute. She has been teaching it to the girls in our Activity Day Meetings. In the meantime I decided to turn the piano so I could see the children while I sat at the piano and if I had to I could try to do it like a multi-talented music teacher at school... leading, keeping track of all the kids, and playing the piano all at once.

My leader didn't come and music time started. I asked the girls to come up to the front and sing the song through for the Primary while I played it. They did.

At activity day, each girl chose a line of the song and colored a picture to represent the line. After singing the song through, each girl took their visual aid and they said the words, we had the children repeat and then we sang that line. We were about halfway through the song when my very talented and johnny-on-the-spot assistant came. She took over and had the children finish singing by line and then sing the song through a time or two. We then had the girls take stickers and put them on the faces of the children who were singing. They were getting the singing measles.

After we finished that song, I needed to practice with the children for the Mother's Day songs that they will be singing in Sacrament Meeting next Sunday. They already know the melodies for those songs, so we practiced them a capella. I noticed that the children were not consistently doing the actions that we had made up, so I took more singing measles and put them on the faces of the children who were doing the actions. It got all of them doing it.

Singing time was over. Thankfully. And yet, it wasn't really bad at all. The children were well-behaved. The girls did an excellent job teaching the song and my activity day leader took over admirably. It was a crazy day, but a good one nevertheless.