New and refurbished ideas for LDS Primary Music Leaders (a.k.a. Primary Choristers)

Saturday, February 25, 2012

CTR GAME


My husband, who by the way is a great support to me and my calling and sings his BIG ol’ heart out in Primary every Sunday, teaches the CTR 4 class this year.  One day as I was perusing through his “Primary 2: Choose the Right A” manual for the year I came upon this black and white CTR game board in lesson 14.  Well, that just turned on the light bulb in my head with the whole CTR theme for this year and of course I thought I would have to somehow implement this into singing time.  The game is a take off from the game Chutes and Ladders.

The color person in me just did not like the plain ol’ black and white version, so I decided to recreate it in living color.  I printed it out in a poster format in Adobe Reader by selecting in my print options “Tile all pages” under “Page Scaling”.  I’m a Mac person so this is how it works for me, but I would imagine Adobe Reader should have the same print option for the PC version.  Just to give you an idea, below is an image of the print screen so you can see where the option is for doing a poster.  Make sure you have the box checked for “Cut Marks”.  That will help you know where to cut off the excess edges.  I printed it at 250%, which printed it out on 9 pages and which gave me about a poster board size game board.  Depending on your printer, you may have to adjust the percentage until you get the size you want.  You can print it smaller or larger depending on your preference.  I printed mine on cardstock, cut off the edges and then butted them up to each other and taped them together on the backside using packaging tape.  This way it was sturdy for my liking yet I could fold it up.  You could print on paper and mount on poster board or just use paper if you prefer.

Print Screen
ITEMS NEEDED TO PLAY THE GAME:
  • CTR Game Board
  • 1-2 Magnetic Game Tokens
  • Dice or Spinner (I picked up a set of 2.5" sized dice from the Dollar Tree store.)
  • CTR Sticks or CTR Game Cards or Slips of paper with questions & Container
  • Key Sheet for Questions (Word docx or PDF)
  • Song Visual Aids (optional)
  • Magnets

 
PREPARATION:
Make the CTR Game Board as mentioned above.
Prepare questions by writing them on the back of the laminated CTR Shields on the stick (found here in this post) or just make the CTR Shields without the stick for cards by using either a dry erase marker (may rub off if handled too much) or those wet erase markers like Expo Vis-à-Vis markers that you use to write on transparencies (won’t rub off easily but writing can be cleaned off with a damp paper towel or cloth.)  I’m planning on just numbering the back of the sticks and referring to my question key sheet to ask the questions.  More simple.  Place the sticks in a container to pick from.   If you have already made and used the CTR sticks for other activities, this is another way to reuse something you already have by using them for the children to pick the questions from.  If you don’t have or want to use the CTR Sticks/Shields, you could write or print and cut out the questions and place them in a container to choose from. 

HOW TO PLAY THE GAME:
I don’t split into teams for my JR since they are too young to handle competition, but I do on a rare occasion for my SR.  They are able to handle and do enjoy a friendly competition once in a while.  I have a lot of boys and that just seems to work for them in keeping their interest.

Take turns having a child come up and pick one of the CTR questions for the group/team to answer.  After they answer the question, let the person who answered the question correctly roll the dice to see how many spaces to move, sing the song if applicable.  If they don’t know the answer, give them a chance to discover the answer while the Primary sings the song and then let them answer after singing the song.  If they give the correct answer before you sing the song, tell them we’ll sing the song to check and see if they got the answer right.  Ohhhhh, we music leaders have tricks up our sleeves to get that singing in one-way or the other.  If they land on a CTR shield with a ladder, they get to move their game token up to the space at the top of the ladder.  If they land on a Wrong Choice space, they slide down to the space at the end of the slide or chute.  Obviously, they win when they reach the end at the Big CTR space.

CTR Poster
I plan on starting with having them roll one die each turn and adding a second one if needed to help speed the movement on the game so we hopefully can finish the game before the time is up.  Some questions are WRONG CHOICES! and they will have to roll the dice to see how many spaces they have to move backwards.  Some questions are not song questions so the team has a chance to answer it, if they can’t, the other team has a chance to answer and take the move. 

The game board and questions files are attached.  The links are above in the “Items needed to play the game” section.  I’ve chosen songs to sing that I would like to review with my Primary.  Feel free to adapt to the songs and questions you may want to review with your Primary.

Hope you have fun playingChoose the Right game.

15 comments:

  1. I love your site and thank you so much. I have a question because I'm still new at this. Do your primary children have all these songs memorized or do you get out words for each of these different songs when you sing them?

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  2. JuLee, No, my primary kids do not have the songs memorized right off the bat. What a dream that would be. ;-) I do try to focus them learning the song of the month, but I also try and incorporate other songs to teach or review in the month so they don't get bored and have more of a variety. The first year I did this calling I tried to push hard in getting them to get the words memorized right away, but soon learned it was seeming more like work instead of a joy to sing for the children and I still had to do the crunch time practice before the program, so I have relaxed a little. After teaching the monthly song, I will use the flip charts whenever we sing, since we don't always sing every song each week, to help keep it fresh in their minds and to help the teachers and over time with the repetitive singing the children, each at their own pace, start getting the song down. As they pick up more and more of the song, I will start weening them from the visual aids in different ways like covering some of the words up to help force them in concentrating on what they should be singing and when it looks like a good portion have the song down, I will stop using the visual aids. This seems, at least for my primary, to make it easier for the children come program practice crunch time in getting the songs down. I'm sure other Primary Music Leaders may do it differently or may not even use many visuals at all. I am a visual person and I do have many children that are as well, so this helps with my Primary. As you work with your children, you will start seeing what works and what doesn't with them.

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    1. Oh, Thank you! This makes so much more sense. Thank you for writing such a wonderful explanation and for the great ideas for teaching the singing. You are helping me so much!

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  3. THanks so much! I was wondering what to leave to do next week while I"m out of town.

    XO
    S

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  4. Love love love your site! Thank you for all of the great ideas! I was wondering what kind of questions you are using... Scenarios, scriptures, song trivia? Again, thank you for your hard work and for being willing to share your creativity with us!

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    1. Melissa, Thanks for the compliment. The questions key sheet I am using are listed under "Items needed to play the game". There is a Word document or a PDF file you can download. If you download the Word doc, it will probably download into your download folder so you will need to go there to open up the file. Good luck!

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    2. Thanks so much! I will probably use this in the next couple of weeks!

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  5. You have such wonderful ideas! Thank you for sharing your hard work with us! I just wanted to mention that you could also use regular washable markers and it will wipe right off with a wet paper towel. I do this all the time and it works like a charm!

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  6. You have NO IDEA how perfect this idea is for me! I have been dealing with sick kids all week and haven't been able to spend the time I usually do preparing for singing time. I just happen to ALREADY HAVE this poster sitting in my closet from when I taught primary a few years ago, plus I already have the CTR sticks made up. You seriously must have made this post JUST FOR ME! Thanks a million! You are fabulous!

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  7. I just did this for Primary today and both Jr and Sr. primary loved it. The boys of Sr. primary my have loved it too much, we had to remind them that church is a reverent place where we can have fun, but still be reverent. Thank you SO much for putting all of this together!!

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  8. Thank you for your wonderful ideas! I appreciate you taking so much time in behalf of other choristers out there whom you don't even know. I love your CTR cheat sheet. I was wondering if you could send me an editable copy. I love it but might need to tweak it slightly to make sure it is consistent with other things I have used. laurenfow@hotmail.com

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  9. Is there any way to print these without going through scrib'd? I don't have fb and finally borrowed my hubby's acct to log in to try and print them and scrib'd then wanted money. It said I could upload, but many of my files are created by others and I figured it was plagiarism to upload something I didn't create. How does that work?

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  10. Just an FYI, I took it to Kinko's and had it enlarged on poster board for $2.

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  11. The dropbox link to the questions doesn't work...do you have a current link?

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  12. Could you update the link to the questions?

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