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

Sunday, December 2, 2012

CHRISTMAS BELLS

YEAH!!!
It's that time of year to pull out those bells or chimes
and what better way to start off with jingle-belling than with the song 
"Christmas Bells" 

This is such an easy yet beautiful song for the children to learn. Split your group in half and have one half sing the first half of the song—the question part—and the other half sings the second part of the song—the answer part.  If you have a large Primary, split your group and the song into four parts. After the groups have learned their part, switch.  After you've learned the song and would like to challenge your older kids, teach them the pretty descant.

Of course, let us not forget this is a song about bells........so have fun singing the song along with your bells or chimes. If you are new and unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, check out this earlier post for an explanation. You can also check out this post for the color key for the Kids Play brand bell set or if you are planning on making your own chime set. If you don't have bells or chimes, use the jingle bells mentioned here in the previous post.

I've attached a flip chart if you want to use as well as a bell chart—actually 2 bell charts. One is made to be printed on 11" x 17" paper. If your printer can't print that large, you could take the file to a copy center and they can print it out for you. I would suggest to print on card stock to make it more durable, but paper is fine too. There will be six sheets, so just butt up side-by-side the two pages that go together and tape on the back. Butting them up instead of overlapping allows you to fold them at the seam. You should end up with three strips.  If you don't want to go to a copy center, I also made a one-sheet pdf version that you can print out into a poster format to the size you want for your Primary.  To do a poster format, you can check out the first link I included in the previous paragraph or click on the "How To Helps" on the tab bar above.  My bell charts are color-coded for the Kids Play bell set. 

Do you remember when you would do a sing-along or karaoke and you would see the dancing dot go across the screen showing you which word to sing next? Well, whenever I use a bell chart, I use my dancing dot stick to help point to each note for the JR kids so they know when to play. Sometimes I have to for the SR as well. I just made my dancing dot with a stick (actually it is a clear, old mini blind stick that I had laying around that was used to open and close the slates on the blind) and glued a big, red plastic, blingy craft jewel on it.   

Now go ring those bells to bring in the Christmas season!






Christmas Bells FC-Nalani

Christmas Bells Bell Chart 8.5x11-Nalani

Christmas Bells Bell Chart 11x17-Nalani

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