by Nicole Soh / I WONDER WHEN HE COMES AGAIN
I taught this song today and I thought I'd share what I did. There were about
6-8 of the children who already knew it so that helped, but they were all
singing the first verse by the end of the 15 minute singing time.
I made up little cards (about 4 x 5) and drew pictures on them to go with the
phrases:
*question mark (I wonder?)
*an angel
*snow covered hill (drew the hill outline with dusty blue pen then colored the
sky so the ground was still white)
*spring scene (green grass, flowers, blue sky)
*grey sky with stars, one bigger and brighter
*sun/moon (I split the page with a diagonal line and put one in each corner)
*bird in a nest with music notes
*picture of Christ with children (VERY rough sketch, I would have preferred
using one of the primary pictures from the library)
*the words "suffer them to come to me."
First I started by asking if the children ever thought about what it would be
like when the Savior comes back to earth. Day? Night? Winter? Summer? Raining?
Then I started adding in ideas from the song...."do you think all the birds will
burst into song?", "do you think there'll be a bright star in the sky", etc.
After we talked about it for a few minutes I sang the song for them. I could see
some of the children mouthing the words along with me, which is always a good
sign! Then I asked them what things the song wondered about. As they remembered
phrases "herald angels", etc, I'd put the card up, in order. They were able to
remember most of the things in the song. Then I repeated the words to the
song all the way through, then phrase-by-phrase having the kids repeat after me.
After that we sang it through two times. Nearly all the kids sang (except the
few who never do anyway) and it sounded really good! I ran out of time, so next
week we are going to do it again using an idea from this list; mixing up the
order of the cards and making someone put them right while we all sing.