The Very Best Praise

Today after church I checked my FB page and this is what I found:

Mati, Aaron gave you the best compliment I think any music leader could ever receive: "Today in primary when we were singing, I felt like I was drinking a milkshake.". Translation: singing time is as good as ice cream. Wow. That's high praise.

What a great day!  I taught the last verse of The Spirit of God.  I will have the picture of that up soon.  I have spent the afternoon working on my pioneer dress (we are having a pioneer Christmas for the ward party).

The Spirit of God

My primary president has been asking me to teach this song since last year about this time.  I feel bad that it took this long.  We didn't work it into the primary program so it had to wait until that was over.  It turns out that I wish I had listened to her and taught it right away.  The kids still aren't great with Shine On, but they picked this up so fast they sounded program ready by the end of singing time!  Sometimes the kids really do such a great job that I am speechless and amazed at how quickly they fill the room with the spirit.
I had a lot of opinions back and forth about the "Hosanna" bit.  I decided to go for it after my president and I talked about the little kids who couldn't read and would be able to use it for the time being to put that word together in their head.  In a few weeks, the hose and Anna will be replaced with the word and pictures of angels. 

I would like to highly recommend teaching this song because it was so popular right away and the kids sang their hearts out.  The truth is though, what I recommend is listening to the primary president when she feels that a song needs to be taught.  This has been an amazing teaching experience for me.

Shine On

I really love this song.  I have loved it since I was a little girl.  I like the image of holding my light in my hand for all to see.  I started teaching this song about the middle of October.  The first thing I noticed is that the notes are a lot higher than I remembered.  I don't have a super high voice anymore and it's hard to hit the notes.  The second thing was the kids seemed to struggle with it.  Two weeks ago I used our CTR beanbag and we played the game where one child waits outside while another hides the beanbag in the room, then the kids sing louder or softer to help them find the beanbag.  That gave us a lot of repetition with the song and the kids are singing it better.  I want to include it with our Christmas songs for Sacrament meeting so that all our songs are themed around light.
One of the teachers said they needed more words on the cards.  More words got me thinking, so when I went to do The Spirit of God last week, I went with a poster.