He Sent His Son: Q & A

"He Sent His Son" pg 34, is a personal favorite primary song of mine, but I feel for the pianists because it is not an easy song to play, strange rhythms and pauses.  Anyway, still I love it.

No big surprise, this song is all about Questions and Answers

So I made a Q and A practice session:  (it took me 3 weeks to notice I'd drawn the question marks backwards!  And I'm an english major - I was pretty humiliated)

 Each set of Q and A's has pictures to help the kids remember, and I used corresponding colors.  I used these in various ways to help the kids remember the song:

1) Hand them out randomly and tell the kids to put them in order, but they have to do it totally SILENT!  This is tough but we went through it together to see if it was right.

2)  Give the questions out to some kids up front, and then give answers to kids in the audience.  The questions have to go find their answer partners and bring them up to the front.

3) Give Questions to one side of the room, Answers to the other, let them sing back and forth.


One other important note for the kids they liked was to point out that when the song say "rise with living breath" that it is a clue to what they should do with their voices.  Take a big breath and rise with the song.  Then we practice holding the long note and see if they can stretch it a long time before the next phrase.  They really like doing it that way and it fills the gap that happens if they just cut the note off too early.