I Will Follow God’s Plan for Me: Which Category? Older Children

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These headings are posted up in the front of the room (My life, My choice, I will).

Around the room are other words from the song.

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I tell the children, “Look at these three categories.  There are words around the room that fit with either the first category, or the second one, or the third one.  As I sing the song, I will tap you on the shoulder.  Go choose one of the words from around the room and bring it up to the front of the room and put it in the category it belongs.”

I start to sing and tap two or three children on the shoulder to go get some words, and bring them to the front of the room to categorize them.  As soon as they have chosen a word and are walking to the front of the room, I tap two or three more children to go and get words.  I continue singing and tapping children on the shoulder until all the words have been chosen.

Once all the words have been placed in a column under the category, I say, “Let’s check it out to see if these words are in the right order.”  I begin to sing the song, pointing to the words as they come in the song.  If there are some out of order, I choose a child to come and rearrange them.  I sing and point again.

Once all the words are in the order of the song, I challenge the children, “You sing all the words that are from around the room.  I will sing all of the big category words.”  We take turns singing.

“Now switch.  You sing the big category words, and I will sing all of the rest of the words.”  We take turns singing.

 

The children who need to work with seeing words to learn will highly benefit from this activity, as will those children who use logic and bringing order.  The visual cues of the different colors will help other children.  The act of letting me sing some of the words (and they only sing them in their head) causes the children to sing those words inside (a strong form of learning a song).

17 Responses

  1. Jen

    Do you post the phrases that don’t fit under a category? Like, “in heaven it began”? Or do you leave those out and they just pick them up?

    Thanks for sharing your talent!

  2. Elaine Peters

    I’m sorry to be lazy, lol. Do you have the word strips to print posted somewhere. Thank you so much for sharing your talents we me. This is a new calling for me and it has been such a blessing to have your support.

    • Sharla Dance

      Dear Elaine,
      So sorry! I was being too efficient and deleted it! Thanks for asking, Sharla

  3. Rebecca

    Sharla, I’m curious if you anticipate reusing this activity or these words? I’m just trying to decide if it’s worth it to me to use paper & colored cardstock & lamination. I love all of your ideas, and understand why there are so many (brain craves variety!). But I personally try to only laminate those things I intend to reuse. If I plan to only use this for one week, I’m considering just printing the words in color on plain paper. Thanks for your insight!

    • Sharla Dance

      When I am teaching just in my ward, I don’t laminate (unless I think we will use this song in a couple of years). I think printing these words on colored paper is great!

  4. Julie Lopez

    Thanks, the kids had fun with this last week. I just have a hard time not making it longer. (:

    • Sharla Dance

      Dear Julie,
      It is tempting but the children actually learn better when we keep each activity to about 5 to 7 minutes, then switch it up. I’d love to hear how things are going! Take care, Sharla

  5. Joy Beckstrand

    I made this for last week and everyone was glued to their seat. Thank you for sharing your amazing teaching methods!

  6. Leslie

    I made a doc. I will post it on “LDS Primary Choristers” Facebook page. 🙂 Search #IWFGPCategoriesGamePDF

  7. Ally

    I have a question, I am getting ready to use this for singing time tomorrow, but I noticed you have all the words that go under the same category the same color… won’t that make it too easy for them to choose the category?

    • Sharla Dance

      Dear Ally, This may be too late, but I purposely did the colors because some of the answers are not obvious (especially the My Choice answers). Because they are gathering the word strips from all over the room, there is enough organization going on in their brains to make it effective. Some of the children don’t even get that the colors coordinate . Thanks for asking!

  8. Danalee Davis

    I also think that another good positive to the fact the colors coordinate is that children who can’t read can easily categorize. I don’t have senior and junior in my branch. I want to be able to use this activity with everyone, and the colors help me to that. Thank you, Sharla for this perfect idea for this song!

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