As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have the calling to serve as the first counselor in the Primary Presidency of our ward (ward=my local congregation). The Primary is the organization for the children. One of my duties as a counselor to the President is to write and organize the yearly Children's Sacrament Meeting Program. This is the one Sunday during the year where the children sing songs and share the bulk of the program (or service). This is just a bias, but I think it is the BEST Sunday of the YEAR! There is an outline provided by the General Primary Presidency that we use to write the program. We use the outline and then cater speaking assignments to the special abilities of the children in our local ward. It is truly inspired and outlines the general principles of the gospel that we believe as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Anyway, my point in this post is to share a few tidbits that I have learned about preparing and presenting the program for anyone on the world wide web who happens across this site.
1) Write the program early and set goals like two sections of the outline per week (if only I followed my own advice).
2) Keep it simple.
3) Before the first program practice, write a tentative seating chart that includes every child. Then, make copies and give them to each class teacher. When it came time for the kids to find their seats for the first time, I just had the teachers place their own children-- this was AMAZING. The 50+ kids in our ward were organized and seated in about 5 minutes (or less).
3) Make lots of extra copies of the actual program for teachers. Especially for the second practice-- they forget to bring their first copies.
4) Bring an extra copy of the program and some scissors that are just for kids who lost their part (then, put these in a gallon baggie). Just cup up the part for the kids who forget and put all the extra papers/ peices in the bag for the next kid who needs his/her part.
5) Let the Primary President sit up on the stand and you (counselor) sit in the audience. This allows the President to sit with the kids during practice and you can run around getting things done without having to go up and down off of the stand.
6) Write a part for the children who don't regularly attend and personally invite them to take part-- you never know who might show up. We also made a copy of the music on CD for the kids who might not be too familiar with the songs (when writing their part, just make it kindof redundant our outlining a similar principle as the child before him/her so their part will add to the program, but nothing is missed if they decide they don't want to take part).
Hope these are helpful to someone! Good luck with your program!
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6 comments:
It is totally the best Sunday of the year. I just got released from the primary presidency so I am not planning one this year, but I got put in the stake primary and now I get to visit all the wards and watch their programs. How fun will that be!
Thanks for all you do, Camilla! You're awesome, and the program will be so sweet! It's my favorite Sunday, too!
Oh, Camilla dear, you are right on time for my issue of the moment. I'm the primary pres. and our program is in 2 weeks. I actually have done all of the things you said here, so I'm quite impressed with myself. And I made my program SO simple this year. I sent home a question with all of the kids back in August and let them answer it themselves, and just made up the whole program in a Q&A format with their teachers. It goes through all the themes in the outlines and all their answers are in their own words. Plus we only do one verse of most of the songs. We figured it was more important for them to do less and do it well. I also made invitations and told all the kids to invite a teacher, friend, etc. because I think it's one of the EASIEST missionary opportunities... people love to hear kids perform, plus the Spirit's so easy to come by that way. And I've learned that no matter how chaotic rehearsal's seem, things MIRACULOUSLY come together the day of the program. Here's hoping that holds true. Is yours all done now? I'd love to hear how it went.
We just had ours today, as the secretary I didn't do that much but it did go very smoothly, good luck with yours and I know all your hard work and prep will pay off.
We just had ours. We have 100+ (160?) kids in the primary and they were overflowing into the first 3 rows. Crazy.
I can always count on three things:
1.It always makes me cry.
2. There is always that really loug kid that sings off key
3. There's always a kid that talks into the microphone really loud and laughs at himself.
I have some advice: Don't make the kids sit up there for 1/2 hour before the program starts! In our ward, they had our kids sit there starting at the beginning of sacrament meeting. James did great for the first 1/2 hour! Then he got a little bit squirrely, but he did pretty good for his age.
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