Unsolicited advice for the Primary Program

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!