Update on Nativity Singing Time

Overall it went well. After doing it will Jr primary, we learned some ways of doing it with less chaos. During Jr primary. I would teach the verse, and then the primary counselor would go out among the children and pick a child to play the role. Even though the costumes were really simple, a robe a hat, it still took some time to dress each child. Since the counselor was trying to pick to pick children they were too busy in trying to get her attention that they were not paying attention to singing and learning the songs. I made paper size visuals with the words and pictures to teach each verse.
To correct these problems during SR primary we first went through all the verses with the children. While I was going through the verses, the counselor went quietly around picking a child one by one and helping them put on the costume. Then after I had taught all the verses and all the costumes had been given out, I called up the children who were in each verse to come up and help be the visuals for each verse. Part of it was to also teach those children where they were going to stand. While doing the other verses, the children from the previous verse sat on the side in the chairs for the talks. After rehearsing each verse separately, we then had all the children get into their spots at once. We then sang through all 5 verse a few times.
Another problem we found with JR primary was that once a child came to the front they no long would sing. By going over all the verses first (multiple times) before any children came up, I think it really helped.
After we were all done I mentioned to the primary president that I think the JR primary would really benefit from flipping their times. I think that I end up using JR primary as the ginny-pigs. I learn and then make adjustments for SR primary. When if they were flipped I could learn from SR primary when the children are better behaved and then take what I learned to JR primary and give them the more structure. I also thing that JR primary would function better if they had Sharing time first and then Singing time. I think that they are better for me overall because it is more involved. And that they get some of their wiggles out moving rooms. So that by the time we do Sharing time they are full of wiggles again. Therefore they would be better behaved if we flipped the sharing time and singing time slots for JR primary. But these are just my observations, and I have only been in primary since Aug., so what do I know.
Merry Christmas