Thursday, January 29, 2009

How Firm a Foundation

These aren't totally original ideas on how to teach the song this month, but I thought I'd share my lesson outline in case some of you could use some last-minute help this week.

First we'll sing The Wise Man and the Foolish Man. Afterwards I'll ask the children some basic questions about why one house fell down and one stayed strong. I'll explain to them what a foundation is.

Then I'm going to show them a picture of the leaning tower of Pisa and explain how it was built on weak soil and with a weak foundation. In fact, it started leaning before they even finished building it.



I'll contrast that with a picture of the bell tower from St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. It was also built on weak soil, but it was built with such a strong foundation that it continues to stand strong and straight today.


Then we'll talk about just as buildings need to be built on strong foundations to not fall, we need to build our lives on a strong foundation as well. I'll ask the children if they can figure out what foundation we need to build our lives on.

Then I'll introduce the hymn using the visuals made by Rebecca Jack, a participating member of the Primusic Yahoo group. You should be able to find the visuals here:
http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/QHuCSWTIUELGbcfOzehD19sJBVud75KLBHExpdzBtJenP9eKv3-MShLJYOBtW192XjTuxZQ6jWXHNuclWOi7OmCE9sRJ5aroJHR0JkJJ/How%20Firm%20a%20Foundation%20visuals.pdf

In Junior Primary I'll just repeat as necessary, using the visuals to reinforce the words. In Senior Primary, as soon as I think they know it well enough (after a couple of repetitions), I'll start taking pictures away and see if they can still sing it. We'll continue taking pictures away until we have no more time.

The following week we'll talk more about foundations. I'll tell them the story of the Salt Lake Temple foundation and we'll read Helaman 5:12. I'm also going to use my Jenga game and do a little object lesson.

Anyone else have ideas on how to teach this hymn? It has a lot of difficult vocabulary that isn't the easiest to remember, and I'd love someone else's input.

It is a rather adult hymn, but it teaches such beautiful truths that I'm excited to teach it. If we have time I'm going to teach them the seventh verse in addition to the first and third.

2 comments:

Katy said...

You do so well with this! Thanks for all your great ideas. I agree that the big words in this song are going to be hard to teach!

Anonymous said...

That sounds great. I like the leaning tower of Pisa idea. I think I'll also have the Jr/Sr primaries clap out the beat before we start singing it. I've never done this before, but I think it will help familiarize them with the song a few times.