You’ll have so much fun teaching the hymn Did You Think to Pray with this engaging melody map! You’ll help the children better understand the movement of the notes in the melody of this song as they are each visually represented as you move through the chart.
Plus, there’s correlated colored spaces to represent the keywords and help you teach some of the key concepts of the song in a unique way!
See all of my Did You Think to Pray Singing Time Ideas here!
Did You Think to Pray Melody Map
How to Play:
Sing through Did You Think to Pray (lyrics here) once before introducing this activity.
Put up the lyrics or colors melody map and ask the children what they notice. They might mention things about the words going up and down like little hills and valleys. Or they might pick out that some words are broken in two. Or whatever other observations they have.
Each space represents one note of the song just like it would on sheet music, but they are represented visually here as the notes rise and fall throughout the song.
Pick one idea or observation to talk about and then say let’s test it out and see if that fits! Sing through the song looking for evidence of their theory!
Continue to decode things you spot within the melody map. If you choose to use the color version without lyrics, you can reference this color code guide to connect the keywords.
Color Code:
- Orange – Self (You, Your, Our)
- Green – Prayer (Pray, Praying, Prayer)
- Purple – Jesus (Christ, Savior)
- Red – Love (Loving)
- Yellow – Finding the positive! (Morning, favor, shield, rests, day, life)
- Black – The “hard” things we deal with (Weary, night, dark, dreary)
Extension Activities:
- Use the lyrics melody map and let the children pick out colors to represent different keywords, concepts, height of the note, or whatever else they might choose! Let them come up to underline the lyrics with their new convention. For example, they might color all the references to self with an orange marker. Or they could color all the highest notes red and all the lowest notes purple.
- Cross out lyrics with a big king-sized sharpie! Let them draw the melody map line instead (follow the words with a big line). Just pick 3-4 words to cross out and then sing through the song again.
- Let the kids unscramble the 6 pages. Can they get them into the correct order? This would be a really fun twist on just decoding the melody map as they have to decode mentally while singing and try to find the ones that fit!
If you LOVE using melody maps to help teach the flow of the music, head over to see our I Will Follow God’s Plan Melody Map printables!
Did You Think to Pray Melody Map Printables
This printable includes an 8-page colorful melody map printable plus a color guide sheet. You can use it as a guide to make a large format on the white board or on a poster board or just print the pages to post up on the board.
I got a bit carried away when creating and made an entirely separate style of melody map using the lyrics. This bonus style is included in the INSTANT Primary Singing membership in March New Testament!
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I’ve got lots more fun ways to teach this song! You’ll also love this Did You Think to Pray Pick a Word singing time activity in your Primary room!
I can’t wait to hear how this melody map went with your Primary! Did you have any fun ways you also used this activity with your Primary children?
