I had a whim of an idea to play a “Wheel of Fortune” type game to introduce the Primary songs this year! This won’t be exactly the same game, as I don’t need the prize wheel and don’t have time for it.
This game will use the visual appeal of big letter tiles, incorporate a Primary song guessing game, and get lots of children involved while you introduce and get the kids excited about the songs you plan to teach during the year!
So, are you ready to play… Primary… Song…. Guess… Game… (Sing-song that in the Wheel of Fortune mantra, if you’d like).
Primary Song Guess Singing Time Review Game
*Downloads are available at the bottom of the post when signed in!*
Preparation:
- Print out the necessary pages below or create your own using white cardstock. You’ll need one sheet of paper for each letter of the song title. Make sure you use cardstock so your letters don’t show through on the back side.
- Print the blank “Song Guess” pages at the end to use as spacers between words. Print the green one on white paper or print the black one on green paper. This will help give you a “Wheel of Fortune” vibe. Though our game is played a little different without prizes.
- Line all your letter up in order with spaces in the right spot. I like to organize these in a file folder, so they don’t get shuffled or mis-sorted.
How to Play:
- You will play by first placing the first set of letters corresponding to your song up on the board. You can do this activity for a single song or as a fun way to introduce all your new songs for the year! It may take 2 weeks to get through all your songs.
- To save time, select the children starting at the front and work your way through until all of the kids have had a turn.
- Call on the children one by one to say a letter. If the letter is in the song title, reveal all of the tiles with that letter. They can then take a turn to guess the song title.
- You can have the pianist playing the music softly in the background while picking letters out. I would do this for Junior Primary! In Senior it might be too much of a clue!
- Once the song title has been revealed, sing the song together once. No need to flip over the remaining letters. Stick to just 1st verses when it makes the most sense or if you plan to use this activity to cover two full weeks, sing all the verses you plan to teach.
- Continue with the next song by removing the previous series of letter tiles and post the next set of letters. Continue calling on children from where you left off.
Extension Ideas:
- Let the child who correctly named the song pick ONE word in the song and ONE action. Do that action instead of the word! If they need help, just use the words in the title and let them pick an action.
- If you have a LOT of Primary children have them either pick a letter or try to guess the song title (not both). This will also help you work through the kids faster.
- Extend the activity by singing the song through once normally, then again with a silly action for one of the words.
- Call on a volunteer to be “Vanna White” and turn over the letters for you. You can either point to the letters, draw a quick dot on them to mark them for the child, or you can show the song title to an older child and let them spell it out and decode the spaces.
- To speed up the game, play the music during the letters. Don’t sing through the song after the title is revealed.
- To keep it to just ONE week, you can have different songs in a variety of colored file folders. Let the kids name which color folder to do next. Just get through the 4-6 folders you make it through.
2022 Old Testament Song List
To correlate with the songs we’ve chosen to use this year for our Primary Song picks, we’ve created a second document that has all of those song titles in letter order. If you are using some of the same songs as us, this is a paper-saving way to quickly print out the song titles!
Our song selections come from this post on the Suggested 4-year Rotation Songs! We won’t be using all 12 of these songs this year, but I have included them within the printable to hopefully cover the most popular song picks. Included are the songs:
- I Know My Father Lives
- Choose the Right (Hymn)
- Love One Another
- Keep the Commandments
- Seek the Lord Early
- A Child’s Prayer
- I Love to See the Temple
- Teach Me to Walk in the Light
- I Will Walk with Jesus
- I Hope They Call Me on a Mission
- We Thank Thee O God For a Prophet
- He Sent His Son
If you want to use all of these songs and reuse the letter tiles, you’ll want to print out:
- 2x A
- 1x C
- 1x D
- 5x E
- 1x F
- 1x G
- 3x H
- 3x I
- 1x J
- 1x K
- 3x L
- 3x M
- 2x N
- 3x O
- 2x P
- 2x R
- 2x S
- 4x T
- 1x V
- 3x W
- 1x Y
Reusable Primary Song Guess
Singing Time Review Game
To Laminate and Save These Letter Tiles:
You might consider printing out 1 page (2 total letters) of each of the 26 letters. Then, use our guide above as a rough guide and sampling that can help you estimate how many additional pages to print of the most common letters.
I would print recommend printing a second page of: a, e, h, i, l, m, n, o, r, s, t, w, and the song guess blanks
You can select on your printer to print 1-copy of a selection of pages and copy this series of page numbers: 2, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 24, 28
In total, that’s 40 pages that will give you a HUGE assortment of letters to play with! It’s like making your own little letter board on your Primary whiteboard!
Primary Song Guess Game Printable
I’ve created a printable Primary Song Guess Game file with two letters per page with a big chunky frame and bold font. This will make it easy to see and read, but will keep the letters consistent and uniform in style.
Each page of the printable has two of the same letter per page. I kept thinking about it which way would have less waste, and I think this lets you print the most common letters that will get reused and skip a lot of the ones you might never need best. You still may have a few extras when printing, but hopefully this will be the most print effective way to do this!
Also included with the printable is the game instructions, extension activities, and how to prep the game. You can keep all your printed files together and save them for later!
Those that want to spend the extra time might even choose to laminate the letters and then quickly reshuffle the ones needed to prepare the next song title instead of printing out a card for each and every song title.
To use this printable, simply print the pages needed for your primary songs!
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I hope your Primary has so much fun playing Primary Song Guess! What other fun ideas do you have to extend this activity? How did it go with your Primary?
Cute idea!!