In February, I’ll be reviewing He Sent His Son with this fun word game! I love playing word games in primary because they can be adapted in many different ways! This fun He Sent His Son Finish the Sentence review activity is a great activity that your Junior and Senior primary will love!
** See 30 He Sent His Son Singing Time Ideas here! **
He Sent His Son Finish the Sentence
Singing Time Review Activity
The idea behind this activity is pretty simple. To prepare for this activity, all you need to do is cut out strips of paper with short phrases of the song. Leave a blank space for the last word of the sentence and have some fun filling in the blanks!
I try to play a word game for each song that I teach! Primary children are the perfect age for learning and developing their language skills. As they play simple word games, they can be more likely to remember the words of the song. This is especially true for Senior primary kiddos who are becoming active readers.
When dividing up the song into phrases, I definitely recommend choosing short phrases. Longer phrases might be overwhelming for the kiddos and will be harder to remember. Keep it simple!
How to Play He Sent His Son Finish the Sentence:
- Print out the finish the sentence lyrics to He Sent His Son (Lyrics Chart here!). You can cut the lines out in sections, if you’d like, for the kids to rearrange.
- Before primary, hide the strips of paper underneath primary chairs.
- Sing the first verse of “He Sent His Son” once through.
- Invite the children to reach under their chair to see if there is a surprise (This is often one of the best parts for kids!)
- Split the class into two teams.
- Have the kids bring up their papers one at a time. Senior primary kiddos can read their papers aloud to the class.
- After one phrase is read, invite one team to finish the sentence. If they guess correctly, they can earn a point. If they guess incorrectly, the other team can try to guess it correctly.
- Continue until all phrases of the verse have been read.
For a fun way to introduce this activity, hide the strips of paper underneath the primary chairs. My primary kiddos love hide-and-seek style games, so I always try to incorporate that element whenever I can.
*If children notice a paper underneath their seat before singing time, just remind them to leave it there until singing time.
After splitting the class into teams, have the children bring up the phrases one at a time. When a child comes to the front of the room, invite them to read the sentence or help them read it. After reading and repeating the sentence, give one team the opportunity to finish the sentence.
If the first team guesses incorrectly, you can give the other team an opportunity to finish the sentence. After all the sentences have been correctly finished, award the winning team!
Adaptation for Junior Primary:
Junior primary kiddos may have more difficulty remembering the sentence and filling in the missing word from memory. To help them out, I like to print out some pictures to go with the words. I typically tape these pictures on the board and let the kids come up and point to the picture to fill in the blank!
Extension Ideas:
- After finishing the sentence, sing the song again, humming instead of singing on the missing word.
- Hide the picture clues instead, and let the child that has one under their chair come up when they think they have the right one to put it in place.
- If you have a larger primary, split the classroom into 3-4 groups instead of 2.
- After guessing all the blanks, race to put the phrases into the correct order on the board!
- Have one side of the class sing the phrase, and the other side of the class sing the missing word.
For even more fun ideas to expand on this singing time, see how we’re using a matching word game in this next post. Head over to see this Did Jesus Really Live Again Find the Word game!
He Sent His Son Finish the Sentence Singing Time Printable Lesson Plan
This activity is newly updated with a larger font and space for the pictures, so you don’t even have to cut it out!!
For this activity, I’ve created a He Sent His Son Finish the Sentence printable with all the word blanks and cute graphics for each. You can use it with the graphics or let older kids write in the missing word!
The last 3 pages of this printable include pictures to use for Junior primary.
This printable is 9 pages in total, so I would suggest focusing on the sections of the song you are working on. I have definitely done this kind of activity twice (with a week in between) so you can absolutely divide it up!
I’ve included BONUS half-sheet graphics and a printable lesson plan when He Sent His Son is the featured song of the month in the INSTANT Primary Singing Membership!
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Head over to see a fun singing time lesson plan for He Sent His Son to get you started in teaching and introducing this song in Primary! This He Sent His Son What’s in the Bag activity is a perfect hands-on learning idea!
Great activity but you are missing some of the pictures for the jr primary variation.
He Sent His Son – Finish the sentence – has words that are incorrect on page 3. It should say “that we may know”.
The word “say” is missing after the picture or blank for “scriptures”, but I realize that could have been intentional.
Thank you so much for catching that and letting me know! I’ve updated the file with those 2 corrections.