He Died That We Might Live Again

I wanted a new Easter song to teach the primary children--one that they haven't heard before--so I chose "He Died That We Might Live Again."  It's short and beautiful and perfect.

So here's how I taught it.

Junior Primary:

First Week

To teach the junior primary the rhythm of the song, I had each of the children create an imaginary frog who would hop on the short notes and splash on the long notes.  I've underlined the long notes of the song below:

He died that we might live again

Lord Jesus our Redeemer true

He died on Calvary's lonely hill

His life He gave for me and you

He rose from the grave on Easter morn

Our Savior and our King

He showed His love for all mankind

For His great love, give thanks and sing

Rejoice, rejoice, and sing, sing, sing!

We hopped and splashed the rhythm a few times before we tried learning the words.  We still hopped with our frogs as we sang the words.

Second Week

We needed to practice the song over and over, so we competed in the Winter Olympics--a fun way to repeat the song over and over without getting bored.  I had a kid choose an Olympic event, and then we sang the song according to the event.

Figure Skating: Spin on every long word (underlined words above)

Ice Hockey: Switch singing between sides

Curling: Pin the stone on the target (I put a picture of Jesus on the wall, and the kids sang loudly or softly to help guide a blindfolded child to put a stone on Jesus.)

Ski Jumping: Hold certain notes as long as possible (underlined words above)

Bobsleigh: Keep your heads in line as I point different directions

Speed Skating: Sing the song as fast as you can while still staying with the piano 

At the end of the day, I gave medals to all of the children for being such great singers (reeses on a string for gold medals, yorks on a string for silver medals).

Senior Primary:

First Week

To teach the senior primary the rhythm, we used frogs also, except with the senior primary, we jumped like a frog on every long note.  We jumped to the song 3 times before we started learning the words.

When we started learning the words, I brought out a toy frog.  On every underlined word, I would throw the frog to one of the kids, and on the next underlined word, the kid would throw the frog back to me.  We did this as we learned all of the words--it was a blast!

Second Week

We did the same Winter Olympics ideas as in junior primary, except I split the senior primary into teams and the teams competed for points.  It got very competitive--but I think everyone still had fun.