COURAGEOUS SUNDAY!

It is time to start teaching Nephi's Courage.  Most of our kids already know this song so we were able to spend only one day on it.  We called it COURAGEOUS SUNDAY.  On the chalk board I listed the following things:

Sing a Solo
Quote and Article of Faith
Conduct a verse of the song
Read a Scripture
Bear your testimony
Act out what we are singing
Escort a teacher around the room while we song
Dance to the song

I read the list aloud and talked about how these things take courage for us to do.  We then talked about the great courage that Nephi had to do the things that he was asked to do by the Lord.  For courageous Sunday, I was going to see who had courage to do some of these things.

We began by singing the chorus of the song.  I then drew a name out of the jar and asked, "Do you feel courageous today?"  I emphasized that it was ok if they didn't.  If they did, they got to pick one of the things to do.  Then that item was erased.  If they chose something that involved music, we would do that on the next part of the song.

Next we sang the first verse (if someone for instance picked to dance, this is when they would do it.)

After we sang I chose another name and asked again, "Do you feel courageous today?"  I did have several kids say that they weren't feeling courageous today and that was OK!  I put there name back in the jar so that they would still be chosen on another day.

We continued to do this until we had got through all the courageous deeds, or ran out of time.  I broke up the singing as follows.

Chorus
COURAGE TEST
Verse1
COURAGE TEST
Chorus
COURAGE TEST
Verse 2
COURAGE TEST
Chorus
COURAGE TEST
first half of verse 3
COURAGE TEST
second half of verse 3
COURAGE TEST
chorus
 COURAGE TEST
Then we ended by singing the entire song.

I had so many kids come up to me after wards that had not been picked who said they had courage!  They wanted to do one of the tasks for me!  it was amazing to see the response that i got out of this activity!  They learned much more than the words to a song.