Primary Olympics, Take Two

Remember the Primary Olympics of 2008? Well four years later, I'm the primary chorister in another ward, and we did Olympics again. This time I did things a little differently.

I wrote all the songs we've learned this year up on the chalkboard, and left space to the right of each for "scores." The categories for scoring were volume, words, and reverence. We sang through each song, and with the advice of our special judges (the primary presidency), scored each song in each category, 1-10. I think it really helped the kids perform their best! It also brought up discussions of team work, and how if one or two team members are not reverent or not singing the words, it can bring down the score for the whole team. This took all of singing time, so we wrapped up the next week.

We started off by re-doing the songs we didn't get perfect tens on. The kids were super motivated to get top marks, it was great! Then we had a "medal ceremony." I called each class up individually, and gave them gold medals* made from three inch circles of yellow paper stamped with a gold design and with a metallic temple sticker in the center (stickers found at Seagull Book and Tape, but you can buy them here), and stapled onto a red or blue ribbon to make a necklace. Junior Primary was ecstatic about their medals, and most of Senior Primary thought they were tolerably cool as well. After handing out medals, we all stood and sang our Primary Anthem (Choose the Right, since that is the theme for the year). It went so well, I would definitely do it again! 

*Originally I wanted to make the medals using chocolate gold coins, but our medal ceremony happened to fall on fast Sunday so that plan was nixed.