He Sent His Son

For "He Sent His Son" I used the fact that the song is divided into questions and answers to do a call and response kind of thing with the children.

I made a poster (I always make them just A4 size) for each question and each answer. I always just use outlined pictures for this kind of thing and then normally colour them in myself, but this time I got a couple of the senior girls to colour them in for me, and they just loved it! For a few weeks afterwards they came to me every time and asked if there was something else they could colour in for me!



Before singing time I set up my part of the room with two rows of chairs facing each other, but slightly curved so that the people in the same row should be able to see the other people in their group. I also stuck all of the posters on the board in random order.

When they all came through and we started with this song I would sing a line, and they would have to guess which picture went with the line. All of the questions I gave to the one side, and the answers to the other side. I explained the meaning of the lines each time.

Then once I'd sung through the whole song, and they all had the pictures we started singing it as a group. But I'd get the group with the questions to sing the questions, and the group with the answers to sing the answers, and the child holding the relevant page each time had to hold it up while they sang. Then after a while we swapped the questions and answers to give everyone a chance to sing both.

I taught the whole song in one Sunday, and it is quite a difficult one, but they got it reasonably well, and they're managing to sing it quite well each time we subsequently sing it too.