Music Basics

Last Tuesday we had a music class for mutual because many of our young women haven't had any formal music training. I wanted to help them understand the church hymns better, so I made a copy of "Soy un hijo de Dios" (in English, "I am a child of God"). I made an accompanying worksheet by cutting out various music symbols from the song and taping them onto a separate piece of paper. I then numbered each symbol and had them look for each symbol on their copy of the song (see the link below). It was a fun activity, and it helped them actually notice what the different symbols were.

We discussed what the various symbols mean and then transitioned into some basics of directing music. I found it really helpful to first define what a measure is and point it out within the song that we were already using as an example. This helped to explain that 4/4 and 3/4 indicate how many beats are in each measure. My favorite part of this mutual was that the young women had an "ah-ha" moment at this point. They finally started to understand the purpose of conducting the music and the meaning of the patterns used to do it.

http://melissaeggertsen.googlepages.com/MusicWorksheet.pdf

NOTE: The website http://www.enchantedlearning.com/music/ is also a good place to find some basic music worksheets.

Johnny Lingo

For the first part of our activity last night, we watched Johnny Lingo. Most of our young women hadn't seen it before and that made it more interesting to watch than I expected. I enjoyed seeing their reactions to the movie. They were kind of anxious to see what was going to happen and kept asking me questions during the movie to calm their curiosity. They also got pretty upset and annoyed when everyone kept calling Mahana ugly and making fun of her.

Here are some of the topics we discussed as a group after the movie:

• Was Mahana always beautiful? What made her beautiful?
• Why did everyone think she was ugly?
• Why did Johnny Lingo pay eight cows for Mahana?
• What helped Mahana see her own worth?

There was a little speculation among the girls as to whether or not Johnny switched girls while he was on the "honeymoon" but I don't think that's a very likely scenario. ;)

I think the main message of Johnny Lingo is that what mattered most was what Mahana thought of herself. Her father treated her like dirt, so that's how she saw herself. Johnny Lingo treated her with love, and she came to see herself as someone worth loving. I thought it was a good movie to watch with the YW because it illustrates the importance of seeing your own individual worth and the impact of treating others with love and respect.

For the second part of our activity, we wrote cards to the missionaries in our ward. We used plain white paper and let the girls decorate it with stickers and pens. Nothing too fancy, but hopefully our missionaries will appreciate the gesture.

NOTE: I have to say that I've seen Johnny Lingo dozens of times and this time I was surprised at some of the story line: buying wives, selling daughters, Mahana's father threatening to come after her with a stick, etc. I probably just noticed it because I was worried the YW might take the wrong message away from it. I liked having a brief discussion together after watching it because I could make sure that they got the right message from the movie.

Service Activity with the Missionaries

Last night we had a fun activity helping the missionaries in our ward create calendars. It's a project they are going to introduce on Sunday to encourage the ward members to seek out missionary opportunities over the next three weeks. One of the sister missionaries split the youth up into companionships and gave each companionship an assignment. I liked that because a lot of our youth are fairly new to the church and their families haven't sent anyone on a mission yet, so it gave them a glimpse into one aspect of mission life.

At one point during the activity one of the young women told me that she was tired. I asked her, "Do you know what missionaries do when they feel tired?" "What?" "They keep working anyway."