I had a very sweet e-mail from Marcia Berkey, who wanted to share a pdf file for the melody charts she made for the song "The Lord Gave Me a Temple." What a blessing she is. She says,
"I tried to show the length of the notes, the relationships, and the repeating words. I created it in Excel but didn't know if everyone would have that program so I converted it to a pdf document. I went into printer settings and enabled poster printing to be able to print this much bigger so the children (and I) can see it - different printers would have different settings for that."
Marcia put these charts into Google Documents and here is the link for it. (edit: another link in case the first one doesn't work.) Thank you so much Marcia for sharing this with all of us! You are a sweetheart. ;o)
Just a reminder about what a melody chart is. A melody chart is simply a "picture" of the melody, some way to visually represent the way the melody moves. So you could draw a phrase of the song on the chalkboard, with a single line that depicts the melody moving up and down in steps. You could draw dots or stars on a paper or poster, to represent the notes, putting these on different levels, somewhat like the way the musical notes are written on the staff lines. A melody chart simply helps the children visualize, in some way, what their voices are doing with the notes.
As a review, you could print the charts for each phrase of the song and ask the children to listen and put the charts in order according to what they hear. You will want to cover the words or that would give it away. You could draw the melody lines on the chalkboard and ask the children to number them as to which "picture" comes first, then second, etc. You could use laminated die-cut numbers with magnets, or even fridge magnets. Ask a child to place a number on the correct line picture. There are just lots of ways to help the children connect with these melody "pictures."
I attended a stake primary music workshop last night and was so glad to feel the spirit and the commitment of those ladies who were there with me. Our stake music specialist, who is also a chorister, was so bright and happy. Her message of connecting with and continually engaging the children was so sincere and her ideas were so helpful. It was a blessing to me just to be together with those women. I hope you all have this kind of support from your stake.
