Thursday, July 21, 2005

Primary small vs large sizes

I was recently called to be Primary President. About 6 months ago the previous Primary Presidency decided to combine yonger and senior primary departments. Right after Sacrament ALL kids go their classes then all come together for the sharing/singing time then stay together for closing exercises. I don't understand their reasoning. Finding sharing time ideas to fit 3 year olds and yet at the same time keeping it interesting for 11 years doesn't seem to work. But that is just me. Has anyone else that has a small Primary (about 40 active kids but 110 in total on record) found that this has worked?

12 comments:

Kim Siever said...

Our primary ended up merging with another ward's primary.

Easy as Epicure said...

are are there 2 wards meeting at the same time then? Who gets to be the president and councilors or teachers? From both ward or just 1?

Mary Siever said...

Well, callings are split between the two wars. Only the youth and primary are combined, and we have our own Sunday School, RS and Priesthood meetings, except the youth have combined SS. And our own sacrament meetings. Yes, it makes it confusing! The Primary President is currently form our war, one counsellor the other ward and the 2nd counsellor from our ward and secretary from the other ward. Teachers and other primary board members are fairly evenly split. However, our primary is GROWING and I don't see any real need for combining. Actually most people feel this way except the Stake presidency, lol. It works fine for the children. They are great, it's just working with two wards is rather interesting! My calling is specialised so I have no idea if it will continue forever.

Mary Siever said...

Ok, I mean WARDS! Not "wars" LOL boy that was a slip of the tongue..

Mary Siever said...

oh and "from our ward" not "form our war"

Easy as Epicure said...

ok I am still confused. You have 2 wards meeting in the building at the same time? If you are having sacrament that what is the other ward doing? I have to imagine that you are meeting at the same time as I can't imagine the members just dropping their kids off and going home to return later

Mary Siever said...

We have three wards meeting in the same building, but two of us share primary and young men and young women classes. So this is how it works. We have saecrament meeting first and then primary and Sunday School begin. At that point, 2nd ward shows up and joins in and the youth and primary go together and they (2nd ward) has RS/Priesthood. When that block is over, then our ward has RS/Priesthood and the youth have their Sunday school classes and the 2nd ward has Sunday school. Then we are done for the day and the 2nd ward has Sacrament meeting.

Easy as Epicure said...

lol ok I got a headache just thinking about what you wrote lol

Mary Siever said...

LOL, yeah I know. It takes some getting used to.

Heather said...

This is my first time reading your blog. I would just like to say Hi!
Anyway I used to be in the primary presidency of a very small primary we had about 25 active kids with only three or four inactive that didnt come. We split them up with junior in for sharing/singing time while senior was in for classes then the senior came in for sharing time then the last ten to fifteen minutes was closing excersises which the junior primary joined. Which was talks, scripture prayer etc.

I enjoyed this setup. and It was nice just to have small groups for singing sharing time

Easy as Epicure said...

THanks Heather and Mary for your comments. I think we will be changing it back to Senior and junior Primary come September when everyone is back from holidays.

Brooke said...

I'm a Primary President too. We had a small Primary last year. They just combined our ward with another last month, so it's big now. But even though sometimes Senior Primary would get down to 10 kids, and Junior not much bigger, we kept them split. Two reasons, one, the 3 year olds and 11 year olds definitely need different lessons catered to them, and two, we only had enough classrooms to send half of them to class at a time.