Callings, the Importance of Music, Life
"My kids continued to attend school at Mountain View, we were serving in the ward, I was released as Relief Society President after 3 years in the calling actually it was one month short it was in December, 3 years later and Pam Hosking was called as the next Relief Society President.
"I was called to teach Primary I was enjoying that immensely and then I was called to be choir director again – actually no after that I was called to be in Young Women’s. Eight or nine months teaching Primary and then I was called to be in Young Women’s and I was teaching the Laurel class and I did that for a couple of years or a year or so and then I was called to teach the Beehives – when Janelle Webster was the President I was teaching the Beehives. Good experience and it was at that point they asked me if I was willing to be the choir director again in addition to doing teaching the Beehives – and I said, “Sure.”
"Choirs not that big of a job for me and I really enjoyed teaching the Beehives. I did that for awhile and then they called me to be the Primary chorister – I was doing that in addition to the choir. I think being the Primary chorister is my favorite calling of all time.
"I learned from the best and I had gone years and years ago to music workshop– they used to have these music workshops for the Bay Area and it would be run by people in the area that were LDS and wanted to have training for people when they got new callings and so they set up this workshop patterned after the music workshops they had at BYU. It would be on a Saturday and you would go all day long. You would go at 9 in the morning and go until 6 at night. Actually it might have been later, I think there was a concert that night. It was all day long. That very first time I went down there and I went to a wonderful music workshop taught by Charla Vance who is – she has no idea what a mentor she has been to me over the years. I went to every class she had talking about Primary music, talking about how to do Primary music, how to do Nursery Music and I had children in the Nursery at the time and I came out of there, “Oooo, my children are going to be ruined forever if I do not do all these fun Nursery activities with them. “
"How important it is for the development of the brain that we do music and of course I knew how important music was but I REALLY learned how important music was in child development in helping children grow. I came home and I started making things for Nursery Music and I would do it with my children and then I would also volunteer and do music in the Nursery. So I was able to use a lot of the things I made and learned.
"Actually I think I started over in Concord Third Ward, I was doing Primary music over there but then I was also doing Nursery music over here too. When I came over to our ward I worked in the choir and I worked in Relief Society and then it was finally time for me to do Primary Music and I was also going to do Nursery Music.
"Five Green and Speckled Frogs and a log and I had those big log and a pond in these little stuffed cute pillows that looked like frogs. I had all kinds of props and fun things to do for Nursery music and to teach them. It was just so fun! I made some music blocks so they would have music notation in their environment. I still have music blocks and my kids love those when they were little and I’m saving them for when I have grandchildren. Also my collection of books that you can sing, I have a pretty good collection – oh my gosh – 30 or 40 books that you can sing to children, and my kids enjoyed those immensely.
"Let’s see… I was called to be the Primary chorister I absolutely loved that and did that for several years. This was when Camilla Wirig was President and it was so great because they actually used me more as a third counselor, they would pull me into the presidency meetings because they recognized the importance of planning sharing time with planning of the music, so we would try and correlate and coordinate what was happening with the music to what was happening and how could the music help the concepts being taught in Primary.
"It just worked really, really well and it was from Charla Vance that I learned that there are ways to learn a song and ways to review a song. Most of the time when people are called as Primary choristers they don’t see the difference and so they go in and try and play a game that will review the song when actually they need to be teaching the children the song, they need to be learning the song instead of just reviewing it. Those are two completely different things. So fortunately I learned from Charla how to learn a song, and some of the different concepts you are trying to do as you are learning the song. There are a ton of fun things you can do with learning the song. And once you have the songs learned, you can review them.
"And so I enjoyed being in Primary Music immensely. That was great, in fact I think I did that about three years and then I was doing that along with the choir. I’m trying to think, I think – was that the time I was doing that when I got cancer? I’m trying to remember it’s all a blur. I know I was directing the choir when I had cancer the first time because I remember I would have to go to the rehearsals and have to sit down. Cancer’s another story.
"So anyways I taught Primary in the ward, I taught the Laurels, I taught the Beehives, I did the Primary music and that was great fun, great, great fun. I’ve done a lot of directing the choir, I’m trying to think of other callings I’ve had in the ward… it’s been great, I have this wonderful time– a lot of variety of different callings, being able to do different things. I feel like the Lord has blessed me and has been fabulous. My kids at this point are growing up. When it was time for Kylie to do pre-school we didn’t have the money to do pre-school or even for the city programs it was twice what we paid for when Amy was going there and we couldn’t afford that.
"I set up a little play group with Britton Moore, Charla and her daughter Brinn and my friend Diedra and my friend Kellon and then my friend Jackie Harrison and her twin boys, Ian and Walker. And we did play group and we would rotate around to the different houses. The kids did extremely well and we would make sure there was some academia to it as far as things they would do for Kindergarten for example they needed to learn how to share and they needed to learn how to color, and they needed to learn how to hold a pencil and we would write letters and we would learn about the sounds of letters and we would do – we would learn how to cut with scissors and we would learn how to glue and we would learn how to raise our hands. It was very fun but they also just played. We would just play. It was the best preparation ever for school was to have pre-school."
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