We’re planning to go to a carol service at the weekend, and I wondered how familiar my children would be with the songs, so I contacted the person in charge and asked what carols they would be singing. They sent me the list, saying that they hoped they wouldn’t get in trouble for sharing secrets!!!
There were some carols they knew a bit, and others they were less familiar with.
To make the service more accessible, fun and meaningful for them, I made a playlist of the carols using both traditional versions and more modern versions where the words were easier to hear. We then listened to the playlist with bingo cards, marking the words as we heard them. One child did this separately for each carol, while the other did it progressively for the whole list.
We didn’t really have a winner – it was just a fun way to listen and spot the words, and therefore think a bit about the words in the songs and what they mean. For example, we talked about ‘David’s city’ which cropped up a few times, discussed which city this was and why it might be called that in the carol. We also chatted about the word ‘Bethlehem’ and how that’s from two Hebrew words, Bet, meaning home or house, and Lechem, meaning bread. So, yes, the Bread of Life was born in the town called House of Bread.
Having done, this I shared it online and asked if anyone would like to me to make these bingo sheets for them, and lots of you said ‘yes’ so here they are!
I’ve made two versions, one with the words we used, based on the seven carols we’ll be singing. The other is a shorter list removing most of the more abstract words like ‘joy’ and ‘Emmanuel’ and focussing on ones which are more obvious in picture form – this is for younger children and people less familiar with the words in carols who might find the first list more daunting.
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