Glad that I live am I

To celebrate the simple joy of being alive!

by Gordon Lamont

Suitable for Whole School (Pri)

Aims

To celebrate the simple joy of being alive!

Preparation and materials

• You will need the words of the song ‘Glad that I live am I’ by Lizette Woodworth Reese (due to copyright restrictions we can’t reproduce them here), available in many school song and hymn books. The lyrics can also be found here: http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=37206 or here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Chinese_Girls'_School
• There is a version by Rick Wakeman on his album Morning Has Broken (ISBN 656172002023).

Assembly

1. Introduce the song and teach it to the children.
2. Ask them what feeling words they think describe the song. Look for responses such as joyful, thankful, and happy. What do they think the writer is getting at by the phrase, ‘After the sun the rain; after the rain the sun’? Can they find other ways of putting this, e.g. things won’t always be so difficult; life has a balance of good and not so good times; enjoy the good times while they last and remember that bad times won’t go on for ever?
3. Ask them to consider what they would put in a song that began ‘I’m glad that I’m alive’. Value all suggestions and write them up for all to see.
4. Introduce a competition. You would like the children to turn some ideas (see below) into verses of a song to fit the tune of ‘Glad that I live am I’. Give an example based on the suggestions you have written up. This might be something like:
   
   I’m glad that I’m alive
   That I can sing.
   I’m glad that I can smile
   And do lots of things.
   
   For the chorus you could use the original words or make up your own. This could be done in the assembly so that the competition concentrates just on the verses.
   
   Times we feel joy
   Times we feel sad
   But we’ll try to smile
   Through the good and bad
   
   We’re sure you can improve on this!

Time for reflection

Reflection

Read out the list of ideas and ask the children to think about them and which they would like to use in their song.

Prayer

Ask the children to use the words of the song as a prayer while you read them. Suggest that they can just listen to the words, or make the prayer their own by joining in when you say ‘Amen’ at the end.

Amen.

Song/music

‘Glad that I live am I’