I’d like to start a hymn study with my children. I’m not sure where to begin however, since this will be the first time we’ve done any. Is there a specific book that anyone would suggest to start with? Also, do you know of any that might have a companion cd to listen to? I would love to hear what others have used. Thanks so much for all!
Great question. I am interested to hear what others have used also.
So far we have only used a book called Stories of the Great Hymns ..it is written for late elementary and older but I use it and my children are 7 and under…so I have to tailor the reading and activities a little bit. We have enjoyed learning about the authors of several hymns and then singing the hymns.
I am also planning on reading aloud the Mr. Pipes series of books about hymn writers, published by Christian Liberty Press. I haven’t heard a lot about them but they look interesting.
We use “Hymns for a Kid’s Heart” by Bobbie Wolgemuth and Joni Eareckson Tada. The book has an intro for each hymn and comes with a CD for listening and singing along. There are four books in the series with each book having about 12 songs. My children love these books. They often play the CD while we are all getting supper together or when they are putting a puzzle together or coloring.
I think this is such a great idea. My sister-in-law and I just started choosing hymns that we wanted our kids to learn. We choose one per month. Then when we get together with the grands our kids can sing the hymns to them. Grandma loves this.
I once had a book out of the library called Then Sings My Soul. It had hymns in chronological order of when they were written. It also had the piano music for each hymn with a write up about the author. I liked it and will probably be getting it this year.
If you need to hear the tunes you can go to cyberhymnal.org.
We, too, own one of Joni’s hymn cds — the Christmas one. During the month of December we would read the write up each day and have the kids guess which Christmas song was being written about.
We’ve enjoyed the 25 Hymns and Praise Classics series because it features very simple 4-part harmony with minimal accompaniment. Most of the instrumentation is just organ or piano, and the hymns are sung in a simple manner without extra arrangements and surprise endings and such, so they are easy to sing along with. (Don’t get me wrong; I love a good arrangement to listen to. They’re just harder to sing along with.) I believe there are four volumes in the series.
I just realized that I never thanked you all for answering my question about Hymn Study. Thank you all so much! What a great help- I’m very excited to get started with this and am still mulling over my final choice for the fall.
After reading these entries, I ordered Hymns for a Kid’s Heart, and we love it! My kid’s love to listen to the CD, and my DD7 was showing off her knowledge to my husband about the author of the song.
we love hymns for a kid’s heart too… i recently blogged on it here: http://ourartandmusicblog.blogspot.com/ (scroll down..2nd entry at the moment.. or direct link to that post here: