I absolutely love old hymns. Growing up we sang hymns a capella every Sunday in church. With the praise and worship music sung in churches today, you won’t hear many hymns in the traditional church. Not that I am complaining. I absolutely LOVE praise and worship music, but I really do miss the hymns. Then I realized something. My kids won’t have the experience of being exposed to the beautiful hymns I grew up with unless I share these with them!
For the last few years I have had good intentions to do a “hymn study” in our homeschool, but I never got around to it. Quite frankly, it felt like a daunting task to pull together. This year in my desire to be much more organize and prepared, I decided to dive in. I picked out a few hymns, printed out lyrics and started singing them each morning in our Circle Time. I am so glad I did.
Do you have any idea how sweet it is to hear a six year old boy running around the house singing “The Doxology” (Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow)? It makes me smile to hear them learning these old beautiful hymns. I have to admit I was a little surprised at how much they love them.
One of my favorite finds at a used curriculum sale this year was the Mr. Pipes Hymn Stories by Douglas Bond. There are three books in the collection and they highlight the great hymn writers and their stories. It is one of our read-alouds for the year, so we sing the hymn for that chapter before we read it. My Hymn Study Printable is not in any particular order and not all the hymns in this series are included in my printable, but you can easily print these off online.
FREE DOWNLOAD: Hymn Study Printable Link
For our Hymn Study, I keep it really simple. First, I made a list of all the hymns I wanted them to learn. I picked out no more than two per month to sing. One is ideal, but I wanted the flexibility. Next, I print the lyrics out to all the songs we will learn and put them into page protectors in a binder. Each morning when we sit down, we sing together one of three ways depending on our mood:
1) Sing a cappella
2) Sing along with the piano version on hymnal.net, or
3) Sing along with a produced version (my favorites below)
So far, there are two albums that are my favorite – Selah, Greatest Hymns and Chris Rice, Peace Like a River: The Hymn Project. I would love to hear your favorite albums or songs!
Click to download my FREE HYMN STUDY PRINTABLE !!
Here are some other great Hymn Study resources I found while pulling our study together:
Hi! I am going to look at the hymn books you mentioned, thank you! Also, two of my favorite hymn singers these days are Chelsea Moon and Hillary Scott. Chelsea Moon hasn’t released anything new in awhile but she has two cd’s and the one we have is wonderful. She has such a beautiful voice! And Hillary Scott and her family just came out with a cd “Love Remains” and we are really enjoying that one too. Thank you again!
Joy, I will check out Chelsea Moon, I love Hillary Scott too, but haven’t listened to that cd, can’t wait!
Thanks so much for your suggestions!
Just an FYI: The words for “He Leadeth Me” are missing.
We’re loving this curriculum. Thank you so much for the idea and the printables!
Hi Kelly, I love Selah and Chris Rice also! I posted links to YouTube videos with lyrics of more than 50 hymns here: http://www.celebratingholidays.com/?page_id=10756