In this second installment of the Creating A Morning Basket Series, we will be discussing Hymn Study. Hymns are an important part of my family’s homeschool journey. We find it very crucial to learn old hymns and the stories behind them. We also study the author and their life. Too many churches are falling away from singing the old hymns and many people don’t even know some of the popular ones.
Incorporating Hymn Study in our morning basket gives us the opportunity to listen, discuss, and research each song. We don’t spend a tremendous amount of time on this particular subject because we repeat it every day. We usually study a particular author for about a month. We listen to all of the hymns they wrote as well as read from various resources about their lives and their families.
One of my favorite ways to introduce a new hymn is to listen to it. I keep various CD’s in our basket and pop in the one that we are studying that month. 30 Hymns For Kids has most of the popular hymns included on it as well as a PDF to print off the lyrics to each hymn. That is our “listening time”.
We then pull out a resource for researching the hymn and author such as Then Sings My Soul: 150 of the Worlds Greatest Hymn Stories. This book (the first in a volume of 4 including a special Christmas and Easter edition) gives a small biography of the author and some background information about the hymn. It is perfect for “littles” because their attention span is shorter. As the children get older they can delve into their favorite hymns more elaborately. But, for now, keeping it short gives them a small portion of the whole picture.
One last thing that I have my children do is copywork or draw a picture (depending on the age). Drawing a picture is simple enough. A great copywork resource is Great Hymns for Copywork. It gives the student the chance to read the words and write them out as they sing them. It is also great handwriting practice.
Keeping this portion of morning basket time shorter is okay. Just allowing children to listen to hymns gives them the ability to sing them in church fluently.
The next installment of “Creating a Morning Basket” will include Read Aloud Time.
