Prayer with Children using YouTube

Earlier this week, I wrote this piece on family prayer.

One of the things we do to make prayer time a little easier in our house is to pray along with a video from YouTube. It's much easier to follow rather than lead, and having a visual on the TV, even if it's just a colored screen with the name of the prayer on it, helps the kids pay attention too.

We usually play one or two of these after mealtimes, since even on days we're wildly off schedule I still have to feed the kids.


Morning Prayer (usually prayed after breakfast)

Angelus (usually prayed after lunch) 

 

I can never remember the words to the ending prayer for the Angelus, so having it play on a recording is a lifesaver for me. 

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Lately, these are the only videos we've been consistently using.

Occasionally though, I get ambitious and add a video of a hymn or a prayer that I don't know very well, but would like to learn with the kids. 

I really enjoy traditional hymns and prayers sung in Latin (I was involved in a Schola, or choir that sings hymns in Latin, in high school and college), but can't read music and am ridiculously out of practice. Playing videos of hymns that I can't remember very well or that I'd like to learn has given me a way to introduce this sort of music to my kiddos with minimal effort on my part. 

(Because this can be a polarizing thing, I want to add a quick note-- I don't think knowing how to sing stuff in Latin is a marker of holiness, or a necessity, or anything like that, but I personally really love the beauty and history of the hymns, and I'd like to share my interest in them with my kids. I'm a firm believer that you can be a good Catholic and not know a lick of Latin (though I also think the Latin prayers and mass parts are beautiful and worth knowing for their own sake)). 

The Angelus in Latin 

A beautiful sound recording. The changing visuals help keep my kids focused too. 

I also like that the subtitles are in both Latin and English, so you can know what you're actually singing.

Salve Regina (Hail Holy Queen) 

My four year old actually really loves this song and has been known to try and sing along. He's not too shabby at it either. 

Also a good casual introduction to what chant notation (sheet music) looks like. I really like the stuff from this channel because the songs move at a good pace, and the sheet music moves at the pace of the song, so if you were feeling particularly ambitious (or are lucky enough to have a Schola in your area you're involved in) you could turn off the sound and just use it to practice.  

Tantum Ergo Sacramentum

This is actually the last two verses of a much longer hymn by St. Thomas Aquinas. The song is traditionally sung at the conclusion of a holy hour of adoration either right before or right after the benediction. 

I haven't gotten around to introducing my kids to this one yet (right now as I write this it's Advent, so I've been playing music and videos related to that), but this is a pretty good version. 

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Sometimes prayers are just too long or repetitive for your very young kiddos to sit through them. 

We've solved this problem with the Rosary by shortening it down to a decade (this has actually worked really well for us, as it gives us time to talk about things we'd like to pray for and to discuss what the night's mystery (one of the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, or Glorious ones, not what made that weird scratching sound in the A/C vent) means). 

For the Divine Mercy Chaplet, we decided to introduce it to our kids by playing it as they played during the afternoon, and later as a bedtime song to play as they fell asleep. 

Divine Mercy Chaplet 

Even if we're not using it as a formal sit down prayer, the kids have been introduced to it and are familiar with it already. 

I hope these videos prove as useful to you as they have to us.

Do you use videos to pray with your kids? Are there any good ones that I've missed? Let me know in the comments!

For the rest of this week's Quick Takes, click Here.