Hymn Study: Count Your Blessings

Count Your Blessings

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Updated 11/11/22

As I sat down to decide what hymn to study this month, I knew that I wanted something that focused on the concept of thanksgiving or giving thanks. We are called to be thankful every day, but this time of year is a time when I like to refocus on all that I have to be thankful for. The day that I was researching hymns had honestly been a pretty tough day, and it was amazing how much listening to all the songs of thanksgiving lifted my spirits.

Story Behind Count Your Blessings

Count Your Many Blessings was written by Johnson Oatman, Jr. in 1897. During his lifetime, he wrote over 5,000 different hymns. Many of those hymns are still sung today. The tune was composed by Edwin Othello Excell. He was popular in his own right and composed music for over 2.000 songs. He is most well known for this song and his arrangement for John Newton’s Amazing Grace.

Hymn Study Plan

Our plan is to listen to various versions of this hymn as an enjoyable way to become familiar with the words of the hymn. I will also have the children complete the hymn study fact sheet to learn more about the background of the hymn. Each day, for one week, they will complete the copy work pages for the hymn.

Through these activities, they will internalize the hymn in just a few minutes of work each day. If your family is musically inclined, there is sheet music listed below. They could learn to play the song on an instrument of their choosing.

Nature Study

We will also be combining nature study with our hymn by taking a hike and making a list of all of the blessings that we see along the way. We can remember how blessed we are that God gave us flowers to enjoy, trees for wood, birds to listen to, plants to eat, and all of the other wonderful things we find as we hike.

Counting Your Blessings

In addition to our regular monthly activities, I think this hymn and this month where we focus on giving thanks gives us a great opportunity to literally ‘count our blessings’. I encourage you to talk to your family and choose a way to list your many blessings.

Some of you may be most comfortable with a private journal format, while others may prefer something more family oriented. You could create a thankful tree where the leaves each have blessings on them, a thankful pumpkin, or just a jar where you collect slips of paper with things you are thankful for.

My daughter found a cute fall container and placed it in the middle of our kitchen table. Each day we all write down one thing we are thankful for on a sticky note. She wants us to take them all out on Thanksgiving and read them aloud to remind us of our many blessings.

Other Activities

One additional activity that I plan to do with my children is a blessings walk. Walk down your road (if it is safe), through your neighborhood, on a nearby trail, or even just through your yard. As you walk, find as many blessings as possible and thank God for them. You may thank him for the butterfly you see flying, your neighbors, your home, flowers, the warm sun, and whatever else you see to be thankful for.

Nana, over at You Are An Artist, also has this really neat mixed-media sunflower art for clubhouse subscribers in her hymn study course. She also has a wonderful podcast on being thankful: Color Me Thankful, for everyone to enjoy.

Other Hymns of Thanks

While we will focus on this hymn this month, there were so many wonderful songs about giving thanks that I wanted to share more with you this month. I am including a list of songs with their links below if you want to enjoy more songs of thanksgiving this month. I would love for you to share with me in the comments what song you think of when you think of giving thanks or thankfulness.

I pray that this hymn study can be a blessing for you during these trying times and that by counting our blessings, we can lift our spirits and be a light in the darkness.

Background and Sheet Music

YouTube with Lyrics

YouTube Performance

Download Your Freebies Below!

Hymn Study Fact Sheet

Count Your Blessings (November Copywork)

Other Songs About Thanksgiving:

We Gather Together We Gather Together

Come ye Thankful People Come

Give Thanks

He Has Made Me Glad (Ska Version)

He Has Made Me Glad (Regular)

God is so Good

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library, you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

Resource Library

This post may contain affiliate or referral links, including Amazon affiliate links. As always I will never recommend a product that I don’t believe in and you will never be charged more for purchasing through our links. It does help pay for the costs associated with the blog.

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October Hymn Study: A Shelter in The Time of Storm

Shelter in the time of Storm

I looked at the calendar earlier and realized how close it was to October. These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity from preparing for a hurricane to helping with relief efforts. I had not decided on a hymn for this month though I had a few options. I felt in my soul that I needed a song about storms. I needed to remind myself and maybe others of you that either went through Florence or are going through a figurative life storm that God will see us through. I asked on Facebook and received multiple wonderful options of hymns related to storms. It was truly inspiring to sit and listen to each one of them and I tried to decide which one we would focus on this month. I encourage you to take a few minutes and listen to those songs that were recommended. It was such an encouragement to me.

I have chosen to study A Shelter in the Time of Storm by Vernon John Charlesworth this month. I think it really speaks to what I needed to internalize. There will be times of storm both literal and figurative in our lives but Christ is our shelter and our rock. We can depend on Him.

Our plan is to listen to a variety of versions of this hymn as an enjoyable way to become familiar with the words of the hymn. I will also have the children complete the hymn study fact sheet to learn more about the background of the hymn. Each day for one week they will complete the copy work pages for the hymn. Through these activities they will internalize the hymn in just a few minutes of work each day. If your family was musically inclined there is sheet music listed below. They could learn to play the song on an instrument of their choosing.

I know many people choose to do more than one hymn per month but this allows us to really learn the hymn as we keep going back to it each week. Next month I plan to have a hymn focused on Thanksgiving. I would love to hear about your favorite activities and ways that you incorporate hymns into your home school or family time. I have included links to the background information, lyrics and sheet music. I have also included free downloadable copy work pages and a hymn study fact sheet that can be used to write down what they learn about the hymn and its background. I pray that this song brings you the same peace and comfort that it brought me as I have been listening to it while I researched and planned for our hymn study this month.

Background and Sheet Music

Background Information and Lyrics

YouTube Performance

Download Your Freebies Below!

Hymn Study Fact Sheet

A Shelter in the Time of Storm Copy Work

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

When you sign up for the Schoolin’ Swag free resource library you will get a link and password to the library, we are adding to the library each month with new items. You will also get a bi-weekly newsletter email to keep you up to date on what we have going on.

Resource Library

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Memorable Monthly Musical Genre Study

Music Genre

In the past we have focused our music appreciation on famous composers and studied a single composer for a semester or a year. While I believe these are valuable we wanted to do something a little different this year that would introduce the children to a wide variety of music and help us create some fun family memories at the same time.

A little while back we were camping at a campground in Virginia and the folks next to us were playing some music that my husband and I had listened to when we were a little younger than we are now ( I won’t date myself too badly). The songs would come on and sometimes one or both of us would sing along because we remembered the lyrics even after all of these years. The children were amazed that we knew the words and wanted to learn more about the music we used to listen to. We realized that we wanted to expand their musical knowledge while still being careful about the language and content that we filled our ears and hearts with.

So this year we have decided to choose a different genre of music each month. Throughout that month we will listen to a variety of songs from that genre and learn about some of the famous musicians. Whenever possible we will attend a free or inexpensive local concert related to that genre. I will mostly use music that is available from Amazon Prime or YouTube to make this an inexpensive study.

Our first month we are starting with Bluegrass music! I know that it is not as popular or mainstream as some genres but I think it is so much fun. I love the instruments and the fun songs. Fall also tends to be a time when I can find more bluegrass concerts available locally. There are always several at our North Carolina State Fair and the apple orchard where we are hoping to pick apples later this month hosts multiple local bluegrass bands (among other genres). If timing works out we will hear a band at the apple orchard and if not we can catch a concert next month at the fair.

I have not scheduled out the other eight months because we will use the availability of free or inexpensive local concerts to help with our scheduling. We intend to study jazz, classical, gospel, big band, classic country, blues, rock, and Celtic music. I know that there are many other genre’s and sub genres that we could have chosen but we felt that those included many favorites that we wanted to expose the children to as well as a well rounded variety. Each month I’ll share a short post with the genre we are studying and some free resources that you can use to share with your children.

What favorite genres or musicians do you want to share with your children? Share your ideas in the comments!!

Bluegrass Resources

Please check these before using with your children to make sure they align with your family. I have listened to some of the tracks but not all of them.

Best Loved Bluegrass

True Bluegrass Gospel

A Brief History of Bluegrass

What is Bluegrass?

Bluegrass Instructional Materials

Resource Library and Affiliate Disclosure

Resource Library

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New Kickstarter Program With Hoffman Piano Academy!

hoffman1

Ready for some exciting news? I just got this announcement from Angela Hoffman at Hoffman Piano Academy! Read here:

Are you looking for a piano teacher? Meet Mr. Hoffman!

Joseph Hoffman has always wanted one thing, for more people to be able to learn music and to love it while they’re learning. He spent years developing his own comprehensive piano method based on research in early childhood education and great music teaching methods like Suzuki and Kodaly. After receiving his master’s degree in music and founding a very successful music academy in Portland, Oregon, he wanted to find a way to teach music to children whose families might not be able to afford private music lessons, or who might live far away from a piano teacher.

Five years ago, Joseph and his wife Kelly came up with the idea to create piano video lessons and post them online, for free, so that anyone in the world could learn piano with the Hoffman Method. To support their project, they sold downloadable lesson materials, like sheet music and audio files, to accompany the video lessons. Mr. Hoffman’s video lessons now have over 5 million views, with thousands of students watching lessons every day. But he’s not done yet.

Right now, Mr. Hoffman has 120 piano video lessons online. He wants to double that number in the next 16 months, then continue to make more. His ultimate goal is to make Hoffman Academy a complete piano learning program, so that a student who completes all the lessons would be ready to major in music at any university and become a professional musician.

The Hoffman Academy team is also working on building a new, interactive, subscription-based website that will include music learning games and online progress tracking. Video lessons alone can’t give personalized feedback, but the new Hoffman Academy will be able to guide students through developing their skills in rhythm, staff reading, music theory, and ear training, and make learning the piano even more fun and engaging.

In order to fund these projects, Mr. Hoffman is running a Kickstarter campaign through the month of February. Campaign backers can try out the new Hoffman Academy premium subscription for themselves at a great discount. Or, you can contribute to our campaign and fund a Hoffman Academy premium subscription scholarship for a child in need. Come on over and check it out!

Do you believe in music education for everyone? Contribute to our Kickstarter and help make it happen.

Visit our Kickstarter page to learn more.