School assembly in the good old days and singing hymns! Anyone remember the 'Come and Praise' books!

[ErlingHaalandsManBun]

I was thinking earlier about being a kid in the 70's/80's and how we would have school assembly. All lined up and then would have to walk in and sit on the floor cross legged in rows.

Then we would sing hymns from the book 'Come and Praise'.

I was trying to remember some of them. One was called Autumn Days and it went something like this:

Autumn Days when the grass is jewelled
And the silk inside a chestnut shell
Jetplanes meeting in the air to be refuelled
All these things I love so well

No I mustn't forget
To say a great big thank you
I mustn't forget.

Anyone else remember this book and the hymns within it.

I bloody loved singing these in school assembly!! 😂

we had an assembly in the canteen, which always smelt of cabbage! we had hexagon tables, which were pushed to the edge of the room with the chairs stacked, then we had to sit on the floor. Due to the dual purpose, our hymns were on drop-down big sheets, a bit like oilcloth, and I loved all the ones like To be a Pilgrim, All Creatures Bright and Small, so many, the their dual purpose, our hymns were on drop-down big sheets, a bit like oilcloth, and I loved all the ones like 'To be a Pilgrim', 'All Creatures Bright and Small', so many, but Harvest Festival, but harvest festival was my favourite time. we went to the Church down the road and all took something to put at the altar. in those day it was rare to get tinned goods,most people had; gardens they grew vegetables in so the aisle was packed with fresh produce and some home made jams or chutneys.
we used to sing We Plough The Fields Scatter always one of my favourites then, afterwards we would all march down to the old peoples home where the cook who was my aunt! would take all the things from the collection at church to use for the residents. i am sure they loved all the fresh vegetables etc

The big Christmas Assembly is absolutely brilliant! Although I was disappointed that he did g put the lyrics on an overhead projector like we had at school.

Did you get the lyrics in paper form or do we just have to know them?

There was a QR code you scan with them on. But they’ll come back to you!

You sound like me and dh s generation.(i didn't grow up in the uk) He often waxes lyrical about assembly songs. He said there used to be a vote for the favourite one via school radio (?) And it was always rousing ones like "A hundred pipers"
Do you follow Geoff and Margaret@retirement tales on X? Currently a thread on this. Its lovely.
My mate had Lord of the Dance as one of her wedding hymns. Everyone sang very enthusiastic ally.

Shine Jesus Shine won the Songs of Praise vote. It wasn’t written until 1987 so loo late for my primary school memories but it got added to our senior school hymn book and then we would all get in trouble for singing ‘shine on me’ louder than the rest of the hymn. It is such a good tune though - deserves to be included in the happy singing memories of school.

I left primary school in 2005 and we used to sing these! Autumn Days was my favourite!

Oh I'll try to find that!

We didn't have school radio(!) but I remember we could sometimes request our favourites, and Hills of the North Rejoice was very popular.

I think a catchy tune and well known words can inspire almost anyone to sing a song or maybe hymn and feel their spirits lift.

Great choice from your mate!

We had that book too, late '70s. I've got it saved on my pinterest

Songs of Praise came to Ealing Abbey in 1980, where school children from the local area were featured. I didn't attend, but I recognise a few faces in the video on YouTube.

We liked “For all the Saints” (no Halloween at our school) and all the harvest hymns.

absolutely LOVED belting that one out

ETA: thanks for the reminder, pp, i can't believe i forgot Lord of the Dance

@OhwhatfuckeryitistorideWe had Lord of the Dance at DMs funeral. “I am the dance and I still go on”. It really is a great hymn.

Dh informs me it wasn't assembly songs which were all hymns, but some kind of school radio maybe on BBC schools? We had similar in Australia, we got a book with diffrent songs in, we learned the songs, it was cross curricular. i remember one about a volcano in Mexico, so we learned about syllables- pop-a-cat-a-pet-al, we did some geography, made musical instruments and obviously did music. It was lovely.

Singing Together. We loved it

I remember 'Singing Together' and 'Time and Tune' .
One was more individual songs, with a 'theme', and one was more of a 'performance' iirc. Like Peter and the Wolf. Peter and the Wolf seemed to feature a lot in my primary years. (And crops up on Only Connect as a a question frequently- I am a similar vintage to the question setters/ VCM).

We also used to listen to a religious service programme in a whole school assembly one morning a week Seem to remember it being Thursdays , for some reason- 'Service for Schools'(vividly remember the voice of the announcer.).

Peter and the Wolf might have been Music Workshop- there were a few of those radio programmes around in the 70s/ early 80s! And tv shows as well.

With Jonathan Cohen on the piano .

As a treat the Head used to sometimes have music on a record player playing as we came into the assembly hall. Playing the vinyl LP ‘Hooked on Classics’. Love how antiquated this sounds. Sometimes he would quiz us on what instrument was playing what sound. I had no idea how anyone would be able to know that without seeing it!

We all made the same disappointed ‘awwwww’ noise when he turned off that classical music, that we did at the end of the TV schools programmes that we occasionally got to watch.

Our school used to do this! I remember getting a gold star for remembering that the music had been Tannhauser by Wagner. And lots of Grieg 'The Hall of the Mountain King' got played a lot.

It's funny how I remember stuff like that far more than a lot of the lessons I actually did.
Primary was great