To have bought a copy of 'come and praise'...

[KindergartenKop]

...to expose my kids to the brilliant songs of 80s and 90s primary school assemblies.

Aibu?

Oh I wish I'd found this thread sooner! So much nostalgia!

I loved Autumn days. It was an absolute favourite. Especially the bit about "Smell of bacon". Really didn't like Colours of Day, always groaned when we had to sing it!

Lizsmum with the actions too!!

We had the blue book but AIBU that i really didnt like "one more step along the world i go?" (Might have to listen again as an adult to see if i change my mind!) My DS had pop songs for his leaving assembly and everyone was booing their eyes out.
Cauliflowers fluffy
Give me oil in my lamp
Lord of the dance
Morning has broken
Who put the colours in the rainbow
Hes got the whole world in his hands....

Was "land of the silver birch" in that book? I remeber singing it at school but not sure it was in the book....

Come and Praise2 ( Circa 1992 ish) was also fab! I was a music co-ordinator and used both C&P books regularly in my Hymn Practice assemblies. Candle in the Window was one of my favourites( sort of Christmas Song but suitable for all year round) Also loved Lord of the Harvest, Pears and Apples, Water of Life, Who put the colours in the rainbow, When your father made the world and You shall go out with joy.

I also had the orchestral parts for all these songs which my little school band used to play regularly in assembly. ( Nostalgia emoticon!)

We didnt sing the Noah one at school (get those animals out of the muddy, muddy etc) but as a kid i was given a kids praise cassette tape with it on.(among others) It was american with a characters called salty the singing songbook and charity churchmouse!

I recognise loads of these but it has stirred up a few memories of songs which nobody else has mentioned and now I'm wondering if they were from elsewhere:

Everybody's Building
It's the Springs up in the Mountains
Big Man Standing by the Blue Waterside

There was also a disturbingly jaunty one about the good Samaritan that went:
Once a man set out to go, down the road to Jericho
On the way he was attacked by a thief who hurt his back

And another weirdly chipper one about dead Jesus that went:

Bright dawned the morning on Gethsemane's cave
Mary Magdalene came to weep at the grave
What did she find when she came full of care?
The stone rolled away and her saviour not there.
Mary, Mary weeping at the tomb
Along came Jesus and he took away her gloom.

I was chief OHP operator for a while and I do sometimes worry that I peaked too early...!

Have ordered a compendium of books 1 & 2! My kids are gonna love me. No more staring at screens every evening. Time to gather round the old joanna and sing hymns to a God we're not sure we believe in .

I think the melodies are the best things about these songs - so easy to sing yet interesting enough to hold the attention. Strangely enough I found out the other week that DS (5) sings a secular song in assembly to the tune of 'Whole World in His Hands'. It goes "I see the trees blowing...I see the grass growing..." etc. So still has the 'wonders of nature' thing going on.

Didn't like 'colours of day' either. It's an exception to what i said about the melodies. Singing it felt like labouring to get up a hill i didn't want to be walking up anyway.

charityconundrum I think maybe I peaked at school too!
I went to a fairly rubbish primary school, I think our school was why the national curriculum was written, as I suppose you can't rely alone on singing from come and praise for education. The come and praise bit is about all I remember of that school. Weirdly a fellow classmate qualified as a teacher and ended up back at our old primary school as a teacher and found all our old song books in the back of the music cupboard. The school had been re built and they had still kept them!

@Hullabalooo - I bought Okki Tokki Unga when I was at primary school 'cos I loved it so much. Cost a fortune (well it seemed like it to me!) I was thrilled a few years ago to find Apusskidu in a charity shop so got that too :-)

We used to sing "There Is A Green Hill Far Away" to the tune of "The House Of The Rising Sun." I was in my late teens by the time I realised that wasn't the usual melody!

This thread has really cheered me up. Singing in assembly and Christmas carol practice / concerts were my favourite bits of school by far. I am a longterm atheist too, but the songs are awesome.

There Is A Redeemer was always my favourite although i suspect it wasn’t in this book as not quite so jaunty.

I do think the removal of such songs from non-faith schools is for the best, but I hope they still get to do communal singing!

My God is so big, so strong and so mighty there's nothing that he cannot do ....

In our song you got bonus cool points if you replaced god with poo. The lyrics to the bridge bit were also changed to:
“It comes from my tum
Then out through my bum
And stinks out the whole of the loo”

I have no idea where that came from or why I remember it 😂

I loved this one:
Sad, puzzles eyes of small hungry children
Thin, weary bodies tending the ground
Weak, pleading voices begging in cities
They long for the day when food is shared round

My friend and I though this was totally great and miserable and it inspired us to create the game ‘Hungry Children’ where we would drag ourselves around the floor, weakly calling for food.

I am glad I came onto this thread - no idea what it was going to be about - but as a 70's child I still remember these songs (having forgotten them for 40 years).

We had Apuskidu as well, or something like that.

YY to doing the OHP sheets too!

LOVED Come and Praise 🎶🎶

Love this thread!

I always think of Autumn Days whenever anyone on mumsnet pipes up with a "never happened" post. My friend at primary school claimed her auntie's friend wrote Autumn Days. No one believed her. She even got her mum to confirm it but still no one would have it. I was the only believer because I couldn't imagine why she'd make it up.

I think Cauliflower fluffy is in the A and C Black book Alleluia.

I loved these songs, I teaching in a CofE academy and still sing several of them regularly. The children are amazed that I can sing the words, while glaring at them, with my back to the screen!

I loved ‘Hundreds, Thousands, Millions of Sparrows’ and Shine Jesus Shine. We had them both at DS’s christening. I liked the verse about the names of all the children being written in God’s memory (and at least a song from Come and Praise, I knew DH would know).

I insisted on lord of the dance, morning has broken and all things bright and beautiful as the hymns at my wedding so people would know the tunes already from school.

So many memories here.
There was a hymn with the line "or yielding grassy sod" and no one would sing the last word - it sort of stopped with a mumble.
"O Jesus I have Promised " was a good one but I wondered at one stage why we had to be helped to follow Julie

At the end of term it was "Lord dismiss us with thy blessing " which had quite a sad final verse IIRC about people leaving.

Happy days.

My kids sing a lot of the same hymns at school that I did. I didn’t even think about it until I heard them singing the whole world in his hands and the were you there were you there one. I joined in and they were like “how do you know them?”

The song "Autumn Days" made me think that jet planes being refuelled in-flight would be a much more common occurrence than I have found to be the case.

Autumn days!!! I loved that song
Happy memories

Does anyone with the hard copies of the books have harmonies for any of the songs? I know there was a harmony for Cross Over the Road (Will you walk by), and I once heard it on youtube, but never seen it again.

I too wonder how the jet planes refuelling in the air took place, and why it only happened it autumn. I was reminded of it recently when reading an article about Air Force One, which can, it seems, refuel in the air.