Teaching your child to pray can be a joyous task. The easiest place to start is with short, simple prayers that can be recited daily and memorized easily. You will find that children love to say prayers, especially ones with rhythm and rhyme. The message is simple, yet heartfelt, and even adults remember the prayers they recited every day as a child. The first several selections included below contain great verses with which to start.
“Now I lay me down to sleep” is a classic children’s prayer from the eighteenth century. It was first found in print in Thomas Fleet’s New England Primer, the first edition dating back to 1737. It is reported that John Adams, second president of the United States, recited this prayer every day of his life. Some things from boyhood grow into manhood.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.