If you go to St. James Music Press (www.sjmp.com), they have a very reasonable subscription rate, and you can use stuff for your adults, too. Their "Viva Voce" program is pretty good for kids, although it recently seems to be dominated by just one or two composers.

Last year, though, I used the set of "A Little Advent Music" for a concert in which the youth choir sang. It's a wonderful set of three pieces (Come Thou, Redeemer of the Earth; Lo, How a Rose; O Come, O Come, Emmanuel) set for organ/piano, 1-2 part youth choir, oboe, and violin. They're gorgeous. It's right there on the St. James site.

Other than that, I'd recommend the new program "Words with Wings" for teaching them chant. I'll be starting that this year, too, and I'm very excited about it.

The idea of canons is good, but I'm going to suggest two other hymns, both from the Christmastide:

Jesu Dulcis Memoria (which is so short that they can learn it easily)
Puer natus in Bethlehem ( which is more difficult, but still short).
Yes, they should learn the Latin. Believe me that they can.

God bless,
Chris

I've used Justine Ward's THE HISTORY OF SALVATION to very good outcomes.
I'm likely going to use Wilco Brouwer's ON THE WINGS OF SONG this year.

Catholics can be, unfortuntatnely, really, really stupid when it comes to choral music, falling over and over again into the trap of being protestant.

Spending weeks preparing a piece, singing it once and then dropping it. Your children should sing the Ave and Salve Regina weekly at Mass. And more, of couse, but repeat over and over again. No on in the church is going to complain but the singers. Getting beyond the bored lets do something else and each time trying to sing it even better than the last time, trying to reach an impossible state of perfection is what it is all about.

It should reach the point that all you have to do is look at them and raise an eyebrow and they start singing it.

You are doing wonderful work and the children, throughout their lives, will never forget this. They may forget your name, what you look like and even totally forget you, but they will not forget the Catholic heritage in music that you brought to them.

I was at a church and ran into a family from Vietnam. I tried to explain what I do there and showed the elderly man my business card with monks singing on it. He began to sing right there in the church entry, the Ave Maria. We finished it together.

There is a universal language AND music in the Catholic church. Preserve it, nurture it.

It appears that the average employment of one of us tends to be 4 years before we get booted out. Make every minute of those four years be spent singing great music.

I discovered that while children took to chant readily, they LOVED repercussions, and became that much more eager when we learned a chant with many opportunities.
(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)

I wonder if there would be any interest in a methods book on how to REALLY train children to sing accurately and correctly? It would contain not only what, when, why, where to do, but would have musically suggested examples like unto the Suzuki Method for instrumentalists. It would be a method that would be fun for children yet professional and a serious work toward teaching children how to sing correctly and all based on traditional sacred classical music; i.e. chant and sacred classical compositions in unison to multiple parts. Anyone interested? Email me at: SarumSociety@aol.com We are composing just such a methods and so its a work in progress for now.

I don't think so. What I have in mind is based on hundreds of years of research, matertials, other methods, training schemes and approaches from many choirmaster throughout the centuries, etc. All of it is also based on the Suzuki style / approach to teaching music as well. The method in mind starts with Kinder-garten age and goes up through Cambiata age boys and high school age girls. It is graduated and incorporates not only traditional sacred classical music and chant, but traditional folks and nursery songs as well for the younger children. It incorporates the Ward Method, RSCM Schemes and solfege too with both modern and Gregorian notation.