Top 10 Prayers Every Child Should Know

Hi Mum and Dad!
Hi Grandparents!

Prayer is our way to stay connected to God. Prayer is our way to tell God we love him and understand more and more that he loves us so much. That’s why prayer is also important for children. It can be a real source of strength and peace for them in their young lives. Teaching your children how to pray can be a daunting task. The best place to start is with common prayers that can be easily memorized. Children who are making their First Communion should have memorized most of the prayers in this booklet, while the Grace Before and After Meals and the Guardian Angel Prayer are prayers that even very young children can learn by repeating them daily. Use the different prayers with your children on a daily basis and see how their life of faith grows.

Grace Before and After Meals

Instilling a sense of gratitude in our children can be especially hard in a world where many of us have an overabundance of everything. Grace Before Meals is a good way to remind them (and ourselves!) that everything we have comes ultimately from God.

The Sign of the Cross

The Sign of the Cross is the most basic Catholic prayer, though we don’t often think of it that way. We should teach our children to say it with reverence before and after their other prayers. The most common problem that children have in learning the Sign of the Cross is using their left hand instead of their right; the second most common is touching their right shoulder before the left.

Using your right hand, you should touch your forehead at the mention of the Father; the lower middle of your chest at the mention of the Son; and the left shoulder on the word “Holy” and the right shoulder on the word “Spirit.”

An Act of Charity

Childhood is a time filled with deep emotions, and children often suffer real and perceived slights and injuries at the hands of friends and classmates.While the primary purpose of an Act of Charity is to express our love for God, this prayer is also a daily reminder to our children to try to develop forgiveness and love toward others.
men.

The Hail Mary

The first half of the Hail Mary is straight out of the Bible. The part before the semicolon is the angel Gabriel’s greeting to the Virgin Mary at the
Annunciation, when he told her that she had been chosen by God to bear His Son, Jesus Christ (Luke 1:28). And the words after the semicolon were uttered by St. Elizabeth, the cousin of the Blessed Virgin, when St. Mary came to visit her and St. Elizabeth felt St. John the Baptist leap in her womb (Luke 1:42).

An Act of Faith

Acts of Faith, Hope, and Charity are common morning prayers. If you help your children memorize them, they will always have a short form of prayer at their disposal for those days when they don’t have time or the opportunity to use their own words  The Act of Faith can be said at any time when we feel our faith is being tested or we are enduring temptation.

An Act of Faith can be as simple as “My God, I believe in you,” but the following is a traditional version which generations of Catholics memorized.

The Guardian Angel Prayer

Christ promises that each one of us has a guardian angel who protects us from harm, both physical and spiritual. In this prayer, traditionally one of the first that young children learn, we ask our guardian angel to watch over us.

The Act of Contrition

The Act of Contrition is an essential prayer for the Sacrament of Confession, but we should also encourage our children to say it every evening before they go to sleep. Children who have made their First Confession should also examine their conscience before saying the Act of Contrition. In silent prayer, they can just think over the day and say sorry for anything that wasn’t right or good.

The Our Father

We should pray the Our Father daily with our children. It’s a good prayer to use as a short morning or evening prayer. The Our Father is the oldest of Christian prayers, going back to Jesus Christ himself, who, in Matthew 6:9-13, taught his disciples to pray in these words.

An Act of Hope

An Act of Hope is a very good prayer for school aged children. Encourage your children to memorize it so that they can pray the Act of Hope before taking a test. Children learn that they are never alone – God is always with them.

The Glory Be

The Glory Be, also known as the Doxology, is one of the earliest-known prayers to refer to God, the Holy Trinity. In Eastern Rite Catholic churches (as well as Eastern Orthodox ones), the Sign of the Cross is made while the Glory Be is recited.