Jesus Loves the Little Children
Lyrics & Sheet Music
Frequently sung in Sunday Schools, this is a fun and easy-to-learn song. Some now find part of the old lyrics offensive; for them, I have placed alternate lyrics along with the old lyrics in the sheet music.
What you will find on this page:
- An easy piano arrangement, late elementary level
- A Middle C shared-hands arrangement
- Another Middle C arrangement, but with note names in the note heads
Please scroll down the page to find the downloadable PDF links
Please scroll down the page for the download links.
The left hand is mostly made up of chord shapes, in root and inversion form. In the right hand, a bit of shifting and stretching is required. Not so easy - so it helps if your student wants to play this song!
Two versions for shared-hands melody
Please scroll down the page for the download links.
What happened to the rhythm?
You will notice at once that I have simplified the rhythm to make it easy for young students to read. All those dots and sixteenth notes make the page very messy for beginners!
They will quickly adapt and play it just as it is meant to sound, if you sing it and play it with them.
A version with letters in the notes
Please scroll down the page for the download links.
This is one of those "Middle C" arrangements where the thumbs don't share Middle C, but play side-by-side on B and C. Looking down the music page to measure five, you can see that finger 5 is necessary to reach that low E note, just as we see in Star of the County Down and a few other Middle C songs on this site.
Some history on this Sunday School song
Did you know that "Jesus Loves the Little Children" is actually just the chorus of a longer song? The man who wrote the lyrics, Clarence Woolston, was a minister with a special gift for engaging the minds of children... he would perform magic tricks, and bring animals into the services to illustrate Bible lessons!
It was during the American Civil War that this song was written, and apparently the tune was originally called "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching." I'm pretty sure that those old lyrics are long gone, but the words of "Jesus Loves the Little Children" endure!
Luke Powell Ministries has a series of videos called "Friday Classic Hymns," and his page about this Sunday School song is a delightful read. Here's a sample:
"Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in His sight,
"Now, at the time this was very inclusive. In the early 1900s, the world was still pretty segregated, and for a man like this to have written about all these different colours was quite a powerful thing. "Red" being Native American, "yellow" being Asian, "black" being the African American people that he knew, and "white" being the Caucasian or European people. For the time, the fact that he introduced all of these different colours - races that God loves equally and who are precious in His sight - this must have been quite radical, because at that time, especially in America, there was still a lot of racial tension.
"But some people still feel that this is exclusive - that there's no brown skin in there. There's black, white, red, and yellow, but there's no brown. Some people, I believe, sing it as "red and yellow, black, brown, white" - so that little children in countries with different skin colours and different races might still be able to sing this and know themselves loved. The point is what he was trying to say: any child, whatever skin colour, is precious in the sight of God."
Two other arrangements
If you are interested in a guitar tabs arrangement, and a fancier piano version, please check out my other website, SingTheBibleStory.com.
The links to the piano music:
Download Easy Middle C arrangement
Download same arrangement, with letters in the note heads
Download an elementary version of Jesus Loves the Little Children, lyrics & sheet music
Dianna:
Your website is a light in the darkness. THANK YOU for all you do in helping to spread the love of music. It matters!
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All the first-year material I give my beginner students.
Piano keyboard sheets, scales, chords, note-reading exercises, and over 256 pages of music!
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This beautiful song book for piano & voice "Esther, For Such a Time as This", available as a digital download, tells the riveting story of the time when Jews in ancient Persia faced a foe named Haman, and how a brave young queen risked her life to save her people.
A good choice for a singing story-teller, an operatic group, a short theater production, or a class of children!
This book is also available from Amazon as a paperback.
Music-for-Music-Teachers.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
This book is available as a digital download from this site. Visit this page to see some free examples from the book.
It is also available from Amazon as a paperback!
This is the perfect easy start for little pianists.
And when they start reading white-key notes on the staff, this is a fun easy resource to say each week, "Choose a new black-key song at home this week and figure it out to show me next lesson!" They will be spending more time at the piano.
Music-for-Music-Teachers.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
A perfect read aloud storybook
for little boys or girls.
The Adventures of Tonsta highlight the travels of a very young boy with a good heart, who goes about helping folk in trouble.
With a red cap on his head and a sack of tools slung over his shoulder, Tonsta seems to meet people in distress wherever he goes.
Lots of trolls in this book - including one who gives him a Christmas gift!
Music-for-Music-Teachers.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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About the Author
Hi, I'm Dana! (Say that like "Anna".) I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.
Like so many of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.
You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.
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