Teaching the Catholic Faith in Our Homeschool

These are my favorite resources for teaching the Catholic faith to my kiddos.

Catechisms

 

St. Patrick’s Summer: A Children’s Adventure Catechism 

(Marigold Hunt)

A fun approach to the Catechism in storybook format. The children in the story are visited by Saints who deliver catechism lessons and tell exciting stories from the history of the Church. A great read aloud for those preparing to receive the sacraments.

An Illustrated Catechism (Inos Biffi and Franco Vignazia)

Richly illustrated in a style reminiscent of medieval illuminations, this beautiful book is organized according to the outline of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, with a section corresponding to each of its four main parts: The Creed, The Sacraments, The Commandments, and Prayer.

The New Saint Joseph First Communion Catechism

Originally published in 1963, this more traditional catechism is presented in question and answer format. The topics of creation, the fall, redemption, and sacramental life are all presented in an orderly manner, with accompanying full color pictures. This is a very thorough presentation of the faith at a level young children can grasp.

Jesus and the Saints

A Life of Our Lord for Children by Marigold Hunt 

By the same author as St. Patrick’s Summer, this lovely book tells the story of the gospels in a way that is engaging and accessible to children. No dumbing down here. Hunt takes nothing away from the gospel and adds only enough to help children understand the context of the time and place.

The First Christians by Marigold Hunt 

Another one by Marigold Hunt, this tells the story of the Acts of the Apostles in her signature engaging style.

Saints and Angels: Popular Stories of Familiar Saints by Claire Llewellyn 

Stories of some of our favorite “Super Saints” and the Archangels accompanied by absolutely gorgeous illustrations.

First Reconciliation and First Holy Communion

Receiving Holy Communion
(Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D.)

Pretty “old school” in it’s style and tone, this book offers a beautiful, straightforward explanation of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It includes an explanation of the origin of the Mass; prayers for before, during, and after Mass; as well as conditions for receiving communion and a simple examination of conscience.

Going to Confession (Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D.)

An excellent companion to the above book, this one explains the origin and meaning of the Sacrament of Reconciliation and takes kids through the logistics of the sacrament. It also contains a thorough examination of conscience based on the Ten Commandments. This is an excellent, gentle explanation of the sacrament that focuses on Jesus’s mercy and love for us.

A Picture Book of the Mass: Illustrated by the Masters (Lacy Rabideau)

This is a missal for young children from the creator of Catholic Icing. It provides the responses for Mass and is current for the new translation. Each page is illustrated with a gorgeous, classical painting to help children (or adults!) meditate on what is happening in the Mass. Helps young children to follow along and understand the Mass.

Jesus in my Heart (Sr. Immaculata Vertolli, OSB)

This book, written and illustrated by a Benedictine nun of the Abbey of St. Walburga, is part workbook, part textbook, and part keepsake. It was written to provide a hands-on curriculum for sacramental preparation that would engage a child’s senses and imagination.  The highlight of the book is the 3-D  card with fold-out “gates” and pocket inside representing a tabernacle. The child is invited to visit the Blessed Sacrament and insert the prayers he writes to Jesus into this card.

The Weight of a Mass
(Josephine Nobissio and Katalin Szegedi)

This beautifully illustrated and gentle tale celebrates the power of the Mass. A shabby, penniless old woman enters the baker’s shop as he is preparing luscious creations for the king’s wedding. When the baker refuses to give the old woman even a crust of stale bread, she offers to say a Mass for him, in exchange for food. Scoffing, he writes “One Mass” on a tiny piece of paper, places it on his scale, and tries to overbalance it with heaps of his finest pastries, but to no avail. The Mass outweighs them all.

The Mass Explained to Children (Maria Montessori)

While this book is written about the old rite of the Mass, it is an excellent, detailed, and understandable explanation of all aspects of the Mass from the prayers to the vessels to the vestments. Truly a treasure.

Confirmation

My Path to Heaven
(Geoffrey Bliss, S.J. and Caryll Houselander)
*Age 10 and up

Based on the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises this “retreat in a book” provides detailed illustrations to guide your child’s meditation on such  essentials of the Faith as God’s will, angels, Heaven and Hell, the Fall of man, the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, the Nativity, the Passion, salvation, the sacraments, faith, hope, love, and contrition, and it teaches children the relevance of these truths in their lives and in the decisions they make. Best for kids a bit older as some of the imagery might be scary to younger or more sensitive children. Also excellent for adults.

Archdiocesan Curriculum to be available ?

There is remarkably little available to prepare young children for Confirmation. Most material is geared toward teenagers. As our Archdiocese shifts to conferring the sacrament on 8-year-olds, parents will be challenged to find appropriate materials. The Archdiocese has indicated its plan to release a curriculum which will be made available in May of this year.

 

Introduction to Copywork: Copywork FAQ’s

Copywork is a favorite tool in Classical and Charlotte Mason homeschooling circles, but what is copywork? What benefits does it provide? How do you get started with it? How do you find passages?

I’m glad you asked.

 

What is Copywork?

Copywork is just what it sounds like. Depending on your child’s age and developmental level, he copies letters, words, sentences, and/or paragraphs. You provide him with a model, and he copies it in his own hand.

 

What benefits does copywork provide?

At first glance, copywork appears to be the epitome of the reviled “busywork.” What good can possibly come from this? So, so much it turns out. Imitating a model is how children learn language. It’s how they learn spoken language without formal instruction. We don’t set out a curriculum to teach infants and toddlers grammar, vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation, phrasing, etc. We just talk to our babies. And they copy what we say to them.

Copywork (and hearing and reading good literature) allows us to tap into this natural imitative process in order to teach written language. By imitating a good written model, our children learn spelling, punctuation, grammar, letter formation, vocabulary, and how to eloquently express a thought.

Not bad for 5-10 minutes of effort a day.

 

How do I get started with copywork?

With the littlest kids, you start with having them copy single letters. Progress to short words. Around second grade or so you can give them short sentences. Sentences can get longer through 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, and middle schoolers can begin copying paragraphs. However, if your kid has never done copywork before, even if they’re older, start with sentences. The right length is what they can copy neatly and accurately in 5-10 minutes.

 

 

Where do I find passages for copywork?

You can find copywork passages on the internet. You can buy copywork workbooks. Or you can simply choose a sentence or two from a book your child is reading. There are websites where you can make your own handwriting worksheets. You can type a passage into that, or you can write it by hand, or you can simply have your kid copy straight from the book.

Most people recommend choosing from a variety of types of passages – scripture, poetry, literature, great speeches, fiction, non-fiction. You want to give your child a variety of good models to imitate to get the most out of the exercise.

 

How much time should copywork take?

Most recommendations are to spend 5-10 minutes on copywork 3-4 times a week.

 

That doesn’t seem like much. Is copywork really effective for teaching language arts?

I’m going to pass you off to another website to answer this question. The short answer is “yes.” 🙂

In My Morning Basket: Apricot ABC (aka The Best Alphabet Book Ever)

Have you ever read a book and thought, “Why haven’t I ever heard of this book? Why isn’t everyone talking about this book? Did I miss something? People must know about this book!” (If you have, please, please share it in the comments below!)

I just finished reading this kind of book to my 5-year-old and I just had to share it with the world – or at least the tiny portion of the world that reads my little blog. Lucky you!

It’s called Apricot ABC by Miska Miles. The exquisite illustrations are by Peter Parnall.

I probably picked it up from a yard sale at some point, or perhaps it came from a box of my husband’s childhood books. I’ve seen it lying around my house recently and it looked like it might be sweet, so when I had a rare opportunity to snuggle up and read to just my little guy, I pulled it off the shelf.

I was afraid it would be a bit “babyish” for my strapping young man. He has known his ABCs for quite some time after all. But he was game, so we dove in. Right away I knew this wasn’t going to be your typical ABC book.

“An apricot tree grew knobby and tall
Beside a rickety garden wall.
A yellow-ripe apricot fell from that tree.
Swift as an arrow,
Just missing a sparrow,
It startled a . . . “

Bee. In case you’re wondering. It startled a Bee.

This ABC book has a plot! It tells the story of this apricot, and the plants and animals living near it, through the seasons. There’s an exciting scene with a “scary” hen that sends the birds and bees running to hide. And, of course, the book ends with a new tree growing from the original apricot seed.

ApricotABCChicken

The story is told is such beautiful language. The “Q” page is a favorite. Yes, the book is so amazing that the “Q” page is truly beautiful.

“Quietly, from special places
In the flickering shadow of Queen Anne’s laces,
Quickly ventured queer little things,
On fluttering, fragile gossamer wings.”

Not only is this book full of poetry, but the gorgeous illustrations double as a field guide for plants and insects. On the “U” and “V” pages you can identify dillweed, dock, ivy, purple violet, and Jimsonweed. Not to mention the aforementioned Queen Anne’s lace. The “C” and “D” pages have illustrations of crickets, butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies.

This book is perfect for Morning Basket Nature Study.

ApricotABC1

All of this, and you have the fun of finding the letter for each page hiding in the illustrations. Actually, that was the most absorbing part for my little guy the first time through. We will have to read this treasure many more times before we begin to exhaust the richness it offers.

I have so many ideas of how to use this book!

As we read it the first time we looked at the different shapes of leaves on the different plants. An older child could use it to draw and learn to identify the different plants. You could look up the plants and critters in a field guide and see how the illustrations compare to official drawings of the same. A simple story of seasons for a very small child. A fun point-to-the-animal book for a toddler. Not to mention the opportunities to find the words that start with that page’s letter,discuss the parts of speech of those words, examine the poetic devices used in the book. . . there are so many possibilities!

It is out of print, but there are a number of inexpensive copies available on Amazon. Check your library, but keep your eye out at used book sales! This is one you want to own.

In My Morning Basket: G is for Googol

I am constantly on the search for ways to make math fun and meaningful in my homeschool. Math really is cool when you’re playing with it, and I like to show my kids that there can be a reward for all of the hard work they do in their daily math books. One way I inspire love for math is by making sure my morning basket always contains a living math book.

Currently our morning basket math book is G is for Googol: A Math Alphabet Book. It’s by David M. Schwartz, the same guy who wrote How Much is a Million?

I seriously love this book.

We read one page every morning. Sometimes it just takes a few minutes as when we read “H is for Hundred.” We learned that cent means 100 and then examined some of the words with cent in them – centipede, centenarian, centennial. Five minutes and we’re done.

Other days, this gem of a book prompts further exploration of an interesting math concept. “R is for Rhombicosidodecahedron” prompted us to test Euler’s formula (vertices + sides = edges – 2) on the polyhedrons in block box.  Come on. You know you want kids who say rhombicosidodecahedron and actually know what Euler’s formula is. It makes you feel like one of those super awesome homeschooling moms with super smart homeschooled kids. This is reason enough to pick up this book.

polyhedron

Most often, this book leads to an amazing sense of awe and wonder. “M is for Mobius Strip” prompted cries of alarm. “How can it only have one side????” We also learned how many miles are in a light year (5,878,512,843,200), and that the closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is about 4 light years away. That’s four times that huge number there. Whoa.

lightyear

David M. Schwartz clearly loves math. And reading his books can go a long way toward inspiring a love of math in your children. Morning Basket has been the perfect time to share this book because it’s a low key time where all I ask of my kids is that they wonder along with me.

mobius

Summer Workshop Followup

That was so much fun!

What an amazing and inspiring group of women you all are! Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and encouragement and support. 

If you missed it, I can offer you a little taste of the awesomeness, but, alas, I cannot re-create for you the amazing synergy of the lovely group of women that was there. You'll just have to come to the next workshop for that. 

But you can learn how to WOOP your summer like we did. 

Here is the script that walks you through the workshop so you can pretend you were there. 

And here are the worksheets we used:

Summer Dreams

Obstacles

Working the Plan

Summer Bucket List

And here are some pictures of my kids working on a giant summer bucket list. Thank you, Jen for the inspiration on that. Even the baby got involved!

 

 

Dyslexia and the Gift of Neurodiversity

I have a fundamental belief that each of us is a unique creation with strengths and weaknesses that equip us for our individual mission in this life. I have struggled so much with the idea of “learning disabilities” because I feel a hyper-focus on a person’s weaknesses can overshadow the development of that person’s gifts.

It makes sense to me that the human species benefits from the fact that no two humans are the same. Some people are strong. Some are fast. Some are amazing artists. Some are compassionate healers. Some are great engineers. Few people are all of those things.

Neurodiversity, that is the differences between our brains that make it easier for one person to learn math and for another to learn to read, is an evolutionary benefit for us humans. It allows us to excel at group problem solving. Because we each have a unique brain, we each have a unique way of approaching a problem and unique abilities to use in solving a problem. It’s this great diversity of brains that has allowed humans to produce electricity, build skyscrapers, write life-transforming literature, create heart-breaking works of art, create the internet, and use the internet for an unbelievably diverse multitude of functions.

Harper Lee

Our society has come to worship at the altar of literacy. It is the one thing we must all master and love. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading and writing. I’m a reader. And a writer. I believe the ability to read well and write competently are skills that every person must acquire to live a constructive and fulfilling life in our society.

I also believe that the over attention given to these pursuits is damaging to some children. The idea that every child should love reading and writing just doesn’t gel with me. While we agree that every adult should be able to perform basic math operations, we don’t insist that every child should love solving equations in their free time. Though there are certainly those who do.

Michelangelo

So what does this mean if your child struggles to read? It means that you should help him learn to read! It also means that you shouldn’t force him to spend an inordinate amount of time struggling to read and write to the exclusion of pursuing and developing his natural gifts.

It means you should help your child see his great contribution to the neurodiversity of the amazing human race. Help him to see that he has unique strengths and weaknesses just like everyone else. Help him discover what his strengths are, and help him to flourish in those strengths. Help him to overcome his weaknesses so that they don’t interfere with the expression of his strengths. Whatever you do, don’t laser focus on his weaknesses and ignore his strengths.

Marie Curie

There are ways of helping children who struggle to learn to read. We should continue to discover and employ these tools. But, and I know this is sacrilege in many circles, I don’t believe the ultimate goal is creating a child who loves to read. I believe the ultimate goal is a child who loves to learn, who knows and can express his gifts, and can employ reading and writing as tools toward that end.

Memorize the Beatitudes – More Helpful Hints!

Are you having a hard time memorizing the Beatitudes? We find that getting them in order is a real challenge. So we came up with a mnemonic device to help us. And we want to share it with you! And just to help you out, I turned it into a free printable.  Because I'm awesome like that. 

Remember back in elementary school when we learned about the order of the planets and we all learned that "My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas?" Apparently these days the very intelligent mother serves nachos because Pluto isn't a real planet anymore. But whatever. The point is, we memorized that sentence and - BAM! - we knew the order of the planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

So we came up with a couple of sentences to help us get the beatitudes in order. Helen, in typical Helen fashion, offered up a sentence about monsters and mopping up poop. I rejected that one, but you should feel free to make up your own sentence if mine is too boring for you. 

Because there are so many beatitudes, we have three sentences. Or two sentences and a sentence fragment if you want to get technical about it. Here they are:

Please make me ham and mashed potatoes. Pretty please? I prefer eating red raspberry pie. 

The printable below shows you how these sentences match up to the beatitudes. 

This little ditty, along with the slides I posted before, are really helping us with our goal of memorizing the Beatitudes. Our goal is to master them by the end of the Easter season. 

Click the image below to get the newest free printable!

Memorize the Similes of Salt and Light – More Free Printables!

Are you having fun with the Beatitudes Memorization Printable? Well, I have some more printable goodness for you.

As I mentioned in my last post, we are working on memorizing Matthew Chapter 5, AKA The Sermon on the Mount, or as my husband calls it, How to be a Christian - In a Nutshell. The Beatitudes are the first big chunk of that. And they're surprisingly challenging to memorize which is why you really want to check out that post for tips and tools to get it done.

The Similes of Salt and Light come after the Beatitudes, and they are much simpler to memorize. In fact, they'd make a great place to start with scripture memorization. And I've made it even easier with these printables.

Here's how it works. I've broken the verses into bite-sized pieces and paired each piece with a memorable picture. The picture helps anchor the text in your brain. You'll start by going through the slides with pictures and the texts printed on them. Once you feel like you're ready, you'll switch to the pictures only. And once that's easy, you go without the aids.

You don't actually have to print the pictures. You can just scroll through the slides on your computer if that makes more sense for you.

It's unbelievably satisfying to hear children reciting scripture. Especially cute 5-year-old boys.

IMAG0290
Gratuitous picture of my cute boys. And my messy kitchen.

So now, without further ado. Here are the magic memory slides. For more details on how to use them, please refer to the previous post.

 

Matthew 5:13 - Pictures and Words

Matthew 5:13 - Pictures Only

Matthew 5: 14-15 - Pictures and Words

Matthew 5: 14-15 Pictures Only

Memorize the Beatitudes – with a free printable!

Earlier this year I set us the ambitious task of memorizing Matthew Chapter 5 as part of our Morning Basket Time.

Having grown up Protestant, my fist inclination was to search for a song. The scripture songs I memorized as a kid are still with me and I can still recite 1 John 4:7-8 because of the Psalty Song.

 

So naturally, I began my search on YouTube for Beatitude songs. I found some fun ones, but they weren’t really working for us as far as actually memorizing the verses went.

In my search, I stumbled across an amazing resource by Bible Buffet which uses the trick of pairing words to pictures to help you memorize lengthy passages. This guy has put together an amazing resource and we worked our way through his videos with a decent amount of success.

But we hit a snag when we tried to review it. I’ve found that depending on YouTube during morning time is not always a good idea at our house. Kids tune out, or we get distracted by other videos, or the technology doesn’t work for some stupid reason. I wanted to print the pictures used in Bible Buffet’s videos so that we could review them quickly and easily.

I did actually contact the channel’s owner to ask if he had the pictures on file. Sadly, he does not.

I told my kids I was going to put together pictures to help us review the Beatitudes and I asked them if they wanted me to use the original pictures (Bible Buffet suggested I could do screen shots of the images), or if they wanted me to create new pictures. They voted new pictures.

I believe one of the reasons the original pictures didn’t stick for us is because one face blurred into another. The images were 100% appropriate and captured the tone of the scripture passages perfectly. But they weren’t exactly memorable. In my version, the images are all clip art. They may even seem irreverent to you in some cases, but the idea is to use memorable pictures, and even a bit of humor, to cement the words into your brain.

I created slides in Google Presentation that you can view and print and use at home. You can also just pull them up on your computer and scroll through the slides. One set has the words with each picture, and the second set has just the pictures. Start with the words, and when you feel confident, move to just the picture cues until you can do it from memory with no cues.

You want to work on about 3 beatitudes at a time – don’t try and do them all at once. I highly recommend watching the Bible Buffet video above to get an idea of the process of memorizing this way.

We have now used this process for memorizing the Similes of Salt and Light. It was fast, easy, and fun. I am forever grateful to Bible Buffet for his videos that taught me to memorize scripture this way!

Here are the slides!

jesuswordsjesusnowords



Homeschooling with a Baby: 5 Steps to a Daily Schedule that Works

 

baby

Remember last year when I went crazy with the Managers of Their Homes schedule planning system? I was high on pregnancy hormones and ready to take on the world. And I did. And it was awesome. And if you don’t have a baby or toddler to add spice to your life, I still highly recommend the exercise.

I knew even as I was doing it that it wouldn’t last. A tiny part of me dared to dream that this baby would be different, this baby would be predictable, this baby would take two predictable naps a day alone in her crib allowing us to keep a tidy little schedule where we do math at 10:05 every morning. But most of me knew better.

I thought about repeating the scheduling exercise this year because it really was so helpful last year. But I know myself well enough to know that it would only serve to discourage me. And so this year I’ve taken a different approach to planning our days.

Baby number four is just as predictably unpredictable as her three older siblings. But I have changed. I have embraced the flexibility afforded by a baby that doesn’t take a two hour nap at 1pm every day. She goes with the flow and so we can continue to flow – fieldtrips and playdates and visits to Grandmother’s house can continue without fear of upsetting the baby’s schedule. 

But how in the world do I teach the other three when I never know when or if the baby will sleep for more than 20 minutes?

We have a system.

It’s a flexible system. It’s a system that requires everyone else to be flexible. But it’s working.

So what is it?

I teach when I can. 

What? You wanted something more revolutionary? More helpful? Let me elaborate and see if it helps.

Here are the 5 steps I follow to “schedule” our days in order to make sure we do everything we need to do.

1) Plan lessons

Each week I create a weekly plan for assignments. I know that I want to read and when and I plan which pages I will read on which days. I am super realistic about this. I know that 2-3 pages is ideal and that 4 pages is the maximum number of pages we will realistically get through of any book. I’m okay with this because my goal is not to read words in a book while in the presence of my children – my goal is to help my children make a connection with interesting and important stories and information.

I write out which songs we will sing, which math facts we will drill, which math lessons will be taught and on which days. I look at the whole picture so that I’m not trying to do a long reading, teach a difficult math lesson, set up a difficult science experiment all on the same day.

2) Plan and write out individual assignments

This starts the night before, or, if I’m really on top of things, the weekend before. Each of my kids has a number of subjects that they can do independently. I make a list each day to remind them what they need to do on their own that day. It’s pretty much the same every day, but the checklist helps keep them on track and accountable. 

This checklist is available to them so that they can get up in the morning and get right to work without me. When I need to go attend to the baby, they can do their independent work.

3) Begin my daily teaching with Morning Time

When school starts for the day, we start with Morning Time. This is the work we all do together. You can see what’s in our Morning Basket here.

This is where things get flexible. Sometimes Morning Time is right after breakfast and the baby joins us. Sometimes, the baby needs to go down for a nap right after breakfast and the kids start their individual assignments while I nurse the baby down for a nap. Sometimes the baby plays on the floor while I teach. Sometimes she nurses. Sometimes she hangs out in the Ergo. Sometimes Morning Time is split into two parts because baby gets fussy in the middle of it. And sometimes we enjoy a nice leisurely morning time with extra read-alouds because she sleeps quietly upstairs for three hours.

I’ve given up trying to make my babies do anything like sleep on a regular schedule. If you’ve accomplished that, I applaud and envy you! But if your baby is like all of mine have been, just work around it. They’ll eventually move into a new phase that complicates your life in a different way.

4) Teach individual lessons when I can

This requires all of us to be flexible. I might call a child from his individual work to teach him a math lesson. Someone might have to step away from the Legos for a phonics lesson. It might be before lunch. It might be after lunch. My only rule about this is that mommy is done teaching school at 2pm. My kids have to have all of their school work done before they can have screen time at 4 o’clock, so if they’ve messed around and been uncooperative and need me to give them a spelling quiz at 3:45 so they can have screen time at 4pm, they’re out of luck.

5) Stick to the plan

This is really the meat of it. I made a plan. I was very realistic about it, so it should be doable. I left room for life with a baby. So long as nothing out of the ordinary happens, I should be able to check off everything on my list. This is where my discipline comes in. It’s hard to pull the kids away from an elaborate game they got going with while I was busy with the baby, but I made the plan for a reason. I went through a super involved, very intentional, prayer-led planning process to select the material I want to teach to my children. I need to stay true to that plan in order to stay true to my vocation. So even if the kids are all playing nicely and I could be free to read or blog, if the school work isn’t done for the day, I need to teach.

We’re three weeks in and this system is working quite well for us. It gives me the flexibility I need to take care of the baby, and it also allows me the freedom to hit Jazzercise a couple of mornings a week, to invite a surprise visitor in for a few minutes, or to allow a leisurely breakfast. It takes advantage of the benefits of homeschooling without devolving into habit of never quite making it to that school stuff we meant to do.

So what’s working for you regarding schedules/routines right now? Are you finding you seek more or less structure than you did a year ago? What are the keys to making your day feel good? I love to hear from you!

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