Bottled Ponderings: The Liturgical Calendar And CCD At Home

Monday, September 15, 2014

The Liturgical Calendar And CCD At Home

Speaking at a homeschooling 101 event many years ago, I declared that in our home we majored in Religion. For the many years that follow, it was indeed and continued to be so. We live, eat, breathe, move and have our being in our Faith, in our God. One of the primary reasons we homeschool is the preservation of our children's faith and to instill in them a truly Catholic identity. The (early) days were a breeze with such joyful minds to pass on my proudly-Dominican acquired knowledge from the old country. I didn't realize how much I owe those Sisters and that dear alma mater that fed me in the language of the Church (via the Baltimore Catechism) until I started teaching my own children.

Fast forward to this year, four of our five are officially homeschooled. I am teaching four different levels of Religion class on top of CCD materials. I have five million different ideas and plans that need to be toned down a bit! We are very fortunate to belong to a parish whose CCD program is top notch. For the Confirmation class alone (I have another one this year), they get to be educated by the most amazing minds - of Friars, Sisters and professors at the nearby Pontifical College. It is a priceless gift.

My intellectual pride moment was given a dose of reality when I asked the first-grader to recite the Our Father and he said this " Our Father, full of grace..."!!!! Here I was thinking all along, through the many years of praying everywhere and anywhere in both English and Latin, that everyone was getting the program! So this year we are back to square one. And I cannot tell you how much that delights me. There is such a sweetness to the early years of teaching Religion. Kids are so honest and simple and so fun to teach in the elementary levels. It is also refreshing to be humbled that my first-grader will not be finishing this year with a degree in Apologetics and Church History LOL. He might know some Latin but he will not yet be parsing Summa Theologiae ;-)

we love our books!

Anyhow, the big question is: how to incorporate the CCD material on top of the home lesson plans that revolves around the liturgical year? What I did is to set a day to go over the CCD material (Faith and Life and YouCat) for the following Sunday, as follows:

Monday - First Grade
Tuesday - Fourth Grade
Wednesday - Sixth Grade (YouCat)
Thursday - Seventh Grade

So throughout the week we go through different grade materials and everyone gets an insight (or a review) into what the others are learning. The older kids find the First Grade material to be sweet. I do not discuss the chapters at length as they would be hearing it at class anyway but I do entertain questions. And yes, the above-mentioned schedule is on top of the Religion class I teach at home (Baltimore Catechism, My Catholic Faith) It sounds like a lot and repetitive but it's not. We cover different topics and celebrate different feast and fast days so it really is like a big party of Catholic knowledge. There will be cookies and cakes to bake, crafts and lapbooks to create and lots of new fun things to celebrate the Faith. After this year no one will be praying Our Father, full of grace! I hope.