Memorizing Six Psalms

Our homeschool is a Catholic school.  There are so many benefits to a Catholic education.  Children who attend a Catholic school know their faith, and love it.

For example, when my son, The Naturalist, was preparing for his First Holy Communion, he attended a pre-Communion retreat called Jesus Day.  One portion of the retreat was a trivia contest.  The children divided themselves into 2 groups: boys vs. girls.  Unfortunately, our group was very lopsided, and The Naturalist and one other boy were pitted against ten girls.  Nevertheless, the two boys beat the group of ten girls, all because The Naturalist could answer almost every question posed to him.  It was one of my happiest moments as a parent!

My children also love praying the rosary and memorizing Psalms.  Really.  In fact, they insisted that I videotape them reciting the six psalms they memorized during the school year last year.  They memorized Psalms 1, 23, 27, 34, 100, and 128.  Memorizing psalms is actually not too difficult.  Every day at lunchtime, we read the daily Gospel reading and pray a Psalm.  In approximately one month (two months for Psalm 34), the children had it down cold.

Here are the kids reciting six Psalms.  Isn’t a Catholic education a beautiful thing?

Praying the Rosary with young children

I was lucky enough to participate in an online discussion with other
Catholic moms about praying the rosary with young children. Here is some
of the advice they offered:

Start small. Instead of praying an entire Rosary, start with only a
decade. Praying only one decade of the Rosary successfully is better than
praying an entire Rosary and having the children hate it.

My kids love to color, so a rosary coloring book is a fabulous way to keep
the children “busy”, yet still focused on prayer. You can find some at The Catholic Company.

Another helpful item is using a rosary CD (as opposed to Mom or Dad saying
all the prayers). That way, the little ones don’t break the “rhythm” or
the “flow” of the rosary every time they drop a crayon. Most Catholic
bookstores or Catholic Internet sites sell them.

Another mom suggested keeping a Rosary CD and cheap, plastic Rosaries in
the car during Advent and Lent, and praying the Rosary whenever the car
ride was more than 20 minutes. The car is a great place to pray the
Rosary – the kids are a captive audience!

If the children share a bedroom, another option is to pray while the kids
are actually in their beds. A mom friend with three boys (who all share a
room) prays the Rosary with her sons after she’s already tucked them into
bed. It settles them down and helps them fall asleep, much like a bedtime
story might.

One mom said that she gives each kid an egg carton, cuts off the last two
egg holders (leaving ten places to store things) and gives each kid a
small bowl of M&M’s. The kids place one M&M in each of the ten egg carton
holes each time they pray a Hail Mary, then the children may eat the M&M’s
once the Rosary is over.

My four year old gets confused about when to advance to the next bead.  I told her to move to the next bead every time she hears the word “Amen”.  This has done wonders for her.  Sometimes I’ll even be a bit dramatic and say the “Amen” a little louder than the rest of the prayer.  Then she knows to advance a bead.

Finally, I always considered 3 to be the minimum age to say the Rosary.
Prior to that, the Rosary would be prayed during naptime!

Great Bible Study for Kids

I have used the “Come and See” Kids Catholic Bible study for two years now, and I absolutely love this series.  I have used these both for homeschooling and at our church for religious education classes.

The series contains three books, The Life of Jesus, Friends of God, and In the Beginning.  I have used the first two books, but I have not yet used In the Beginning.

All three books contain the same format:  Each lesson includes a Bible story, a coloring page, and a craft.  Two years ago, I used The Life of Jesus as part of our religious instruction for homeschooling.  My kids loved it!  Not only did we learn the lessons, color the pictures, and do the craft, but we also made a lapbook, so that we could go back and review what we had learned about Jesus’ life.  (The lapbook was also a great way to show the grandparents all they had learned about Jesus!).  It was a lot of fun.

Last year, I used Friends of God both in my Kindergarten CCD (or now called PSR) class, and I also used it in our homeschool.  The Friends of God was easy to use because it closely followed the liturgical year.  The book begins with Bible figures from the Old Testament.  Around Advent, we began studying the New Testament, and the first lesson of the New Testament was Jesus’ birth.   Lessons about the apostles John and “Doubting” Thomas were studied around Easter, and the last lesson deals with Paul and Pentecost.

With my Kindergarten CCD class at church, I collected all the coloring pages at the end of each class.  Then, at the end of the year, I bound them all together, and it made a wonderful book for the kids to keep to remember the year.  Additionally, I typed up shortened versions of all the stories, and at the last class, the kids glued all the stories into their books.  I really liked this idea, because I sent each kid home with a book containing a picture and story of each Bible figure we studied that year.  The two photos below are the cover and the inside of my daughter’s book.  (If this idea is appealing to you, and you’d like to have my Word document, post a comment to this post, and I will have your email address and I will email it to you.)

To make things a bit more challenging for my second grader, I would have him retell the Bible story in his own words for his book that he was making at home.  (Yes, I’m big into narration in our homeschool!)  He seemed to like it, and it helped him remember the stories and practice his writing skills at the same time.  He also collected all his pages and bound them in a book to display at the end of the year.

If you’re looking for a fun way to study the faith, either at home or in a parish setting, I highly recommend these books.  They are fun, easy to do, and the crafts use materials that are easily found in the home.  It is a simple and joyful way to learn about God!  My kids loved it!