2020 sure sent us on a wild ride. At the end of the summer, with a baby on the way, a move in the near future once our house was finished being built and several months spent at home in lockdown because of COVID, we made the difficult decision to pull our girls from public school and homeschool them for the year. Even though I have a teaching background, I knew this wouldn't be easy for so many reasons, but I also knew that the options we had with our local school just wouldn't work and wouldn't be fair to our kids. While I knew it would be hard, I also knew there would be some perks too, like being flexible, especially when the new baby was born, or when we moved. I also loved that we would be able to incorporate more of the Catholic faith into our day than we ever had before.
Prior to the shut down in March of 2020, both of our older girls were enrolled in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd at our church for their faith formation. In addition to that we prayed as a family on the walk to school, at meals, and before bed. We started adding more days to celebrate to our calendar to try living liturgically more often. Many of these things we had to do before or after school, so with homeschool, I knew it could be a part of our day.
I want to share some of the ways we've incorporated religion and the Catholic faith into our homeschool day and some of the resources we've been using. I am by no means an expert and I know many Catholic families that homeschool follow a set curriculum. Since we plan to put the girls back into a traditional school, we are following the standards versus a curriculum and adding religion in throughout the day, so it is easily something we can continue whether they are in homeschool or a traditional school.
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Scheduling a Time for Bible Study
We start our day with Bible Study. I have a list of ideas that the girls can work on independently. We try to do this all together so that I can model praying, reading from the Bible, listening to worship music, etc. Some days the big girls work on this independently while I'm cleaning up breakfast or taking care of the little girls.
To make it easier, I have a basket that we've put go to resources in - handwriting books, saint of the day coloring books, books about saints, Bibles, rosaries and more. The items in here can be rotated out to create more interest but the girls know where to find everything.
Religious Formation Programming
Our girls are still technically enrolled in faith formation through our church, but we opted for the homeschool option, so they don't meet in person with a class or teacher. This year, all of our programming is using Discover! Finding Faith in Life from St. Mary's Press using the Catholic Children's Bible as the text.
I love love love this Bible and using it versus a traditional textbook has been amazing. There is a Home Guide that walks you through each lesson (about 30 minutes) and facilitates age appropriate discussions and activities. They also have an online version of the program where a certified catechists walks your child through the lesson in pre recorded videos with a chance for students to answer questions and share ideas. We do both types of lessons, in person with me and the online versions, depending on the week.
Saint of the Day
I printed out all of the pages of my Catholic Saint Coloring book for each girl, hole punched the pages and put them in a binder in order of feast day. Each morning, the girls check to see if there is a saint that day. If there is, we read about the saint, color the picture and then turn to a video or podcast for more information. Not all saints have a kid friendly video to go with them, but we search and see what we can find.
Some days we celebrate a little more for certain saints like St. Nicholas, St.Therese of Lisieux, Our Lady of Guadalupe and St Patrick. On those days, we might read a special book, eat specific foods, or have an activity to do specific to that saint. You can read more about our liturgical celebrations here.
Rosary
During the pandemic, our archdiocese would stream one of the bishops praying the Rosary. We attempted to do it as a family most weeks. This was new for us and some weeks it was a success and other weeks the girls lost interest or became distracted. Either way, they came out of it with a better understanding of how to pray the Rosary, so they could do it independently during Bible Study time if they wanted. Some days we will pray a decade together.
Also, a few years ago the girls made their own Rosary Lapbooks. We often kept these in the car (pre-pandemic) and would listen to the Rosary on the drive to church, and they would use their lapbooks to help them. We brought the lapbooks inside so they can reference them when needed. I still refer to the lapbooks as an adult who didn't grow up praying the Rosary and still needs help remembering the order or words to certain prayers.
Bibles
In our Bible study basket we have a variety of Bibles that the girls can look at. Our favorite is the Catholic Children's Bible from St. Mary's Press. Since we use their curriculum through our church, each girl has her own Bible. I also include Bible story books in the basket at a variety of levels, so the girls can all read something at their level.
Prayer Journals
At the start of the school year I gave each of my girls a composition book and let them decorate the covers with faith based stickers and markers. They are allowed to write in these during Bible Study time. They can write prayers that they've memorized or a prayer they have on their heart. It is their special place to write/talk to God.
Technology
Some days we let technology help with the teaching! For the Saint of the Day, we've found it helpful to search YouTube for kid friendly videos. You can also find saint videos on Amazon Prime, FORMED, and EWTN, but we've found that many of these videos are also on YouTube, so we start our search there.
We will also use our Amazon Alexa to play praise and worship music. We also have the Saint of the Day skill enabled, so we will get more information about a saint that way. Alexa can also recite Catholic prayers if you enable that skill.
The Shining Light Doll creators have a podcast called Saints Stories for Kids that is another great resource for short, kid friendly information about our friends and heroes in heaven.
Some days we incorporate some art and faith. Catholic Icing has a YouTube channel where she teaches you how to draw or do different art projects related to the faith. We've also found a few faith based pictures on Art for Kids Hub like the Nativity picture.
I also will allow the girls to use my tablet to play Little Saint Adventures or my Catholic Mass Item BOOM Cards. BOOM Cards are digital task cards. There is one question per card and it is self checking so the kids get instant feedback on if their answer is correct. I also included sound on these cards so that my first grader can use them even if she can't read all the words.
Handwriting Books
A project I created specifically for my girls this year was a Catholic Handwriting Book. I didn't want to spend a ton of time explicitly teaching handwriting, but I wanted them to have a chance to practice and review correct formation. My oldest has been begging to learn cursive, so I created everything in print and in cursive.
The girls are working through uppercase and then lowercase letters. Each day there is a Catholic vocabulary word that relates to the letter they are practicing. Once they've mastered individual letters, they will go onto writing memorized prayers.
I wasn't overly concerned about what style of letters the girls used, just as long as they were taking their time and writing correctly. I know each teacher is required to teach different fonts so as of right now, I've included a few different options including a Zaner Bloser version.
If we make it through the whole handwriting product this year, they will have practiced all letters (upper and lowercase) and 13 Catholic prayers including:
- Hail Mary
- Our Father
- Glory Be
- Sign of the Cross
- Angel of God
- Grace Before Meals
- Grace After Meals
- Morning Prayer
- Evening Prayer
- Hail, Holy Queen
- The Apostles' Creed
- The Nicene Creed
- The Act of Contrition
Free Catholic Handwriting Pages
Whether you are homeschooling, or just looking for ways to incorporate the Catholic faith into your daily life with kids, I want to give you a free sample of my Catholic Handwriting Pages. This freebie is the uppercase print version of all the letters of the alphabet. Try it out and let me know what you think!!
To grab your free handwriting pages, enter your name and email and submit. Then go check your email. Your freebie should be waiting for you. If you have problems getting your freebie, check our FAQs for more help.
I hope this helps give you some ideas of simple ways to add Catholicism to your routine with your family. My oldest are 7 and 9 as we are doing this, but the toddler is along for the ride too. We just continue to lay the foundation and add these ideas into our day and on top of what we were already doing as a family.
