Catholic Homeschool Support

I was so thrilled when I received these two books from Mary’s Books. They are reprints of Dujarie Press Saints and Famous Catholics Biographies by Brother Ernest and Brother Roberto from the 1960′s. The books are the size of typical early reader books with a light blue cover and a simple black lined picture both on the cover and then black lined drawings in the text.

Not knowing what to expect, I opened the first book, “A Story of the Infant Jesus of Prague” by Brother Ernest, C.S.C. (32 pages) and was entranced. I have a number of Catholic saint books from several series; one is a very old set in hardback (what a find on a used Catholic books list) and of course the Mary Fabian Windeatt along with lots of books that are collections of saint stories. But, none of these were really appropriate for my beginning readers. The level 1 book opens with the following text:

Many years ago, no one knows just when, an artist in Spain made a very lovely statue of the Infant Jesus out of wax. We do not know who the artist was, and we do not know for whom he made the beautiful statue.

Isn’t that all very strange?

But I am very glad that the statue was made. I think you will be, too, when you read about it. Its story is a very interesting one. Tell all of your friends about it.

The book continues on to describe the first miracle attributed to the devotion and how the statue lost it’s hands and how they were recovered. Finally, children are introduced to all the miracles that a devotion to the Infant Jesus of Prague are attributed.

Ten books are available in the Level One series and retail for $6.95 each or $62.55 for all ten books:

• A Story of St. Therese
• A Story of St. Anthony
• A Story of the Infant of Prague
• A Story of Saint Bernadette
• A Story of Saint Joan of Arc
• A Story of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary
• A Story of Saint Charles
• A Story of Saint Margaret of Scotland
• A Story of Saint Agatha
• A Story of Saint Cecilia

For level 2 readers, I had the privilege to read a book from the series, “In the Footprints of Saints” by Brother Roberto, C.S.C. Again, the book is the size of the typical early reader book with a blue cover and a black and white image on the front. I began to read “Stairway to the Stars, A story of St. Germaine Cousin”. The book was 94 pages long so more advanced readers have time to really get to know the saint in language that is appropriate to their reading level. The story begins:

This is the strange and wonderful story of a girl, deformed, ugly, unloved and unwanted, who became one of the great saints of the Catholic Church and who works many miracles today for the sake of suffering people. The girl is Germaine Cousin. Her of of twenty-two years on earth was filled with pain and loneliness and suffering, and now that she is at rest, she does her best to relieve the pain and lonliness and suffering of all who come to know her. For, to know her is to admire her, and in admiring her, we come to love her.

The book simply invites the reader to learn more. You learn about her life, unwanted and mistreated and how she turns to God for comfort and “to help her bear patiently all the bitterness and anguish that lay ahead” and how she attends mass on her own daily and even encourages her care giver to do the same in spite of a busy life. For sensitive children, some of the unwarranted abuse she suffered at the hands of the wife might be a bit disturbing, “the terrible woman raised her fist high above the girl’s head and brought it down with all her strength on Germaine’s head”. But, for my children the scenes were not too disturbing and truly give the reader an image of the suffering that she patiently endured.

And, in spite of the suffering, Germaine is able to take joy in her work of tending sheep and instructing other children in the faith through stories of the saints, her devotion to the rosary and sharing her meager food. Children are also introduced to the miracles attributed to St. Germaine including the wolves not attacking her household’s sheep and even the conversion of her primary tormentor.

Even as an adult, I was moved by the story and my 10 year old daughter, a reluctant reader, who has never voluntarily read a saint book inhaled it! I have fallen in love with a saint about whom I would have never known. These books cost $9.95 each and more titles will be added to the following list:

• Stairway To The Stars-A Story of St. Germaine Cousin
• No Tears For The Bride-A Story of St. Perpetua
• Bring Me An Ax-A Story of St. Boniface
• The Girl Who Laughed At Satan-St. Rose of Lima
• Music From The Hunger Pit-A Story of St. Maximilian Kolbe

I love the fact that children can read for themselves such beautiful stories about our beloved saints for themselves. The books can be used both as an introduction to the saints, and as a way to learn about history and geography and of course our faith. These books would be lovely gifts for First Communion or as a gift to a god child for Easter or Christmas. You can purchase the books at www.marys-books.com.

I do not have an official label of dyslexia for any of my children. But, with my first, we spent many hours and went through many programs trying to find one that could teach my son how to read. I finally went through the training to become a certified Reading Reflex tutor and we used the program successfully. But, I had many difficulties – the primary problems included pacing. I never quite knew when to move him along or how fast to push. Fluency was another issue. Reading Reflex was clear that children need to read to develop fluency and strongly encourage picking material a bit below reading level to work on fluency. No other guidelines were offered. Thankfully I stumbled upon a fluency program that was very easy to implement in a homeschool setting and was very affordable compared to school based programs (plus they almost all required an outside trained tutor to administer) and it is called Great Leaps. I will come back to the program in a subsequent post and describe why students need to work on fluency and why Great Leaps does such a good job.

Back to the topic of this post – reading. So, I was able to successfully teach my next three children. In fact, my fourth required very little instruction from me. As a tangent, I believe that most children are hard wired to learn how to read – so whatever program you use, they will make their way through and end up successful readers (perhaps not great spellers though). For a smaller percentage of children, a more detailed program is required to teach phonics. You can go the Orton Gillingham route – it is tried and true and very thorough. But, it is not a program you can just walk into and use. And, it is very expensive. Most parents opt to hire a tutor to implement it with their child.

Programs like Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, Alphaphonics, Pathways and all the rest present phonics in a sequential method. The problem is that they do not offer strategies for children that simply cannot blend the sounds together or do not hear the difference in sounds. So, I have another child, my fifth, who when he encountered the word “cat”, deftly produced the sounds “ccccc” “aaaaa” “ttttt” – and never could say the word cat.

Reading Reflex addressed this issue by teaching activities for phonemic awareness. Unfortunately, it was not easy to find a flow through the program. I stumbled back upon AeBeCeDarian a month ago. I had looked into it five years ago, and chose to go with another program that I had sold several years ago believing that somehow I must be a much better teacher

What makes AeBeCeDarian so much more user friendly is that the entire program is basically scripted out for you. It is reasonably priced at around $55 / level (level A does have 2 parts), and the student book is affordable for subsequent students. The company provides a PDF file that has the placement test.

You can use this method to teach all of your readers – the ones that get it will move quickly through the program, the ones that need the extra help will receive it. Fluency and handwriting instructions are included. It is multi sensory using letter tiles to build words. Turtle talk and People talk are used for sounding out words. Phonemic awareness exercises are scripted into the program.

We have only used the program for two weeks and I am quite pleased with how it is laid out. I can see using this with the rest of my children because it is not burdensome or difficult to understand. You do not need to read a manual to start.

The first set of words include sat, top and map. The child has the three letter tiles for sat and a blank page with three lines. The teacher reads from the left page as she moves her finger under each of the blank lines using the script provided. The student moves the tiles to the correct space saying the sound as he moves them. Then the teacher demonstrates the tap and say method where she taps each sound and says the sound, and then says the word in “people talk” as she drags her finger under the word. These are called sound puzzles in Reading Reflex.

The fluency exercises are in the student book. A page of letters that the student has been working on are presented, along with a grid at the bottom to record the date and number correct. Clear goals are given as to when to move on and the student is timed for 20 seconds. Another page has the words and follows the same directions. You do not move on until the child has a sufficient fluency to indicate that automaticity has been achieved. In order to read and actually understand the content, a child needs to be fluent – he needs to not think about what each letter represents. By the time a non-fluent child has finished decoding a passage as opposed to reading a passage, most often he will not remember what he has read. That is why he can encounter the word “cat”, sound it out and say it, and then a sentence later, encounter the same word and again must decode it.

By the end of A1, a child will have word cards for zip, jet, fib, yes, pen, wet, bet and will, spill, flag, drum and fell as well as chin, chop, rich, duck, cash, and black. 79 words all together are presented.

Please visit this post at a later date as I share how my son has progressed.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tony Barone at our recent Catholic homeschool conference. He’s a parishioner at a local church, the father of 5 children, a Major in the United States Air Force and has worked as a prosecutor and defense attorny. Tony write Christian adventures stories that have received positive reviews and now he has book 2 out. Please take a moment to visit his website and view the video.