Catholic Homeschool Support

I joined Faith and Family Flix several months ago. We have a Blockbuster online DVD account, but I found the movie selections for FFF much easier to navigate, so now we have both. On to the point of this post, one of my best discoveries was the series, “The Footprints of God“. I watched the first DVD I received, “Mary, Mother of God”. What is so unique about the series, is that they are filmed on site. As Steve Ray talks, you get to see the sites – the actual house of the Dormition of Mary and many other treasured locations. You travel with Steve as he visits all these sites. You have a sense of the scope of the travels that Holy Family made. You see the river Jordon where Jesus was baptized. You are there where Jesus walked on water. You watch as modern fishermen bring in their catches just as the apostles did.

When Steve discussed, “Peter, The Keeper of the Keys”, you see the rock where Jesus proclaimed,

“And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.”

Upon seeing the rock, you understand exactly what Jesus meant.

Steve is passionate about his subject – his love for the Holy Mother, for the Church and for Our Lord is quite evident. My family was enthralled to watch the DVD’s and we came away with a much deeper understanding and appreciation for the history of the Church.

I received two books in the mail last week and found them to be delightful. Cynthia Reeg is a a former Catholic School librarian.

The first book is entitled “Gifts from God”. It is a soft cover, 31 page book that has beautiful photographs for the art work. The book offers:

“a celebration of God’s love as seen through the eyes of children”

On one page is a blurred image of a rainbow with the text from Genesis 9:13:

I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

On the opposite page is a picture of a little girl smiling.

Another page depicts a beautiful golf course that is set against mountains with two children on an Easter egg hunt. The Biblical text on the left is from Leviticus 26:12:

I will walk among you and be your God.

And the text on the opposite page says “God walks beside me”.

I enjoyed the pictures and the text. My little guys pointed and talked about the pictures. With the older children, we were able to discuss the Biblical passages and the meaning as tied to the picture.

The second book was loads of fun: “Kitty Kerplunking” – what a wonderful way to discuss prepositions! Cynthia uses her cats to teach about prepositions. Each page features a picture of a cat doing something and a sentence using a preposition (it is in capital bold letters). On one page, you see a picture of a cat under a chair and the sentence says: “Preppy the kitty… chased a mouse UNDER the chair.”

At the beginning of the books, the author gives a brief description of prepositions and then proceeds to show how prepositions are used by depicting the adventures of a kitty. Following the adventures of the cat are several pages of activities including a crossword puzzle, word search, fill in the blank and scrambled prepositions all aimed at giving children another opportunity to work with prepositions. Answer keys to all the exercises are provided at end of the book.

The book is not exactly geared towards older children – but – this is a great way to introduce prepositions to the middle elementary school kids using great visuals. Thank you for a great resource.

I had an opportunity to listen to a CD, “Soul” by W. Keith Moore after receiving a message from him:

Hey folks, my name is Keith Moore. I am a convert/musician who has been in the music business for years and I have a new album about my journey Home. I am looking for a way to reach and encourage young Catholics in their journey.

Whenever I find another Catholic artist to add to my playlist, I am thrilled. I would not classify the music as distinctly “Catholic” in that there are no mentions of Saints or the Eucharist, but faith abounds in the lyrics of his songs.

The style has a country, rock, blues feel. The lyrics are easy to understand and sing along with (my kids tell me to be quiet all the time) and I enjoyed listening to the album. I would love to hear his conversion story! On the album, he gives credit to two priests, Jeff Cavin (for pointing him home – love the phrase!), St. Augustine, his patron saint, St. John of the Cross and St. Francis and St. Terese. What a great lineup to give honor to.

Myspace for Keith Moore
Wesmanmusic.com

(parents – read the lyrics before passing on – particularly, “Unto Me” – I liked the song – just a warning so I do not get blasted:

I saw Christ last evening, a needle in His hand
His eyes withdrawn and empty, a thin and withered man
I saw Christ last evening, She was picking up some guy
Now She’s trembling in the darkness with a far away look in Her eyes

There is another song called “Grace and Mercy” – just read the lyrics so you know what it’s about.

And, to make the post a bit more of general use, did you know there were some sites dedicated to Catholic music -  you can listen to songs online and search for artists to add to your playlist:

• http://www.catholicmusicnetwork.com/
• http://www.catholicjukebox.com/
• http://www.catholicplanet.com/mp3/index.htm
• http://www.mycatholicvoice.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.

I was asked by Sister Kieran Sawyer, SSND to review a program she developed called, “Faith Facts for Young Catholics: Drills, Games, and Activities for Middle School Students” and the “sequel” to it, “More Faith Facts for Young Catholics: Fun Ways to Teach the Basics of Our Faith“.

I appreciate the paragraphs she wrote in the Introduction (bold text added for emphasis):

“The faith formation of our children includes three distinct but interrelated process: developing their personal relationship with God; deepening their sense of belonging in a Christian community; and increasing their understanding of and allegiance to the institutional church. A firm knowledge of the basic faith facts is an important aspect of all these processes, especially the third: coming to know and understand the formal church with its scriptures, sacraments, moral teachings, prayers, liturgical celebrations, hierarchical structures and history.

Faith facts give young people the vocabulary they need to think and talk about the deeper matters of personal, communal, and institutional faith. A facile knowledge of the faith facts is an important component in developing for them a sense of Catholic identity. The facts also provide a structure within which they can organize the vast array of truths that make up church doctrine and church traditions. To use an old phrase I learned from my father, memorized facts provide ‘pegs to hand your knowledge on.’”

The books are designed primarily to work in a classroom setting. For homeschoolers who belong to homeschooling groups and co-ops, the games and activities are well suited. For families who will use the resources in their individual families, some adaptions will be necessary.

First of all are the Faith Facts Study Cards. The cards are printed on card stock; each set in a different color to make it easy to keep them sorted. Furthermore, each card has a number printed on it, so you can keep track of where you are at on memory work, or you can easily assign a set of cards by number for you child to work on. The description from the website follows:

Study Cards
Faith Facts Study Cards Every middle school catechist needs these — 400 study cards, each with a faith vocabulary word or phrase on one side and the definition or explanation on the other. The cards are printed on heavy card stock and packaged in small baggies. There are four sets of 100 cards: Set A (green) is the easiest, with Sets B (pink), C (blue) and D (yellow) being successively harder. Set L (orange), the last 20 cards, contains questions with long or multiple answers (eg: Name the 12 apostles, Recite the Hail Mary). Games for teaching with the study cards are found in the Faith Facts Books below. The games and the cards were created by Sister Kieran Sawyer, SSND.

I think the price is reasonable for the number of cards you receive and the ease in which they are organized. In the green set, some examples include:

• #13 – Baptism – The sacrament through which we become members of the Church and adopted children of God.
• #14 – Benedict XVI – This person was gorn in Germany and baptized Joseph Alois Ratzinger. He was elected Pope in the year 2005.
• #47 – Holy Communion – Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine.
• #73 – Matrimony – The sacrament that unites a baptized man and woman in a lifelong bond of faithful love.

Other definitions include those for Peter, diocese, bishop, Lord’s Supper, Sign of the Cross and soul.

In the next level of cards (pink), examples include:

• #25 – consecration – The solemn prayer during hte Mass when the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ.
• #64 – mortal sin – A very serious offense that destroys our relationship with God.
• #88 -sanctuary – The main area in the church building where the altar is placed.
• #95 – Sunday obligation – The expectation that Catholics are to participate in the Eucharist every Sunday (or Saturday).
• #96 – tabernacle – The special locked cabinent, often made of gold, where the Blessed Sacrament is kept in a Catholic Church.

In the blue set of cards, examples include the following definitions:

• #21 – College of Bishops – All the Catholic bishops of the world, in union with their head the Pope, who is the bishop of Rome.
• #22 – communion of saints – All the followers of Jesus, living and dead, including the faithful on earth, the souls in purgatory, and the saints in heaven.
• #90 – transubstantiation – The special word used to name the changing of ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ at the consecration of the Mass.
• #91 – vestments – The special clothing worn by the priests and other ministers for liturgical celebrations.

In the yellow deck, definitions are included for words like fidelity, excommunication, prudence, St. Augustine, St. Dominic, inspiration and logos.

All the decks are organized alphabetically for ease in working on specific definitions.

Alone, you could use the cards simply for memory work, taking perhaps ten cards at a time and drilling them for a week. In a 36 week school year, you would have worked your way through nearly all 400 cards and exposed your family to the “vocabulary” of the Church.

What if you want to step it up a notch? Then look to the two books that go along with the Faith Fact Cards. As I stated earlier, the activities are geared towards classroom. One fantastic idea that this set off for me is a Catholic Knowledge Bowl. Each family that wants to participate would purchase the set of 400 cards and work on them. At the end of the school year, families from your homeschooling group could get together and have a competition by giving out the definitions and having students compete to provide the correct word.

In the first book, Faith Facts for Young Catholics, these are some of the activity directions that are provided:

• Sacraments – Drill One and Two
• Ten Commandments – Drills One through Four
• Review Card Drill
• Parts of the Mass
• Seven Gifts Memorization Game,
• Prayer Relay
• Several sports analogy games,
• Twenty Questions
• Complete the Passage
• Scripture – Drills One through Three

All told, there are are 25 activities listed. In the resource section, you will find blackline masters for making copies of the forms needed for the games, the scripture passage cards and more.

I found the the scripture passage cards to be very useful – on one side is the beginning of a scripture passage like “#1 – My God, my God” and on the other side of the card, “1. why have you forsaken me.” (Ps 22:1) and “15. See, upon the palms of my hands” with the other side saying “15. I have written your name. (Is 49:15)”.

Another useful section is the Gospel Trivia Cards that include 36 cards with a question about a biblical passage on the front along with the location of the answer and then on the back the answer.

In the next book, “more Faith Facts for Young Catholics“, Sister Kieran provides another 13 activities including: Tick Tac Toe, Musical Flash Cards, Apostles’ Creed Games, Old Testament and Gospel Trivia, Bible Book Games and Catechism Categories Game.

A particularly useful feature of this book is the Flash Card Categories section. Sister Kieran offers 13 suggestions for categorizing the cards including Old Testament Men, Old Testament Women, Gifts of the Holy Spirit and Apostles. In the resources section you will find 103 Flash cards to duplicate and cut out.

And the Old Testament (30 cards) and Gospel Triva (30 cards) cards (black line masters in the resource section) are also quite useful. They include:

• 5. Name both parents of John the Baptism. LUKE 1:5-23
• 28. On what day of the week did Jesus cure a man’s paralyzed hand? MARK 3:1-6
• 25. Two of the apostles were sons of a man named Zebedee. Name the sons. MATTHEW 10:2

This is such a great activity to foster independent work that familiarizes your children with the bible, the ability to look up passages and to be exposed to particular biblical fphrases. I can see giving a card to each child at the beginning of the school day for them to look up and write out.

And, finally, definitely not to be missed is the the “Who, What, When Study Cards”. This part of the resource section includes 16 black master pages starting off with 4 pages of a time line.

The next section offers 40 cards of events / people including Edict of Milan, St. Benedict, Crusades, Gothic Cathedrals, Council of Trent, First American Bishop, First Vatican Council, Rerum Novarum, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton  with a description of the term / person on the front and a date on the back.

Following the cards is the actual sequence of the 40 cards mentioned previously. Again, my mind is just churning on how I could use these as an independent activity for my children.

I found this to be a very well done package of resources. I believe you could use the Faith Fact cards independently of the books. But, I did find especially the second book to be filled with some very unique resources and ideas. I have a large family, so I could use the activities right here, but they do especially lend themselves to co-ops and larger group settings.

First of all, I have to give credit to the inspiration for this post to the Mother of Divine Grace yahoo email list. I am listing the resources that were given there. Thank you to all the ladies that contributed to the list on the topic.

I purchased a lovely book several years ago for my third child who was preparing for her First Holy Communion:

You will find the book filled with beautiful illustrations and helps children to understand the gift we have in the mass.

For a detailed, visual walk through the mass, I highly recommend:

The DVD takes you through a reverent Novus Ordo mass, quietly explaining the details of each point of the mass. I loved the explanation of why we make the sign of the cross on our heads, lips and mouths before the gospel is proclaimed.

I am sure this is a wonderful DVD – Children of Hope is noted for it’s well done program to set up a Children’s Adoration Hour, and I can only image what a great resource the DVD, Mass- “Mass-The Greatest Act of Love“.

Now, while this is an explanation of the traditional Latin mass, it is so well done and such a classic that I had to pass it along. No matter what form of the mass you attend, you will learn a lot:

The book is fully illustrated in a comic books style and truly a treasure.

Maria Montessori wrote a wonderful small book called:

I have used this along with the Mass Kit (please scroll down the page) I purchased from Our Father’s House. The Mass Kit, while pricey, is very nicely done. My children have learned so much from offering their pretend masses and I have lent the kit out to First Holy Communion classes so the class can actually handle the items. In browsing through the site, I see they have a beautiful baptismal kit along with reliquaries, a Montstrance, altar linens and even vestments.

Oh, and before I forget, this is a bit tangential, but if you have the program in your area, I hope might look into it, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. This is a Montessori approach to religious education, and some programs are based in Episcopalian and Lutheran churches that have a liturgy. But, you probably can find a Catholic based program. The instructors are highly trained and put many hours into the programs. You will find it rich, hands on and very meaningful.

For adults to have a deeper understanding of the mass, not necessarily an  explanation of the elements of the mass, I recommend:

Scott Hahn discussed Revelations as a blueprint to understanding the Mass.

Another book for adults (and again it was written to explain a traditional Latin mass but has so much detail to offer that Novus Ordo attendees should not be put off by it) is:

The book was written in the 1704 and is not a quick read, but can definitely change the way you see the mass.

My final recommendation for adults is:

James Akin has written a book where he draws upon the GIRM and other church documents that govern how a Catholic Mass should be offered and explains in an accessible way the liturgical issues that Catholics are facing in their local masses.