Catholics refer to the month of November as the “Month of the Holy Souls in Purgatory” – an opportunity to take the spirit of All Souls Day (November 2) and to observe it all month long, recalling those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. Many parishes provide what they call a Wall of Remembrance, often a bulletin board in the church vestibule, in which they invite parishioners to post pictures […]
Last night was a busy night for us in religious education since it was our monthly mass (the last Tuesday of each month) as well as the evening that I invited parents to attend so that I could meet them and spend some time with them. I really like the idea of the kids going to Mass once per month…they are learning more about the Mass and developing more familiarity with our liturgical life. The […]
During our prayer the other night, as the young people were offering intercessions, one young lady said, “I pray for Malala, the girl from Pakistan, who is speaking out about peoples’ rights.” After the prayer, I acknowledged this intercession and said how impressed I was that she had mentioned Malala Yousafzai and began to explain her story to the class in case some were not familiar with her. She is an education activist who was shot […]
One of the most difficult things for a Catholic publisher to do (in terms of pleasing everyone) is to explain how to pray the Rosary! You would think this would be easy, however, there are so many variations in the ways people pray the Rosary that it can make your head spin! I was reminded of this last night when we took the kids to church to pray the Rosary. Two weeks earlier, I taught […]
Perhaps the most interesting part of our session last evening, as we explored the consequences of not trusting in God (via the story of Adam and Eve) was when one young lady pointed out that the serpent “never gave up” but kept coming at Eve until she gave in. What a great insight! We picked up on that right away and talked about how that happens to kids with peer pressure: we might say no […]
Here is my plan for this evening’s session. I will have 60 minutes to teach before we take the kids to church for the Rosary in honor of the Month of the Holy Rosary. Big Idea: When We Stop Trusting God, We Face Consequences (Adam and Eve; Cain & Abel) Preliminaries: (15 mins) As students enter, have them work immediately on coloring their Creation Drawings from last week. Allow 10 mins total and then share and collect. Opening […]
Yesterday, I gave a couple of little tidbits (Ave Maria activity and a humorous comment from a student) about this past Tuesday’s session so now I thought I’d give a more detailed summary. For the first time, I had a couple of absentees so I was down to 7 students. As soon as students entered, I put them to work locating passages in the Bible using their Bible Bookmarks from my book The Bible Blueprint and a Scripture Search […]
To begin yesterday’s session, we did a little review of the Rosary and then I introduced them to the Ave Maria and did a little activity with them to translate the Latin into English (check out my previous post with details on this Ave Maria activity). Here are a couple of pics of the kids matching English lines with the Latin lines while we are watching/listening to a performance of the Ave Maria by The […]
At last evening’s session, we focused on the gift of God’s creation and spent a lot of time learning about and reflecting on the goodness of God’s creation. As class was winding down, I encouraged the young people to look up at the night sky when they left to see the stars and the moon and to look around at all the people made in God’s image and to be grateful and joyful. One of […]
Tonight, we are going to focus on the gift of God’s creation as presented in Genesis, chapter 1. Here is my plan. Big Idea: God Creates Something Good Out of Nothing Preliminaries: (25 mins) As students enter, have them work immediately on a Scripture search worksheet, using their Bibles and their Bible bookmarks from The Bible Blueprint. Allow 10 minutes total and then review. Invite a volunteer to review how to pray the Rosary. Do “Ave […]
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