There is a difference between knowing about a person and knowing that person. I can think that I know all about a celebrity’s life from the media, but to really know that celebrity, not only do I need to meet him or her, we must also spend time with each other. Our relationship with God is the same. In our classes we can teach our students to know all about God, but we also need […]
Every year part of our third-grade curriculum includes teaching children how to look up a verse in the Bible. In the past I’ve used fortune cookies with a verse from Scripture as the “fortune” to make the learning fun. We started out this class by handing out a Bible to each child and showing them the list of books of the Bible in the table of contents and finding where the Old Testament ends and […]
This school year, our third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students all received their own copy of a children’s Bible. This has been a great experience. In the past, each classroom only had a few copies of the Bible, and the students had to share them. But with their own Bibles, students have ready access to look up verses on their own, which is something that they really enjoy. With this added flexibility, I decided that we […]
As we near the midpoint of our catechetical year, we can begin to feel dragged out and even a little intimidated as catechists. We’ve come so far since the fall, and there is so much left to do. We can get so caught up in parish life that we feel overwhelmed and lose our focus on what moves us and inspires our ministry. We can forget that all of the activities, planning, and preparing we […]
I was delighted to discover last evening that my 6th graders had retained a great deal of what we covered during the year! In essence, I really emphasized 3 main topics this year: Old Testament stories, the Ten Commandments, and the Sacraments. Last night, we did a review of the Old Testament stories and it went very nicely. Here’s a pic that sets the stage: On the board is the theme/big idea for the session […]
Our session this past Tuesday went very well. The focus of the class was to review the stories that we learned from the Old Testament this year and to locate them in the Bible. We began by inviting each student to recall the name of someone we learned about in the Old Testament this year. Every student recalled someone and we had a good list of names on the board: Adam and Eve, Cain and […]
It’s hard to believe but it is that time of the year when I begin to review what we’ve learned this year! In other words, I will not be teaching any new material for the remainder of this year! We will review all of our Old Testament stories tomorrow, using my Bible Bookmarks to guide us in locating them in the Bible. Here is the worksheet we will be using. Please note: this is based […]
After 2 weeks off for the Christmas holidays, religious education sessions are scheduled to be back in session tomorrow evening. Of course, we’re keeping an eye on the weather here in Chicago. Schools are closed today with a foot of snow on the ground and temps at -10 degrees (for a high!). Tomorrow it’s supposed to get up to a balmy zero degrees for a high! In the Book of Job, God responds to Job’s laments […]
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 […]
As the kids enter the room tomorrow evening, I will have them immediately get to work finding some Scripture passages using the Bible Bookmarks (from my book The Bible Blueprint) and their bibles along with the following worksheet which you can feel free to use. Take note that page numbers are different for every edition which is why I cannot provide an answer key. Likewise, this activity will only work if all of the children are […]
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