When people hear I prepared Bella for her first communion myself rather than sending her to the parishes religious education program, they often ask, “what curriculum do you use?”
Well, I think it’s time to start a new blog series. This will attempt to answer that question about what I use for religious education and first communion prep. But it will also inaugurate a project that has been on my mind for some time. I’m also often drawn into conversations: What is a good Catholic Bible story book? What are good saints books? etc. So I have decided to try to catalogue all our “religious ed” books.
And not only am I going to list them here on the blog, I’m also going to set up an Amazon storefront, which will have the advantage of being easy to update as we get new books. And will perhaps give our family a little pocked money through our Amazon affiliate membership, so that we can continue to buy more Catholic books for our children.
I’m going to divide the book list into some broad categories:
Saints
Sacraments
Prayer
Art
Catechism and Creed
Some books may, of course, fit into multiple categories. And I may have to come up with new categories.
For now this is just a list of the books I personally own. I welcome book recommendations from my readers. Let’s get the best online list of Catholic kids books out there.
But before I start cataloging books, I do want to point out that I don’t think books are the mainstay of my religious education program. And actually, to drive this point home, I want to eschew the phrase “religious education” because I think what I do is much more formation than education. What we are doing is living a Catholic life. Our faith is not merely an academic subject to be studied like math or history or literature, it’s a relationship to be lived in our daily life.
And that relationship is fostered by daily prayer as well as by study. We use art as well as books and music and sacramentals like holy water, rosaries, and crucifixes. Yes, I’d say the cornerstone of our faith formation is the Liturgy of the Hours.
I’ve written quite a bit about prayer and especially about praying the Liturgy of the Hours as a family. Perhaps at some other point I’ll write more about art and music. But for now, because after all I am a book lover, let’s talk about books. Tomorrow (or the next day or whenever I get the list typed up) we’ll start with Bible stories.
[…] Seeking Curriculum for First Communion Preparation and Religious Education? […]
I am really interested in this! Our oldest is finishing up her Kindergarten year and our Parish does First Holy Communion preparation in 1st and 2nd grade. However, I am underwhelmed with their program and looking into what we can do at home as part of our natural homeschool curriculum. Thank you for sharing some resources!