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Thursday, September 1, 2011

Catechism update

A month ago I shared some catechisms that we were considering using as a family. We were starting to teach them to the children and so I had adapted some simplified versions for children.

One month in and I have made some changes, so I thought I'd tell you about them as some readers were interested in the catechism idea also.

1. We have started working through Training Hearts, Teaching Minds, by Starr Meade (mentioned previously). She has created a set of weekly devotions around each question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English.

We read it with Mr 8 and Miss 6 at the end of the day, and we are all enjoying it and learning lots. Each daily reading takes 5-10 mins to read and talk about, so it's very manageable.

To go alongside it, I have produced a document of just the questions and answers as she has them (in modern English), which is quite manageable. Mr 8's goal is to learn them as we go through - at the rate of 1 per week, he should be fine.


2. I realised my previous Family Catechism with all it's 146 questions was way too complicated for younger ones. Not only that it had some emphases I wasn't happy with. Maybe I am more Anglican than I thought!?

As we are going to work through Training Hearts, Teaching Minds with them all once they can handle it, they didn't need to get into all the details of the commandments, etc, at this stage.

However, I still like the idea and having started to learn some of it, I realised what they were capable of when the language was simpler and more familiar.

So in a burst of energy I have created a Simple Family Catechism. It is only 60 questions, and I think it represents some of the main things I want the kids to learn at this stage, keeping the general format of the Shorter Catechism as the guide.

I would love to know what you think of it.


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