Homeschool Highlights: Teaching Toddlers and Preschoolers About Our Catholic Faith

One of the many reasons we will homeschool our children is that we want to incorporate our Catholic faith into every aspect of their lives, including their academic studies. Unlike other homeschool subjects, only a few of which we have even begun to explore with Little Miss Muffet (age 4.5), Catechism is something we have introduced almost from birth. In the Catholic communities I belong to on Facebook, I see a fair number of questions from new moms about how to start introducing the faith to their very young children. Today I want to share what's working for us so far with our three daughters under five.

Mass Attendance

Our kids attend Mass pretty much from birth, and unless they are horrendously loud, we keep them in the pew for the duration. (No cry room, no children's liturgy, etc.) I really feel that the best way for kids to learn how to sit through Mass quietly and attentively, is to sit in the congregation, observe others, and practice doing it. (This is how I was raised, and it worked for me!) We do take screaming children to the vestibule to calm down, and we take potty training toddlers to the restroom, but we typically come back to the pew in time for Communion. We also don't allow toys or food during Mass. The girls are allowed to look at the hymnals and missalettes, but we don't bring anything to entertain them, as we want to send the message that the Mass is exciting and interesting all by itself.

Prayer

Praying is a part of our daily routine, mainly at mealtimes and bedtime. (I plan to become more organized about morning prayer now that we are getting into more of a homeschool routine.) At meals, we pray the Sign of the Cross in English, say the Grace Before Meals, and then pray the Sign of the Cross again in Latin. For a few years, at bedtime, we said a variety of prayers, repeating them again and again so they would become familiar. To date, my oldest has memorized Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Memorare, Hail Holy Queen, the St. Michael prayer, and a good portion of the Apostle's Creed. (Our second daughter has mostly memorized these just by imitating her sister.) We have also used a set of board books by Maite Roche to model more spontaneous types of prayer that reflect on the events of the day. Lately, we have started lighting a candle and praying Night Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours using the iBreviary app, which we follow up with a sung "Salve Regina," and a few other prayers. Sometimes we give each of the girls a chance to ask God to bless five people of her choosing and we ask our patron saints, or the saint of the day, to pray for us. During Lent, I also try to have the girls join me in praying the Rosary (using their Chews Life mini decades) and/or the Stations of the Cross (either at home or in the church).

Gregorian Chant

We have been attending Mass in the extraordinary form several times a year for several years now, and it has really made me want to learn more chant. Currently, I am working on learning the Marian antiphons for each season of the Liturgical Year, and the girls are picking it up as I go. We mastered Regina Caeli during Easter, and now we're working on Salve Regina for ordinary time. Next, I plan to learn the Credo and the Pater Noster that is sung at the Latin Mass.

Liturgical Year Activities

A great thing about homeschooling is how easily you can conform your school year to the rhythm of the liturgical year. With help from the wonderful monthly saints coloring books created by Angie from Real Life at Home, we are able to keep track of saint days easily. We also encourage the girls to pay attention to vestment colors on Sundays, and even if we don't do anything in particular to celebrate, we try to point out different important feast days as they occur. During Advent we have a Jesse tree, we "bury" (really hide in a bookcase) the Alleluia during Lent, pray for the dead on All Souls Day, and put treats in shoes on St. Nicholas day. When I have the time and inclination to be more crafty, we also occasionally do some projects from Catholic Icing. I do keep a calendar that lists all of the occasions I want to remember, but we don't always get to them all, and that's okay. Even celebrating one or two things a month helps the girls start to understand how the church year flows.

Shining Light Dolls

We received our first Shining Light Doll - Our Lady of Fatima - from my second daughter's godparents on her first Easter. Now, my non-Catholic mom has started collecting these dolls for us and we receive them as birthday and Christmas gifts. In addition to Our Lady of Fatima, our current collection includes: St. Nicholas, St. Patrick, Our Lady of Knock, Our Lady of Lourdes,  St. Michael the Archangel, St. Gabriel the Archangel, and St. Raphael the Archangel. The girls absolutely love these, and they enjoy lining them up, pretending to fight Satan, and in the case of the baby, chewing on their heads. I was taught as a kid that it was sacrilegious to "play" anything church-related, but I find that playing with these toys makes the girls feel comfortable with the idea of Heaven and with the concept of Jesus as someone they can love and trust.

Catechism Memorization

My oldest child has always been very advanced verbally. She talked early, read early (at 3.5) and has a great memory for facts, poems, etc. Because of her oddly advanced abilities in this area, we started having her memorize the The New St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism. After a little less than two years of working on this on and off, she is about 8 lessons into the book, but she can answer all the questions in those lessons with probably 95% accuracy. She also recognizes many words and phrases from the Catechism when they come up in the readings at Mass. We do plan to have all three girls memorize this version of the catechism before First Communion, but when the next two will start will depend on their own verbal capabilities. In general, though, it seems to be wise to start young because their little brains just soak it all up and then they can make more and more connections as they grow older.

Illustrated Children's Bibles

Finally, what has been great for our girls is having access to children's Bibles with good pictures. They especially love to study the New Testament, looking for Mary and Jesus, but they also enjoy picking out Old Testament figures like Jeremiah, Noah, Moses, and Job, to ask their names and learn a little bit about them. Inevitably, when they hear the names in the readings at Mass, their faces light up. The Bible we like best for pictures (but not for the text, because there are some strange spellings and such) is The Catholic Children's Bible by Mary Theola, with illustrations by J. Verleye. We also have a Baptism bible that retells some of the more kid-friendly Bible stories in a simple way that is good for really little kids, as well as The Golden Children's Bible, which is the one I plan to read aloud in our homeschool starting this fall.

Homeschool Highlights: How We Taught Our Preschooler to Read

My oldest daughter, known here as Little Miss Muffet, is four years old, and (to my great shock!) she already knows how to read. Because I am asked occasionally (and because I want to remember our method for use with our younger two girls), today I am going to share what worked for us in terms of teaching reading to a preschooler. Your mileage may vary.  

Laying the Foundation

Before we ever even considered any formal reading instruction for Miss Muffet, we did a lot to pave the way. This was partly because my husband and I are both librarians, partly because we were early readers ourselves, and partly because our daughter seems to have a natural inclination for learning and using language. Also, because we always planned to homeschool, there was no reason to wait for the "right age" to get the ball rolling on reading. We just incorporated literacy into our everyday lives. 

These are some of the preliminary things we did before starting formal reading instruction: 

• Reading aloud. We read aloud to Miss Muffet a lot, from birth, and through her toddler years. We didn't shy away from using big words and explaining their meanings even if she didn't quite understand them the first time. We also used a lot of word books and even an old children's dictionary to introduce new words and to help her learn the alphabet. 
• Listening to audiobooks. When she stopped napping for a while around age 2.5, Miss Muffet was often put to bed with the audiobook version of a picture book playing in her room. I would give her a copy of the book too, so she could "read" along. She also had a subscription to Highlights High Five magazine for a while, and there is an audio version of that with page-turn signals that she really enjoyed.
• Labeling the house. We labeled familiar items in our house with little pieces of paper so she could begin to associate letters with words and words with meanings. (She ripped a lot of these down pretty soon after they were put up, but some that were out of her reach are still in place!) We can't say this had a definite impact on her early reading, but it probably didn't hurt. 
• Writing stories. When she was two, I started having Miss Muffet dictate stories to me about things she did during the day. Then she illustrated them with crayon drawings. This really helped to develop her sense of narrative and reinforced her knowledge of how books work. 
• Doing a letter puzzle. My mom bought this Melissa & Doug Wooden Magnetic Alphabet Puzzle book for Miss Muffet and she took a strong liking to it right away. After our second daughter was born, Miss Muffet spent a lot of time doing this puzzle independently during times when I needed to be with the baby, and I think it helped her learn to recognize the letters and to begin understanding their sounds.
• Playing with magnet letters. We spent a lot of time with magnet letters. We played games like The Runaway Letter and taught some of the letter sounds using consonant-vowel-consonant words.

Even if you aren't planning to teach a preschooler to read, I think all of these early literacy activities are fun to do and they still lay that foundation for when your child does eventually learn to read. I also don't think all of them are absolutely necessary. I think it was mainly the fact that literacy was such a part of her everyday life that helped Miss Muffet develop an enthusiasm for reading. (I also think the fact that we don't own a TV may have pushed her toward books.)

Reading Instruction

 

By the time Miss Muffet was about three-and-a-half, she had a definite interest in reading, and she knew all her letters and some of their sounds. This is when we started formally teaching her how to read. 

We used these resources:

• The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise and Sara Buffington. We bought this book because we knew we'd be homeschooling. My husband started going through the lessons with her in the evenings, and she really enjoyed it and took to it right away. She finished the entire book in about six months. 
• Hooked on Phonics Readers. We found a used set of kindergarten Hooked on Phonics books at a library book sale and gave them to Miss Muffet one at a time. She would practice sounding out the words and reading punctuation and using proper expression until she mastered the book. Then we would make a video of her reading the book and give her the next one in the series. She loved making the videos and was always thrilled to start a new book.

I really think any set of phonics readers would do the job. Practicing sounding out words in context is the key; I don't think it matters much which phonics books you use to get that practice.  We stumbled upon the Hooked on Phonics ones, and they worked great, but they aren't great works of literature or anything. The purpose of these books is to build up the skills required to read better books. Parents in the library used to complain that phonics readers were boring, but Miss Muffet definitely didn't think so. They were the first books she could read, and that made them very special to her.  

Reinforcement 

Now that she has basic reading skills, we mostly just make sure to supply Miss Muffet with books to reinforce what she has learned and to keep challenging her. 

• McGuffey Readers. When we ran out of Hooked on Phonics books, we moved on to these old-fashioned readers. When she was reading the Primer and First Reader, they were a little too easy for her, and she went through them fairly quickly. She is now in the Fourth Reader and things are moving a bit more slowly as we work on strengthening her comprehension skills. 
• I Can Read Books. Once she was through the first couple of McGuffey books, Miss Muffet was ready to read "real" books with more plot and characterization. The first one she read, with lots of help, was The Fire Cat by Esther Averill. After that, we started giving her different I Can Read titles, and some easy reader books from other publishers' series. Some were almost as easy as the Hooked on Phonics readers; others were intentionally beyond her level so she could be exposed to new words. At this point, she has ready pretty much every I Can Read book up to level 2. Now we try to have her read one I Can Read book that she has previously read and one that is new to her every day after her nap.  
• Beginning chapter books. To keep challenging her, we have also introduced some beginning chapter books into the mix. Little House on the Prairie and Betsy's Little Star by Carolyn Haywood were her first two. We don't worry a lot about reading level, but my best guess is that she is capable of reading around a third grade level right now, sometimes with some extra help with vocabulary and comprehension. 

I still read aloud to Miss Muffet a lot, and sometimes we read books together, taking turns and pausing every so often to discuss what we've read. She also reads to me, and to her siblings, a fair amount, in addition to reading to herself. You can keep up with her reading journey (and with what her siblings are enjoying) in real time by following my weekly Read-at-Home Kids Reports.

Homeschool Highlights: Preschool Geography

Miss Muffet my oldest, is currently three years old, and though we are not planning to do any formal schooling with her for a couple more years, we have started doing a bit of "unschooling" this year based upon her interests. This winter, she became excited about geography, with specific interests in the globe, the continents, and the four cardinal directions. Today's post rounds up some of the resources she and I especially enjoyed as we explored this topic together.

Digital Easy Readers

I searched our local library catalogs for basic books about geography, the seven continents, the four cardinal directions, maps, and globes, but I had a surprisingly hard time finding physical books that were basic enough for Miss Muffet's age. In the end, I turned to Hoopla, knowing that it typically has a good selection of basic nonfiction titles. I was pleased to find two ebooks there, both part of the Little World Geography series: Counting the Continents by Ellen K. Mitten and North, South, East, and West by Meg Greve. Both of these books are brightly illustrated with photographs of young kids, and the text is simple, but informative. Counting the Continents provided the names of the continents and highlighted where to find them on the globe. North, South, East, and West showed how to move in those directions on a map and helped Miss Muffet learn to associate up with North and down with South. We read the books on my laptop several times over the three-week loan period, and she enjoyed pointing the correct way for each direction and trying to point out North America on a map.

Globe

We own a globe, and Miss Muffet loves to look at it. She is comfortable spinning it around and turning it upside down, and she enjoys feeling the bumps of the mountains and pointing out the bodies of water that surround the continents. She also enjoys looking for the compass rose, and finding our state and the other states we visit when we go to see her grandparents. We used the globe to help us find each continent, and later, to find the specific homes of the elephants in Here Come the Elephants! by Alice E. Goudey as well as the seals in Here Come the Seals! This was the first time I think she realized that some of the places she reads about in books are real, and she wanted me to show her the path the seals would have to take if they were to come to our house. She also had a lot of questions for me about why it is dark on the other side of the world when it is light at our house, and we wound up talking about the sun and time zones using a flashlight. I'm sure she didn't understand it all on this first go-round, but I could tell she appreciated having her questions taken seriously and answered to the best of my ability.

Flashcards

I wanted Miss Muffet to have something to hold and manipulate any time we were talking about the continents, so I searched through some blogs and found these Continent Cards from Mama's Learning Corner. Though Miss Muffet didn't quite make it to the point of memorizing which continent was which, she did enjoy stacking these up and carrying them around the house, and we did quite a bit of matching. I would find a continent on the globe or in one of the ebooks and she would search her stack for the corresponding card. She is a little young to really use these as flashcards, but she enjoyed having special homeschool cards that were just for her and not for her sister.

Travels with Charlie books

 

Around the same time that we were really getting into "globe work" as Miss Muffet calls it, my mom sent us a couple of titles from the Travels with Charlie picture book series. They were Travelin' the Northeast, which covers our own state of Maryland as well as New York, where my family is, and New Jersey, where my husband is from, and Down South, which covers Virginia and North Carolina, which we regularly visit as well. The books include the state mottoes, flags, and flowers, and a map for each state that shows some of the interesting landmarks to be found there. The text accompanying each map rhymes, and it lists things the child reader must find on each page. The last thing to find is always Charlie, the little white dog for whom the series is named. I have to give quite a bit of support to Miss Muffet, since she doesn't read, but she loves finding the landmarks and looking for Charlie, and she also enjoys keeping track of which states she has and has not visited. 

Google Earth

Miss Muffet likes to use Google Earth to make virtual visits to places she has been, and to places she wants to know more about. We have explored our neighborhood, her grandmother's neighborhood in North Carolina, the Sahara desert, and other landmarks as they have occurred to us. Miss Muffet tends to get frustrated if we don't find something interesting right away, but if I can plan ahead and take her on a five-minute virtual tour, she really enjoys it.

The Desert

We also did a brief unit about the desert, using a few pages from The Desert from the Life Nature Library, as well as some supplemental YouTube videos. Miss Muffet is still talking about desert-dwelling animals such as the gila monster and kangaroo rat, and she enjoyed coloring a desert on white paper with tan, yellow, orange, and green crayons. We also talked a little bit about living in the desert, as this had come up in a bedtime story she read with my husband from My Bookhouse. She learned what a nomad is, Though this video is not specifically for kids, I found it to be a good way to show a three-year-old how living in the desert is different from living in a city.