So Um, This is the Bible…

I have started trying to incorporate some religion into our homeschool lessons.

I have to laugh a bit at myself as I think about it, because it’s been a little awkward so far.

I end up saying things like, “So while we’re talking about the letter Z, let’s learn about St. Zita! Okay, soooo she was a saint. And um, a saint is someone who’s, well uh, really holy, and, um dead. And so, you can ask a saint to pray for you. So yeah, St. Zita!” And then I read something to them from a book or our new curriculum supplement from Catholic Icing that allows me to actually sound as though I know what I’m talking about for a minute. But I pretty much don’t.

I am totally learning all of this stuff with my kids as I teach them. But I’m cool with that. I kind of like learning through teaching. I’ve been doing it all along anyway. I learned a ton of stuff about groundhogs when we did letter G, and about horses when we did letter H.

Our new curriculum helps me to add some religious teaching to what we’ve already been doing, keeping with the letter we’re working on and adding some other things.

We just did our first Catholic craft. Presenting, St Zita:

I am so proud (the idea for this also came from Catholic Icing, I just used some different materials).

I’ve been having a lot of fun with this new aspect of our school. Even when I know I’m stuttering and fumbling awkwardly to describe something that I don’t fully understand myself, I’m enjoying the process. And the girls don’t seem to notice my stumbles, or care. I’ve even discussed with them how I’m learning lots of these things right along with them. Miss was very understanding. She said, “That’s okay Mama. I’m just a kid and I really have a lot to learn, so you know more than me.” At least she thinks so.

The Bible is another topic I’m kind of faltering through with them. Each lesson from the curriculum has a Bible verse that goes with the letter we’re doing. So today I even took my Bible (which I just bought a week ago) into our school room and read and “discussed” a verse with them.

It went something like this:

Me: “So this is the Bible. It’s the book that, uh, tells us lots of important stuff that God wants us to know.”

Them: Blinking.

Me: “And so the Bible is full of um, well look at all these words in here (fanning pages). This is a really big book!”

Them: Leaning in to look at pages. They seemed interested!

Me: “And this, um, tells us how God wants us to act and lots of other things. And there are different books in here, see this is the book of Wisdom… Huh. There’s a book of Wisdom?  I didn’t know that. Okay so then here’s Proverbs, and here’s Psalms. Yeah. And the verse we’re reading today is from Psalms… Let’s see Psalm 97:8, ‘Zion,’ oh, what letter does that start with?”

Them: “Z!”

Me: “Yes! Okay, ‘Zion hears and is glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgements, O Lord.'” (In my head, “crap, what does that mean?”)

Them: Blinking. Smiling. Waiting.

Me: “Right, so um, that means that, uh, the people in Zion were happy. Uh huh. Because of what God said.”

They were content with that. Thankfully, though they actually did seem to be listening (which usually means 1000 inquiries), they didn’t ask me any questions about my oh-so-vague first Bible lesson. Thanks God.

What was learned:

For them: 1. Zita starts with Z; 2. That Bible is a big book!

For me: 1. I have a lot to learn; 2. Read Bible verse and figure out what the heck it means ahead of time.

So there you have it. The baby-steps implementation of religion into our homeschool.

I’ve also been talking with the girls to try to help them understand the idea of Baptism, since theirs is coming up (one month from today!). I was botching that one too, so I got a few books to help me out and I have a few craft ideas as well. My husband and I have a class to attend tomorrow night about their Baptism, so hopefully I’ll be better equipped to discuss it with them after that.

So much to learn…