Seeking Homeschool Catholic Ed Curriculum

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2cherubs

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I’m not sure where it’s best to post this. Please let me know if there’s a better forum.

I am a Catholic homeschooler seeking an alternative to the Faith and Life curriculum for religious education.

I’m homeschooling three children, including a high-I.Q., ADHD second grader who will be receiving his first Eucharist next spring.

Does anybody have any recommendations?

This one was recommended to me but apparently only sells curriculum in bulk to parish religious ed programs.

Obviously, I would only need to order one copy of the materials for each grade level, so I’m hoping to find a curriculum that better accommodates homeschoolers.

Please do *not *use this thread to defend Faith and Life or debate its merits. Thank you!
 
Other than just using the Baltimore Catechism, there is no alternative to Faith and Life that is worth your time, energy, or money

Faith and Life is what is used by all the orthodox Catholic homeschool curriculum, and for good reason- it has no heterodox ideas, and teaches the Faith in an age appropriate manner

Can I ask why you want an alternative? If your child is high IQ, you will be disappointed in other programs because the approach and the Faith are dumbed down and empty
 
The program you have linked in your OP is what my parish used. It described abortion as a woman’s choice regarding her body, and never discussed sin
 
Do you have a specific type of teaching that you’re looking for, or a complaint with Faith and Life that you’d like to avoid?

I have used Faith and Life for my kids and do like it quite a bit, but it’s not the only option. Ignatius Press also sells a series called “Image of God,” which I’m sure is orthodox in teaching (but I haven’t used it past the earliest level, so I can’t speak to how good it is otherwise).

Many people use and love Seton Homeschool’s Religion series. Their main website is:
www.setonhome.org You could just buy the books, or enroll in the religion course.

The Apostolate for Family Consecration is a wonderful, faithful/orthodox, group that also puts out a catechism series. Again, I haven’t used it myself, but I would trust it in terms of being true to Church teaching. They also have a Family Catechesis program, and they have a catechism of their own - which doesn’t contain different teachings from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but has them organized in a different way, and has guides to go with it. If I hadn’t already invested so much time and money in the Faith and Life program, I’d be very interested in the AFC catechesis.
store.afc.org/learn-the-faith/catechesis-religious-education

Also, I definitely recommend the St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism, to be used either as a reference, or arranged into lessons. The Kolbe Academy homeschool lesson plans combine both the Faith and Life books with the Baltimore Catechism books, and add their own commentary now and then as well.

I’m guessing there are a couple of other trustworthy programs as well, but these are the ones I’m aware of.
 
I would not recommend Loyola Press. I appreciate their resources for special needs kids, but their Finding God textbook series is on the weak side.

If you’re looking for an alternative to Faith & Life, I would go with Alive in Christ (OSV), Spirit of Truth (Sophia Institute Press), or Image of God (Ignatius Press). Those three are all much better than Loyola Press’ series.
 
ThyKingdomCome said:
Many people use and love Seton Homeschool’s Religion series. Their main website is:
www.setonhome.org You could just buy the books, or enroll in the religion course.
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My wife and I used Seton to home school our daughter from 6th through 12th grade. We were quite pleased with the results. Given that was some time ago, she is 26 now, things may have changed with Seton but I think it would still be a good idea to check out their course curriculum.
 
I have not used them personally but I have heard glowing remarks about Our Lady of the Rosary’s religion curriculum. I know a few public school families that enroll just for religion to work with their kids at home. They all have said that the sacramental prep is outstanding.

olrs.com/

There is also Our Lady of Victory.

olvs.org/
 
We are a homeschooling family and use Seton’s materials. The “Religion” books as they are called have a lesson per day and then usually fill in the blank sentences to complete or sometimes a crossword puzzle. My oldest is in 6th grade and I am yet to have an issue. In fact, I wish I had had such a solid teaching of my faith as a child. Just last week she was explaining infused knowledge to me (what the angels have). And almost every page has beautiful works of religios art - paintings, stained glass, etc. Very holy & inspiring to look at. Nothing cartoon at all.

P.S. For sacramental years our parish requires that they attend the church CCD program. They use a program called “We Believe” by Sadlier. It was total & utter rubbish. RUBBISH. There was more in there about recycling than sin. No pictures of Jesus or Our Lady, just children from around the world, the sun & clouds, kites, etc. I couldn’t believe it. And that curriculum is approved by the USCCB! :gasp:
 
PatienceAndLove said:
The program you have linked in your OP is what my parish used. It described abortion as a woman’s choice regarding her body, and never discussed sin
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Oh wow! My parish uses this, too!

Do you have a reference to their statement on abortion? I’d like to bring it to the attention of our religious ed director. That’s awful. 😊

I do recall them teaching about sin, however.
 
EmeraldOak said:
We are a homeschooling family and use Seton’s materials. The “Religion” books as they are called have a lesson per day and then usually fill in the blank sentences to complete or sometimes a crossword puzzle. My oldest is in 6th grade and I am yet to have an issue. In fact, I wish I had had such a solid teaching of my faith as a child. Just last week she was explaining infused knowledge to me (what the angels have). And almost every page has beautiful works of religios art - paintings, stained glass, etc. Very holy & inspiring to look at. Nothing cartoon at all.
Click to expand...
I don’t know why, but I was under the (ignorant) impression that Seton just used Faith and Life, like other Catholic homeschool programs, (e.g. CHC, Mater Amabilis, and OMDG).

Your description sounds like an intriguing possibility and right up my alley. Thanks!
P.S. For sacramental years our parish requires that they attend the church CCD program. They use a program called “We Believe” by Sadlier. It was total & utter rubbish. RUBBISH. There was more in there about recycling than sin. No pictures of Jesus or Our Lady, just children from around the world, the sun & clouds, kites, etc. I couldn’t believe it. And that curriculum is approved by the USCCB! :gasp:
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I believe that parents do have a right to home educate their children for the sacraments, at least according to this post. homeschoolingcatholic.com/issues/ccd/

This is fortunate especially for parents in smaller towns and rural areas where there’s only one parish nearby, and that parish is using stuff like “We Believe.” 😉
 
Thanks for the other suggestions, all! You’ve given me a lot to go on. 😃
 
What I’m wondering is, is a curriculum necessary? Couldn’t you just get your own resources to teach with? I have no experience with this, so I have no idea.
 
mathematoons said:
What I’m wondering is, is a curriculum necessary? Couldn’t you just get your own resources to teach with? I have no experience with this, so I have no idea.
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Well… yes, creating your own course of study is an option, but it takes a LOT of extra work and time, because this isn’t a subject on which most parents would want to just “wing it” each day. 😉 There is a lot of information to cover, especially at certain ages/grade levels, and when your parish/diocese has requirements for you to meet for First Holy Communion and Confirmation.

Still… yeah, it’s an option. 🙂
 
Seton. If you are just homeschooling religion, it can be purchased separately.
 
2cherubs said:
I don’t know why, but I was under the (ignorant) impression that Seton just used Faith and Life, like other Catholic homeschool programs, (e.g. CHC, Mater Amabilis, and OMDG).
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I just want to put this out there, for you or for someone else also wondering… it’s true that Seton uses their own self-published religion books. But those that DO use Faith and Life, don’t all use it in the same way. For example, Kolbe Academy also uses Faith and Life, and by using their lesson plans, we have gotten a lot more out of the materials than we would if we were just doing it on our own (at least without the teacher’s manual). Kolbe doesn’t just tell you to read a chapter of the lesson book each week. They also assign memorization of the catechism questions that are listed at the end of the chapter. They also add the St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism to the program and weave it into the plans so the topics from the BC match the chapters in the F&L. They also include additional information, suggestions, and discussions in their lesson plans, that allow you to expand on what you’ve read. They do assign workbook pages (which I don’t have my kids do) as well. By the time the week is up, if we are following these plans, we’ve gotten a much more “meaty” religious education than we would if we were just reading through the chapters. The last time I looked at CHC’s lesson plans (it was a long time ago - maybe they’ve changed), their use of F&L was more about just reading the book. I believe they did add other types of activities into their plans that were not from F&L, but my impression of their use of that book was that it didn’t use it thoroughly enough to really embed the concepts.

I know you are interested in a different one - hopefully Seton’s, or one of the others, will suit you better. I just figured that it was worth mentioning that the religion program itself can be so much more than just the book you use. It may be that each of the providers who use it put enough of their own spin on it that they seem like very different programs.
 
EmeraldOak said:
P.S. For sacramental years our parish requires that they attend the church CCD program. They use a program called “We Believe” by Sadlier. It was total & utter rubbish. RUBBISH. There was more in there about recycling than sin. No pictures of Jesus or Our Lady, just children from around the world, the sun & clouds, kites, etc. I couldn’t believe it. And that curriculum is approved by the USCCB! :gasp:
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Just a point of clarification, the USCCB doesn’t “approve” textbooks. It reviews them for conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Just because a textbook doesn’t say or teach anything contrary to the CCC doesn’t mean it isn’t also weak or lacking in some respect.

So appearing on the list doesn’t mean the textbook is good. It just means it doesn’t contain explicit heresy. Which is a step in the right direction. As weak as some of these textbook series still are, the general landscape of catechetical texts is much better than it was before the bishops started their subcommittee to review the texts.

Further, the bishops only review what textbooks are submitted to them. Publishers do this because it then becomes a selling point to have it on the Bishops’ conformity list.
 
2cherubs said:
Oh wow! My parish uses this, too!

Do you have a reference to their statement on abortion? I’d like to bring it to the attention of our religious ed director. That’s awful. 😊

I do recall them teaching about sin, however.
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It was in the 7th grade textbook

I no longer have it, I’m sorry 😦
 
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