books and toys for catholic kids

Eight Ways We Do Catholic at Home {a few gifts for you too}

August 24, 2015

While talking to a dear girlfriend from childhood the other day, the topic of how we teach our kids about the faith came up. Beyond meal prayer, night prayer, and weekly mass. How do we discuss and teach our faith while wiping bottoms, thawing food for dinner, picking up toys, maybe working on alphabets & reading, and calming fervored tantrums? I went to a state university and when I landed at the Catholic law school where I met my former-seminarian husband, I hadn’t been at Catholic school since the sixth grade. The task of being Catholic in the home had initially seemed like a specific subject to teach. Like table manners. Or reading. But as my kids grow, and their love and understanding of our faith grows, it is actually way simpler than I thought. If the environment is rich with culturally Catholic items, the kids kinda do it via osmosis. We do it like this. 1) Sacramentals. We are crawling with saints medals, holy cards, candles, rosaries, crucifixes, icons, incense, you name it. Holy water fonts in bedrooms, holy water to sprizzzle all around the house, and a few precious relics of saints. All those little physical reminders of our faith–many of them blessed. Just seeing them around the house and playing with (some) of them ignites the kids’ cultural Catholicism. Crucifixes like this one the baby got from his amazing Godparents are a beautiful reminder when I’m telling SuperBoy about how Jesus really suffered so put your sister touching your legos…

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