Our church has family catechesis once a month at the request of our bishop.
The goal is to involve the parents more in the spiritual development of their children. Our job as teachers is to educate both the parents and kids on how to live out their faith.
The last family catechesis was based off the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the ACTS Prayer Method. One of our very talented young ladies in the church created this beautiful billboard to illustrate this prayer method.
We had group activities for the parable and each part of the ACTS Prayer Method, as well as a few games. At the end of the lesson we played Jeopardy, which went over very well.
To start, everyone received this handout I created that illustrates the meaning of each section of the ACTS prayer. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it stands for Adoration, Contrition or confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. You can download this FREE ACTS Prayer Method or purchase the colorful ACTS Prayer Method.
We talked about what each section means and page 2 of this worksheet gives examples of what to say in each part. The families were encouraged to take it home and fill out page 3 using the examples.
There’s also a prayer cube for a game with each person taking turns saying the prayer they land on. Because there’s only four parts to the ACTS Prayer Method, I’ve also included the Our Father and Hail Mary. If you have family members that are still learning their prayers, here are 18 prayers every Catholic should know, along with a free printable prayer booklet.
So here’s everything we did for this catechism and its meaning.
The Parable of the Lost Sheep
The story was told of the lost sheep and the families were asked to imagine themselves as of one three characters – the lost sheep, the shepherd and the community.
They were to question themselves about what they would do or feel in that situation and how we are all like these characters at some point in our lives.
The lesson is for everyone to consider why it was so important for The Good Shepherd to abandon the others to rescue the lost one. He is always chasing after that which belongs to Him, and we are to be patient as He rescues them from danger.
Sometimes we are the lost sheep that needs saved. Sometimes we are the other sheep who need to help bring others back and be patient as Jesus is with us.
ACTS Prayer Method
Adoration
Adoration is merely expressing our loving praise to God for His goodness and righteousness. Since it was almost Valentines Day, we used candy conversation hearts to illustrate words of love. Granted, today’s messaging isn’t as holy as we’d like, but it gets the point across.
We played a minute to win it game (actually 2 minutes as 1 was too short for the amount of people there). We broke into teams and each person took turns transporting a spoonful of hearts from one end of the hall to the other and had to dump them into a cup, trying not to spill any. They ran back and gave the spoon to the next person and so on. The winner was whoever had the most hearts in their cup after 2 minutes. The kids really enjoyed this game (as well as some adults).
We also handed out this box of candy hearts to everyone with some references to bible verses that express what is written on the heart. Kind of far fetched on some of them, but we tried desperately to find some with religious sayings to no avail. I really liked these scripture candy hearts but they were sadly out of stock.
Contrition/Confession
The next activity was to talk about God’s forgiveness and our reconciliation with Him. This was a great discussion for our students who are going to be receiving their First Holy Communion and First Confession soon.
The first activity was this experiment that utilizes water, iodine and bleach to illustrate how our sins turn the water red, but God’s forgiveness (the bleach) washes it away.
The second activity was a demonstration of the weight of our sins. We labeled books with various sins and asked a few willing volunteers to hold them as they were stacked up. The weight of all that sin is sometimes too much to carry, but reconciliation removes that burden to restore us to be able to walk freely with Jesus again.
Thanksgiving
The next activity was a simple task of giving each family a set of legos (we used the big LEGO Duplo Classic Bricks but you can use any). Each person took turns saying one thing they are thankful for, then stacking a LEGO on top. You keep going until the tower falls over. The highest one family got was 47!
Supplication
Since prayers can be very private, we decided to give each person some slips of paper and asked them to write out their prayer requests, fold the paper and place in a basket. The basket was given to our parish priest and he prayed over all the intentions. Simple but direct, as prayer should be.
Jeopardy
The final activity for our Family Catechesis was Jeopardy. One of the catechism teachers was a school teacher and she devised a very clever Jeopardy board with questions that varied from easy to hard (100 to 500, respectively). I believe this was the favorite activity of that day and the families did a great job of answering the questions, including the kids.
She used this pocket chart and index cards to create the board. I wish I had taken a picture of it but things were moving so fast I forgot. If we use it in the future I will take a picture.
Conclusion
Overall the family catechesis was a great success and enjoyed by the families. It’s not easy to discuss these matters with different levels of understanding, but I think we were able to relate to them in easy enough terms to understand.
Hopefully, the families will utilize what they learn at family catechism and try their own activities at home. Teaching your children is a great way to develop your own faith, as well as strengthen family bonds.
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