Since yesterday was Ascension Day, I was pondering how to teach it to my daughter. "He went up! But he'll be back!" was what I came up with. And, of course, after I came up with this brilliant originality, I realized that basically what I'd done was repeated part of the Apostle's Creed.
Which got me thinking: how old does a kid need to be to start learning the Creed? Does anyone out there have any experience with teaching an almost-three-year-old the Creed? Did you simplify the language, or just go with it as is? (I'm inclined to do the latter, because then Bess wouldn't have to relearn it a few years later.)
Anyway, if anyone out there has a story to share, I'm very interested.
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell
3 comments:
I think it is best to go with the real wording, and teach the concepts as she is able to understand them. That's what we're planning to do with Jonathan, anyway (and have already started, a bit, just not with the creeds yet.)
Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is really good about all these liturgical matters, especially in the habit of wondering. I would go line by line (maybe one line each day) and wonder about it (I wonder what the word 'believe' means? I wonder why we call God Father? I wonder why he is called 'Almighty'?), the same way that you would wonder about scripture. Then you can have a conversation with the child where they are. This wondering is very natural and easy for the three year old child and helps them internalize the concepts. We've started this kind of wondering even at the dinner table and we get lovely and surprising things out of our kiddos in the process.
We taught the creed to Rachel, using the current wording, when she turned three. Later that year, when she asked me, "Mom, why did Jesus die?" I was able to pull lines from the creed she had already memorized to help explain things to her. It was a great day, the day she asked Jesus to be her boss!!
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