Free Catholic curriculum resources, groups, blogs I love..

Cathswap is an online yahoo group I am in. We swap Catholic books and other Catholic items. I found many CHC out of print books for sale from other homeschooling moms. Most take paypal or a check in the mail. This is a great way to support another homeschool family and build a family library. I am not sure why people want to sell their saint books as their children grow. I am planning on keeping ALL of ours!! ;)

Holy Family Home Educators is the homeschool group we participate in locally, it also has a yahoo group you can join for $30, it's helpful so you are in the "know".

Shower of Roses is one of my most favorite blogs, along with Catholic Icing, and Catholic Tool Box. If you are a CCD teacher or a religion teacher check out the last two websites. You won't be disappointed. I have a long list of more blogs I look through.

Free Saint coloring pages-VISIT Waltzing Matilda.

Music Blog, we adore Justin Stroh... watch and hear some of his music on You Tube!

Sacred Music Study for homeschools

Virtues in Practice Program for homeschools- part of religious studies

Do you know your Angelus? How many bells ding? What time? Do you know the famous painting of those French kids??

This is an Orthodox Christian website, but they have some audio stories you can listen to of Saints. See the book list for some examples if you don't have time to look through.

I came across Holy Heroes several years ago on Catholic Icings blog. I was just plugging along like most moms. Did what I was supposed to be doing- at least in my mind I was. The reason I was on Catholic Icing's blog was because I was considering homeschooling- Catholic Preschool had fallen short of expectations. I felt my faith was needing to be instilled in my children. But we didn't have a lot of cool little traditions. I certainly didn't know a lot of saints- at least not like I do now. I am a cradle Catholic, married to a good Methodist man, raised in a Catholic School system.

KC Homeschool Conference, Summer 2013

I signed up for Holy Heroes Advent Adventure several years ago in the fall, and ever since then, things have changed in my faith. I finally got real. I know I did, because I see a change in behavior from people towards me. Their videos and songs, cds and coloring pages changed things. I had another re-conversion- we are always having conversions right? Well this was a BIG ONE, we doubled our efforts to make extra masses during the week and say The Angelus daily...lol (here's a cool blog link to The Angelus) we were even doing it three times a day when we were learning it, do you know how many times the bells ding? My kids to!
My kids got excited. It was amazing, we have been on a speeding train since. I feel like if you're a mom looking for something easy but that comes and makes a big impact, this is a great place to start. This stuff is for grownups too. If I can have a re-conversion than anyone can.
We do own all of their cds, the Catholic Treasure Box books, and yes we even use sacrifice beads throughout the year. The beads really have changed things in our household. My husband looked at us cross eyed talking about giving things up. Now he gets it. He encourages the kids to offer a sacrifice up when they are disagreeing. First it was sort of weird to listen to a story on a cd. But my kids 4 and barely 3 at the time sat still in the living room for 2 hours. Then they wanted to hear all the cds again. The Jesse Tree tradition we started last Advent amazing! We love it and talk about Salvation History all the time now.  They have weekly Mass preps with free coloring pages. We incorporate into our homeschool. These are things I didn't grow up with, and it wasn't that my parents didn't try, we just didn't know. It has to start somewhere. Go on get on Advent Adventure, find a set of printable Jesse tree ornaments, color them every night, light candles, burn incense during advent and listen to Holy Heroes emails. It will change the way you do things.
Oh and I got to meet the Holy Heroes kids and their father at the Kansas City Catholic Homeschool Conference in 2013. My kids were with me, and we sort of snuck them in at the end of the conference to meet their real heroes. Trey was there and that was so cool for my son Knox to meet the little boy he had been watching in all the videos. Such a great memory for us getting to meet them!

1 comment:

  1. Great blog - thank you! Here's another resource you might like, we used it a lot in our homeschool days:

    www.love2learn.net Favorite Resources for Catholic Homeschoolers. God bless you and your dear family!

    ReplyDelete

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