More on Catholic Texts-Religion Books

When you first start out trying to put together your curriculum, it can be a bit overwhelming. A great place to start out is with one that's already put together for you. Unfortunately, the curriculum you love for language and math is often not the one you would choose for religion. When I was looking for our religion program, I had difficulty locating any at all, since they seem to be spread out over an abundance of smaller publishing houses. I looked at the books of as many friends as I could, and seemed to keep seeing the same two over and over again, namely Faith and Life and We Believe. One had beautiful old world master paintings in it and a page full of text on the facing page. Boring and snoring for my hyper 1st grade boy at the time. The other had lots of fun pictures, but was more fluff and less meat than I was looking for. I saw Image of God in a Catholic press catalog, but couldn't get my hands on a copy to really examine it before buying it.

Finally a dear friend showed me her copy of The Treasure of My Catholic Faith, from Circle Press. I was impressed by the content and how much information about our faith it covered, but was absolutely thrilled by the abundance of illustrations and fill in the blank, matching, kid-friendly kind of exercises. In other words, it was the best marriage of content and accessibility that I had seen. I still learn things reading through it with my kids. Too bad it only goes through 6th grade.

However, I have finally found a whole slew of texts to investigate for next year, and I can rest assured that their content at least is all in line with Catholic teachings. Apparently the USCCB (that's United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) publishes a list of "texts and series [that] have been found to be in conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church," and keeps it updated here. Who knew that USCCB would have so much useful stuff? And wait until you get a look at all those books on the list. I feel a google coming on.