Little One's Faith

For someone who’s half auto-didact, half-homeschooled in theology, Little One knows a goodly amount of her religion.

Even though she’s not quite seven years old, even though she’s only had four months of official Sunday School – about a dozen sessions – she’s familiar with:


* The Nativity of Jesus (found in the first chapters of Matthew and Luke)

* The distinction between the Old and New Testaments

* The Ten Commandments

* The names of the Apostles

* The names of the Gospels

* The names of the cities where Jesus was born, lived, and died

* The general story of the Exodus (she watched The Ten Commandments with us this past Easter with a fanatical passion)

* The story of Samson (her favorite “hero” of the Bible)

* The story of Jonah and the Whale

* The story of David and Goliath

* The fall of Man in the Garden of Eden

* The Resurrection of Christ


Two years ago we sent her to her room as a punishment for some long-forgotten transgression. Alone, she read up to page 66 in her Children’s Bible, nearly the whole thing! That absolutely amazed me. That summer, at her own instigation, she had me spell out the Commandments for her to write out on a piece of green construction paper that she could hang up on the wall of her toy room.

I am firmly convinced that children are born supremely close to God. So’s Our Lord (see Matthew 18:3). It takes the World and their fellow men to bang the love of God out of them. I hope that doesn’t happen to my two little ones.

So I’m wondering what to teach her next. Usually as we drive about she asks me to quiz her on various subjects. Column math, multiplication, spelling, the presidents, geography, and religion are all in there. Sometimes we have impromptu learning sessions over dinner. Now I’m getting the sense that I need to expand her home study.

On my agenda are:

* The Sermon on the Mount (the only “how-to” book she’ll need)

* The 72 books of the Bible

* The Eucharist (she’ll be receiving Holy Communion next year)

* The Rosary

* The miracles of Christ

* The passion of Christ (edited and age-appropriate, of course)

* The creation stories

* The history of the Ark of the Covenant (perhaps before a viewing of the Indiana Jones flick …)

* A general knowledge of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph) leading to the Twelve Tribes (though I won’t require her to memorize those names!)

* And some of the more fantastical elements of the Bible – Leviathan and Behemoth, the Witch of Endor, the fall of Jericho, angels and the names of the three angels appearing in the Bible, some age-appropriate elements of the Book of Revelation, etc, etc.

Whew!

Did I miss anything? Anything that might fascinate a precocious girl of six and three-quarters interested in her faith, along with a healthy dose of all things weird, interesting, and slightly spooky (as is her dad)?