Third Grade-January 13th Class

This week we covered chapter 8, The Church Has Four Marks, in our text book.  We talked about how Jesus chose St. Peter and the Apostles to lead the church.  Upon arrival at class, the students worked on a word find activity to find the names of the apostles.  We learned that the pope and the bishops are the successors of the Apostles.  We talked about how the bishops lead locals areas of the church called dioceses.  They also learned that the pope is the bishop of Rome and he along with the bishops, leads the whole Catholic Church.

I told the children that we are part of the Camden diocese and our bishop is Joseph Galante.  I let them know that if they listen closely at Mass, they will hear his name and the name of the Pope, Benedict XVI, mentioned during the Eucharistic prayer.  We also did a brief lesson on roman numerals as I explained how the XVI  in the Holy Father's name translates into 16.

We discussed the marks of the Church, namely, that it is one, holy, catholic and apostolic.  Each characteristic was explained, but I fear the anticipation of a four day weekend made it difficult for some of the class to focus on the fact that the word catholic meaning universal or open to all people, didn't mean the fun amusement park in Orlando, Fl.

Our key words for the week are: bishops, dioceses, pope, and marks of the Church

This week's decade of the Rosary was the fourth luminous mystery, the transfiguration.  I read the children the story of the transfiguration from The Rosary Comic Book.  Some of the students were rather surprised to learn that there is a comic book about the mysteries of the rosary.  It's a book that has been a favorite of my girls for the past year and a half and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in it.

To wrap up our class this week we played a game called Catholic Lingo Bingo which was sent to me to review by the publisher, Arma Dei (latin for Armor of God).  The class had a little difficulty playing the game because I absentmindedly forgot to bring the cards to call the pictures, but we managed to play it in spite of that.  The game is actually pretty cool because it teaches the children the names of items they see being used at Mass.  It's a great primer for any children who hope to be altar servers in the future.

This week's homework is the Project Disciple portion of the chapter found on pages 80 and 81.


I hope you all have a great weekend.  See you next week!