Let me just state now that I'm a liberal Episcopalian from Massachusetts. I support gay marriage. I support birth control. And bible thumping makes me very nervous.
But that doesn't mean I'm not a Christian. I want my daughter to have a relationship with God, a strong sense of right and wrong, knowledge of the bible, and an understanding of our religion. With that in mind, I set off to find an appropriate religious curriculum. It was a scary journey.
I finally narrowed it down to three curricula widely used by the Episcopal church: Catechism of the Good Shepherd, Godly Play, and Episcopal Children's Curriculum. The first two are Montessori based and require fancy materials. And so I turned to the Episcopal Children's Curriculum published by Virginia Theological Seminary. ECC is available, in its entirety, online and free of charge. It has lots of options for each lesson including activities sheets, cut and paste crafts, more creative crafts, and serious bible study. It covers bible stories, prayer, sacraments, Episcopal liturgy, and more. For non-Episcopalians it could be easily adapted by skipping the "church" units to focus on the bible units. My daughter loves it because each lesson has a collectible review card to accompany it, and she'll do anything that allows her to collect stuff. And did I mention it's free?
The only problems I've found is with the crafts. Crazy Bug and I are Serious Arts-and-Crafts People. So I've scoured the internet and my own brain and added our own thematic crafts. We're currently using the Shell Year of the Primary curriculum. I'll share the crafts here as we create them.
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