...anything suitable for children to offer some useful teaching using the Scripture readings at Mass each Sunday. There are a number of books, but they all offer large crude drawings aimed at 5 year olds to cut out and colour in and glue on to cardboard or stick together to form a sort of paper toy. It's along the lines of: "Jesus said 'I am the vine.' Cut out these grapes and stick them on the vine." and so on.This means that children learn to colour and stick, but do not absorb much about the Gospel of the day.
All good catechists say "Well, teaching shouldn't be happening on Sunday during the Mass anyway...instead children should be taught systematically in classes after school, or by parents, or whatever." But that's like the story of the chap who got lost in the city and asked the way to the park and was told "Well, now, if I were going there, I wouldn't start from here". We have no choice but to start from where we are, if we want to go somewhere better. If childen are coming to a Liturgy of the Word organised by kindly people, they need to have some genuine encounter with the Word, and then be taken in to Mass to encounter the Word made Flesh. It has often happened in the history of the Church that children, properly taught, begin to teach their parents.
There is a lot of goodwill around: people volunteer to be catechists and the pattern they are given is to have the children for a short while every Sunday morning, during the Liturgy of the Word. Starting from here - even if it isn't where we want to be, or are meant to be - it is possible to achieve something. But some good material is neccessary.
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You will find some good material here for adults, children and teens. There is an element of colouring, if desired, but there are also examples of how real children, teens and adults put the message of the gospel, the Sunday readings, into practice in their own lives, and this is an inspiration to many of us. Often children see the way more clearly than we do. http://www.focolare.org/gb/news/2015/11/01/november-4/
Hello Joanna, why not have a look at the resources produced by Our Lady's Catechists, there is a scheme which covers all Sundays and Feasts in the liturgical year available on a CD for printing or as a hard copy.
https://ourladyscatechists.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/scriptural-lessons-and-colouring-books-for-young-children/
Angela Ashby
(signing in as Anonymous as I can't remember my google account password)
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