Prayer is a necessity for the Catholic homeschooling mother. It is an ongoing process that tends to fluctuate with how busy our life is at the moment. While we should strive to make it a constant in our day, it can sometimes be hard to do. At the same time that we are working on our prayer life, we need to consider that our kids need a prayer life, too. They struggle, have doubts, sadness and joys that they want to share with the Lord like we do. Therefore, it is up to us to lead them down the path to developing a strong prayer routine. I've found some excellent books that will help you do just that!
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Kids Books are a Great Way to Introduce Prayer
Sometimes it is hard to get little kids to pray. They're squirmy and fidgeting and they have the attention span of, well, nothing. They have no attention span.
As they get a little older, it gets a bit easier to get them to focus. Heck, it's hard for us to focus and yet we get frustrated when our kids can't.
That's why books are a great way to teach kids how to pray. A book, especially one with engaging illustrations, will keep their attention and help them to learn how to pray. I recently became familiar with a series of books designed to do just that. The books are ideal for kids aged 4 through 12. While my kids are a bit old for them, I can't wait to buy them for other people's little kids.
This first book, "Guided Prayer for Little Ones", is a simple guide to getting your child to learn how to focus and how to pray. If you've not done much formal praying with your child, this book would be a great place to start.
The simple process outlined in this book will help your child to pray for his needs and those of friends and family. It will connect him with God, Jesus, Mary and the Holy Spirit.
This would be a great book for the youngest of your crew.
Marian Prayers
The picture at the top of this post is the artwork from the cover of the book "Consecration to Mary for Little Ones" by Kimberly Fries and illustrated by Sandra Koumo Johnson. The illustrations in these books alone inspire me to pray!
This book, "Consecration to Mary", would be a great addition to any of the 33 day Marian consecrations that you would do as an adult.
Every year we do the St. Louis de Montfort 33 day consecration and it is hard for an adult to do, let alone a child. I've always wanted our kids to participate but they just couldn't stick with it until they were much older; like young adult older!
This book has an entry for all 33 days of the consecration preparation period so it would be very easy to have your kids follow along on the road to a Marian consecration. I would say that kids a little older, like the 8 to 12 range, would get the most out of this book.
Scripture Reading
This is a great book to introduce your kids to the prayerful way of reading Sacred Scripture.
After looking at the book, it even helped me! Kimberly does a great job in outlining the 4 parts of Lectio Divina and makes them very easy to understand and follow.
She then walks you through all the steps with guided suggestions and questions. This is a fabulous way to get your kids to start meditating on the life of Christ in Scripture.
Teach Your Kids to Pray
In other words, I'm super excited about these books and I hope that you will be, too. So far Kimberly has written nine books for children and one for women. I'm planning on reviewing the other books in the future and I'm sure you'll like them just as much.
Remember. No matter how you do it, just make sure that you teach your kids to pray because our children need a prayer life, too, in order to survive this crazy world we live in.