A member of the Confessional Lutheran Fellowhip group on Facebook, Lauren Hanson, posted a video of her 3 year old child learning to recite the First Commandment and its meaning from the Small Catechism.
She graciously granted permission to share the video here. She sent it along with this note:
My husband and I grew up in the LCMS, but don’t remember doing any Catechism work until Confirmation class, and by then we just thought it was boring.
However, we are now homeschooling our children and have determined to make catechesis a major part of their curriculum.
We have been working with Liam (3) on the First Commandment and explanation and his weekly memory verse (Deut. 6:5) since Sunday evening. My husband, Ryan, works nights, so he reads from My First Catechism to the boys before he leaves for work, and then I practice it with them during the day!
I hope this is helpful!
To modify a phrase, “This is most certainly helpful!”
Seeing this visually explodes all the theoretical reasons some people give for why young children cannot learn. Granted, a full understanding might not be there at age 3, but the understanding is better than rationalists suppose. Liam understands more when reciting the First Commandment and its meaning at age 3 than he would if he were reciting something like “three times seven is twenty one.” A 3 year old can know God, and can know fear, love, and trust.
And, as G. H. Gerberding is quoted saying in another post here, “The way of education is by practice to understanding, not by understanding to practice.”
Thank you Lauren for sharing this beautiful and charming demonstration of how adapted to young children Luther’s Small Catechism is.
Good job mom. I am also teaching my kids the caticism. We take a chunk at a time until they have it down. We work on it each day. My kids are 7 and 5. We have worked up to the 3rd article of the apostles creed and what does this mean. They learn so fast.