A Healer’s Geste

Homeschool Review: Covenantal Catechism, Book 1

We very much enjoyed using Covenantal Catechism Book One for our Bible lessons this past year. The review at Exodus Books is accurate and quite thorough, so instead of repeating effort here, I will tell what I liked most and then explain how we used it.

I wanted to do an Old Testament survey, but knew I didn’t want moralistic renditions of the OT stories. God did give us the Old Testament for our instruction, but He did not give it to us so we could have trite Sunday School & VBS lessons. I knew I did not want anything trite or moralistic; I knew Elly had been raised on this material and was in turn using it to teach her boys; and I knew that if anyone was going to be Christological and not trite, an old-time Dutch Reformed type would be. And, yes, I also happened to already own the book, which made the choice easier yet. It was a good choice, even if it was the easy one.

The author has the same thesis in every lesson and one thread weaves together the entire structure: God created man, man sinned, God gave man a promise, God kept that promise no matter how Satan and sinful man tried to thwart it. Every story is told from the perspective that it is leading toward and teaching about Christ. There is no “small people can do great things for God,” but rather, “David defeated the enemies of God because God used him to teach his people about Christ would be like.” In fact, here is an excerpt on the lesson about Saul and David (both their kingships, one lesson, one week):

“David was a wonderful picture of Jesus who fights against the enemies of God’s people. Jesus fought the great battle against Satan and won that battle for us, His children. He is the great Son of David. [...] God used Saul and Satan used Saul. But God used Saul to show the people what happened when they wanted to be like the wicked. God also used David to bring the people close to God and give them the victory.”

Yet these lessons are not without application:

“God uses us and Satan will try to use us. Which way will it go? Read Psalm 51 and you will see how wonderfully David knew how to pray to God for the help he needed.”

Really, the story of Adam and Eve, of temptation and fall and redemption is pictured in every lesson: Satan tempts or tries to destroy, man sins and fails, God rescues and still works out His promise. And so the application is also generally a variation on that theme: You will be tempted, but God has given you Christ, through whom you can resist so that now you can be used by God rather than by Satan.

The author sprinkles “boys and girls” or “children” throughout his text with liberality, which immediately sounds condescending to our modern ears. I simply left them out when I read, and found that the author was not the least condescending to children. He respected their abilities, their relationship with God (this is written for covenant children and assumes Christian faith on their part rather than preaching alter calls). It calls them to continue in faith, not get faith, and it teaches them what Christ has done for them, what is theirs because they are in Christ. It assumes personal prayer in their life and encourages them to pray when they are tempted. It takes the children and their faith and their temptations seriously, and I appreciated that.

Because the point of the curriculum is to give a basic overview of the structure and theme of the Old Testament rather than simply enhance familiarity with the stories, many standard “Bible story” events are left out. There is no separate lesson for David & Goliath, although the event is mentioned; there is no Samson, Jonah, Ruth, or Esther; there’s no Ehud or Jael or Phinehas; there is much more emphasis on kings and prophets than is typical in a young children’s curriculum.

The book has 25 lessons, each lesson being one Old Testament story. It is meant to be used in a church setting, with children learning the questions and answers and hearing the story and lesson at home during the week, then meeting as a class with a teacher to go over the material and review and discuss the lesson.

Every lesson, in addition to a lesson about the week’s Bible story, has several questions and answers (hence, catechism) that the student is expected to memorize. The questions are primarily information questions (such as ‘Who was the oldest man to live on earth?’) rather than doctrinal. We are already learning the Catechism for Young Children and a few Heidelberg questions and answers, so I did not attempt to add the questions to our memory work docket. Instead, I used them as review questions as we went along.

So each week we did one lesson. Twenty-five lessons turned out to be a good number for us this past year; we did finish them all despite the several times of upheaval. On Mondays we read the Bible story straight from the Bible (actually, we listened to it with ESV audio Bible). This was always the longest day; it took about 20 minutes or so generally. I would let the boys color a picture as they listened. I used a page from Stories from the Old Testament whenever it was relevant, but once we got into the kings and prophets, there weren’t many coloring sheet options available. Tuesdays we would read the lesson from the book and I’d ask them one or two review questions before and after. This took 5-10 minutes. Wednesdays we ended up never getting school done. Thursdays we read the story again from either Children’s Story Bible or Vos’ Story Bible. This took about 10 minutes if we read from the Children’s Story Bible or 20 if I read the entire Vos chapter. I usually abridged it on the fly because I am impatient. Fridays we went over the timeline and line of promise (i.e. who did God use to further His plan and who did Satan try to use to prevent God’s plan). This usually took about 5-10 minutes again.

So, for first grade (and K4) Bible lessons we used

All of which are non-consumable and all of which we will be using again in the future.