Apostles Creed
This year in the 2023-24 Family Faith Formation we will study the Apostles Creed. We will take words or lines of the prayer and dive deeper into learning the significance of this prayer.
In the first pages of your notebook you will glue the 3 printouts of prayers. You will then glue to facing pages the Nicene Creed and Apostles Creed. We found that having the prayers in English and Latin side by side will be useful for the year as a reference source.
We begin by asking: Who are the Apostles? How many Apostles?
In my search to find a good picture of the 12 Apostles for the notebook I discovered a wonderful rabbit hole. Illuminated Manuscripts. I printed out two pictures to glue inside the notebook. Below is the second picture I found and how I set it inside the notebook. The pictures can be found here.
What is the Creed? The summary of our Catholic beliefs. We have the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed.
Who wrote it? The 12 statements of the Apostles Creed is found in scripture. It is the profession of our faith dating back to the Apostles themselves.
Where is the Apostles Creed found in the Bible? At the bottom of this page is a good list. I copied it and pasted it into a word processing document then reduced the size printed it out to glue in the notebook.
I included a printout of the following article to read: One Faith, Two Creeds by: Father William Saunders. This article is a good one to read to your children. The older children can read it themselves and then you can discuss it later. This article was simple folded and placed inside the notebook for this lesson section. Because we chose to read it out loud at supper we needed one copy which will be kept in the older student’s notebook.
We will also be working through the Baltimore Catechism book with our children For this week they will read Lesson 1-2. We are using Book #2 of the Baltimore Catechism.
For the self directed portion of the lesson we will learn more about Illuminated Manuscripts.
What is an Illuminated Manuscript? (see pictures pages before of the 12 Apostles.) Please visit the National Gallery of Art website page: What is an Illuminated Manuscript for a brief Art History lesson. See also the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s website page Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts Discover the art of bookmaking.
Assignment: Write a short paragraph answering the question above. Once you have learned about this form of art you will make your own illuminated manuscript page. (glue/tape your assignment to the notebook page.)
- Choose materials ex: art paper, colored pencils, crayons, markers, paint, etc..
- Choose a short prayer
- Create an illustration for this prayer. You can reference the websites above for inspiration and style techniques.
- Have fun. This is meant to be a fun way to bring art and prayer together.
Deep dive option is have your students go to some online encyclopedia websites to read more about the history. Maybe even the library! Have your student write a 2-5 page paper about illuminated manuscripts.
*** Read Lesson 1: The Purpose of Man’s Existence and Lesson 2: God and His Perfections in the St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism Book #2******
*Lesson 1: I Believe Family Faith Formation group meeting on August 29, 2023.
The Small Pencil Catechist 