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Child Education Program
The Comhaltacht Draiocht Child Religious Education Program is currently undergoing primary development and the full program
is not yet available. As the development procedes lessons will be added to this site until our full compliment of 26 lessons
has become available. We welcome Comhaltacht Draiocht members and others in the community to make use of the material that
we have ready and urge that parents and educators return to this page often in order to see the newly developing lessons.
Religious Education for Children
Introduction
Welcome to the Comhaltacht Draiocht Religious Education Program for children. This program has been designed to provide
several years of courses in religious education for our children and structured to be taught in two week intervals. In developing
this program, we have drawn on many areas of religious training including: liturgy, cosmology, symbology, ontology, ethics,
worship, Fellowship structure and holidays.
This program has been constructed on a one year cycle with twenty-six lessons. Each lesson is designed to accommodate
at least three different age or developmental levels and so the series of lessons can be used effectively for several years
by cycling through the lesson series repeatedly while moving to a higher developmental level each year. As the child learns
through the cycle at ever increasing developmental levels, these basic and important lessons are reinforced when each year
builds upon and connects to previous years of study. With the inclusion of a variety of projects and activities contained
herein, this program can be used to take a child from early training until he or she has entered the teen years. Our intention
is to give every child the tools to understand our religion, the ability to function within our Fellowship and all the while
to assist them in developing and practicing a healthy, fulfilling personal spirituality.
We have identified three different probable class structures that we have attempted to accommodate during course development.
The simplest class structure is that of a single child in need of religious education. This requirement may be easily accommodated
by selecting the aspects of each course appropriate to the developmental level of the child along with activities that may
be done alone or with the assistance of the instructor. The second common structure is the class made up of several children
who are at the same or nearly the same developmental level. Also easily accommodated by selecting activities appropriate to
the developmental level and designed for groups. The third common structure is the class made up of several children who are
at differing levels of development. Though requiring a bit more planning and organization on the part of the instructor, this
class can still accommodate the needs of all children present at the appropriate individual level but with the overall group
working on a common theme or primary subject for the lesson.
Instructor experience and education must also be taken into account. The program has been designed to be used by the new
parent/instructor working one on one with his or her own child or the experienced instructor working with the varied group.
This program may be used by anyone from our newer adult volunteers to our most educated Clergy, with no presumption of a particular
level of religious education on the part of the instructor. A familiarity with the lessons in this program will allow the
instructor to develop new lessons to accommodate the specific cultural and spiritual practices of individual hearths and congregations
within our Fellowship.
Robert L. Barton
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