Book Review-The Liturgy of the Word with Children

After a few months of searching I’ve finally come across a decent book for use in our Children’s Liturgy of the Word. Our group were looking for something accessible for all aspects of the format our meetings take and it was proving hard to locate a text that would be helpful but not cost the earth. This morning, the excellent (and cheap!) Book Depository delivered The Liturgy of the Word with Children by Katie Thompson and from a sneaky look, I love it.

The tag line of the book is “A Complete Three Year Program Following the Lectionary” which finally means we won’t have to chop and change for each year and now have lots of resources literally at our fingertips and won’t have to spend half our time trying to find out what the readings are for a particular Sunday. Each Sunday is given a detailed breakdown to include a focal point for the group, an introduction written in child-friendly language-It is geared to ages 5-8) several of these resources presume a rather biblically literate child. Not very helpful if you have a bunch of four year old!). There’s also a Gospel acclamation, a child friendly Gospel reading, Reflections (with questions and reflection points for all involved), and activity and intercessions. On the opposite page there’s lots of cute (I know, not a very biblically academic word) activities that you can photocopy. For example last week’s activity (where the Gospel was based on the wedding at Cana) was simple pottery jars that we could cut out lots of, get the children to colour in and then write on the back what they were thankful for. We could assemble them in a jug for bringing to the altar at the presentation of the gifts. The book take account of the fact that not all groups have oodles of time (listen to the next homily you have at Mass and try fitting all the above into it).

The book also comes with a music CD and offers informative background notes and directions for liturgy leaders, parents, catechists, and all who work with parish children

We’ll keep you posted on how we get on!