A couple weeks ago we had one of those magical Montessori-homeschooling-Catholic moments that only come along with the patience that goes with being all of these things.
As the Year of Mercy draws to a close, we have been reviewing and studying the Corporal Works of Mercy (that’s the CWOM). I like to create my own card work for topics like this that follow the Montessori style of organization. I believe that this makes the unfamiliar, familiar for my kids and helps them make connections between areas of study. At the end of the day true education demands that all content be understood in an inner-connected fashion.
While we were laying out our CWOM card material, we noticed a striking similarity to the Fundamental Needs of People (FNOP). The FNOP (or FNOHumans, as others refer to them) is one of those materials and presentations that we tie back to just about everything. We use it in the study of history, geography, science and more. Indeed some schools give the initial presentation repeatedly at the beginning of every single school year.
It never occurred to me, however, to deliberately tie it to the study of religion.
Which was probably, in hindsight, an oversight.
I don’t remember who made the first observation, but once we started things kind of snowballed from there and people were throwing out connections left and right. So then we had to get out our FNOP cards and things got a little crazy as we explored all of the different connections. We sorted the FNOP by the CWOM and the CWOM by the FNOP and then for fun we threw in a little discussion of the SWOM (Spiritual Works of Mercy) and how those might fit as well.
The moral of the story is our Church is pretty amazing when it comes to this stuff and way back when, without the studies of sociology and anthropology that led to the development of the FNOP, they picked up the Bible (see Matthew 25: 31-46) and created a list of what our fundamental needs really are and gave us all a good kick in the pants to take care of one another in exactly the ways we need.
I seriously love being Catholic.
And THEN, just when I was thinking- Hey, I should make a set of CWOM card materials for my TPT store– I got an email from the editor over at Peanut Butter & Grace wondering if I was interested in selling some of my faith-based digital printables through their storefront.
My answer took about .02 seconds worth of thought.
I’m sometimes surprised my rampant over enthusiasm hasn’t scared them off yet.
Digressing, I developed lesson plans and printable cards so that you can explore this fabulous connection with your kids as well. You can find them here!
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