Children, Rosary Instructions for

Q: I have a six-year-old daughter in kindergarten who received a rosary today. Is there an easy way to start teaching her how to pray the rosary? She currently knows the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

A: What a marvelous task to initiate the youngest to the mysteries of our faith. I can see two important aspects to be conveyed over time. Start out with using the beads. The child needs to touch, count and know what the different beads mean. This should take some time at the end of which the child would have acquired a loving and respectful familiarity with the beads. Sometime along this apprenticeship you should introduce the real meaning of the rosary by telling your daughter the story of our salvation as expressed in the fifteen mysteries, as a simple story, without insisting on individual mysteries. The best way to do this, is to "tell" the story so that the child can vividly imagine one event. You can subsequently make it an ongoing story, there you would each time dwell at some length on the various episodes covered by the most important mysteries. During this time the child would hold the beads, and even count them. Little by little you then introduce the idea of praying for somebody, and relate this to the mysteries. I hope this helps to develop a "plan of action." In the event that more children are together, first tell the story (just one scene, one mystery), then the children repeat it by acting it out. When the "act" is over, pray just one decade. The child will then easily associate the story and the meaning of the prayer decade recitation. Allowing this to stretch out over several weeks, always in a reverent and pleasant atmosphere, the child will remember the mystery of faith as a treasure never to be forgotten.