Catholic Review of: Jesus, The Way, The Truth, The Life Student Text

Jesus, the Way, the Truth, the Life is the seventh grade text in the Image of God series published by Ignatius Press. It is a large softcover worktext of over two hundred fifty pages divided into twenty-two chapters or units. The pages are pleasing to the eye with a nice layout of clear text, full color photos and illustrations of stained glass windows. Each unit has questions, with space to write answers, interspersed instead of culminating exercises at the end of each.

 

The open ended title is reflected in the variety of unit names ranging from "God" to "How Should I Act?" to "The Church Carries on the Work of Jesus". Included in the units are many references to Scripture, stories of the lives of saints, and real life scenarios to better help students to understand their Faith in action. What does seem to be missing are references or corelations to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The text appears to be written at a grade appropriate reading level although at times the topics seem a bit deep for twelve year old tweens.

 

I have used the Image of God Who Am I? workbook to teach a preschool Mommy and Me class when my eldest was 3 yrs old and I have used the 6th grade text with my five children in a homeschool setting. I have loved both and always recommend them to other homeschoolers and DREs. I will not be recommending this text with the same enthusiasm since it introduces topics of a sensitive nature such as marital love, natural family planning, contraception and homosexuality for which some tweens are not yet ready. I also miss the end of unit activity worksheets that were included in the 6th grade text.

 

There are two supplements to the worktext that I was not able to review - a teacher's manual and a resource binder (which I discovered does reference themes in the text to the CCC). It seems at least one of these would be necessary to use Jesus, the Way, the Truth, the Life to its fullest potential.

 

You can purchase this book here.