Last year, I shockingly discovered that my 6 year old daughter did not KNOW that God was a triune God. My 9 year old son did not know what "the chief end of man was", nor when presented with the answer, did he know HOW he could glorify God. And this discovery, in spite of a daily homeschool Bible story both of them having gone to Sunday School their whole life. I began to teach catechism to our children to make them aware of and help them understand the basic doctrines of our faith. In the grammar stage, we read the question answer flow, memorize it and look up a few Bible verses from various sections of the Bible to support the particular doctrine in question.

Of the 130 questions and answers in our catechism of choice, we do 3 per week. It will take us roughly a year to go through the whole catechism. Catechism in our home, is done three days per week, reviewing previoius question and answer flows (Q&A) also. We also read the particular scriptures verses pertaining to the QA of the day. My 9 year old looks the verses up in the Bible by himself.

We use Puzzlemaker.com to make up some puzzles once a week for workbook style review. Also, we use our games, Chutes and Ladders (or Candyland) on Fridays to review. Every time you land on something which could advance or regress you, you answer a catechism question. If you get it right, you advance or stay in place, if you get it wrong, you get to stay put or regress, respectively. We also do catechism with our Trivial pursuit game, alternating odd and even questions with the 6 colors on the wheel. A more cooperative game, we planned, is to go around in a circle with all the kids, doing the QA flow with a "talking stick": Each person says 3 words of the flow, passes the stick to the next person who says 3 words, et.c. and see how many catechism Q&A's you can get to before we make a mistake.

Here is another fun game for catechism.... though you have to have some of your catechism questions memorized to do it. I made a strategy game by making a board with all the question numbers of the catechism in squares. (It came out odd numbered so I added the Apostles' Creed, 10 Commandments, and Lord's Prayer as other squares.) Players each have different colored discs that they place on the number as they answer the question correctly. The object of the game is to get 5 in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally). In turn each player chooses a square, answers the question and then places his/her disc on that square. Players try to block their opponent while trying to get 5 in a row themselves. We have only played it with two players but you can make up your own rules for the game and have some fun with it.

I divided the sections for specific on-line catechisms in to a Protestant
and a Roman Catholic section. Protestant Resources for Catechism:

Catechism for Young Children
Catechism for Your children

A small Reformed catechism for Preschoolers with Bible verse answers
The Small Child's Catechism

The Westminster Larger Catechism, part one
The Westminster Larger Catechism, part two
The Westminster Shorter Catechism
The Westminster Larger Catechism with proof texts
The Heidelberg Catechism

The Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics
Fisher's Catechism and the catechism of the Church of Geneva at this site, but because of the way they are set up, you need to go the main page (which is a frameset), navigate through "historic church documents", and scroll down to the section on catechisms to read them.

Reformed Baptist:
Spurgeon's catechism
Keach's catechism


Lutheran:
Scroll down for Luther's Large and Small catechism

For Reformed theology, the Small Westminster Catechism and the Catechism for Young Children are both sold in a nice workbook format put out by Christian Liberty Press, likewise, Covenant Home Curriculum offers a "package" for teaching the Westminster shorter catechism which includes several teacher's guides and explanatory books, as well as a daily lesson plan for dialectic stage students.

Roman Catholic Resources for Catechism:



For on-line Catholic catechisms, check out

the Catechism of the council of Trent
Catechism of the Catholic Church
the St. Thomas Aquinas catechism
the Baltimore Catechism

There is a solidly orthodox catechism program for Roman Catholics, which is a reprint of the 1940's Benzinger series called "The Living My Religion Series" . It is similar to the "Faith and Life" series in that it goes in depth explaining the meaning of the questions. It is an 8 volume set with a teachers syllabus. Each grade level builds upon the previous level. The syllabus states that the doctrine taught is repeated 3 times within the series. The catechism questions used are taken from the Baltimore catechism (pre-Vatican II). The pictures are in black and white and comparable to what is in the "Catholic National Readers" The reading level is at grade level. The Appendix of the texts have all the catechism questions written in Q and A format; also included are the prayers to be learned. The lessons have additional questions and Bible readings to be looked up that go along with the topic being covered. The books are hardbound, so they'll last. Because they are pre-Vatican II, some things have changed. The changes are; rules regarding fasting, holy days of obligation, and instead of the "Novus Ordo" being covered in sections on the Mass they offer explanations of the "Tridentine Mass". The series can be purchased from Saints and Scholars. When I purchased mine, it was a requirement to purchase the WHOLE series. I paid $147 for mine. You can find it at Saints and Scholars and other Catholic suppliers
Or get "Faith and Life" by Ignatius Press.