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kristinannie
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I pray my rosary every day. I am starting to try to do it before the kids wake up so I can start my day off right. I was wanting to start a weekly rosary with my family. My oldest is almost 5 so they are still really young. Is it too early to start this tradition? Obviously they don't know all the prayers yet, but I was thinking that if they were just in the room (even just playing quietly) that it could give them a love for the rosary from a young age. What are your thoughts? Do you do a family rosary?
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jillian
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Not too early to start. I have a 3 year old who I am going to start with soon. It's amazing how quickly they pick up the prayers, dd picked up all the rosary prayers in about a week and knows all the words. She's not always reverent and quiet but we are working on that, I mean she is 3.
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D. Marie
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With so many little ones, why not start with a decade then work your way to doing more every few weeks? Have a little "rosary bag" with picture books and baby rosaries for them to look at and use. I usually sit on the floor with the baby and toddler.
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mom2mpr
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We usually do a Family Rosary on Sunday nights. We did do it every night for awhile but we started some activities and....well.... 
I am trying to make sure we do it on Sunday night--if it kills me!!!
There are some sweet pictures that you can put in a 3 ring notebook of the different mysteries and that helps our younger one concentrate. She can turn the pages and pray with us. I think they came from CHC. A nice lady who was cleaning out stuff gave them too me! She knew I needed them 
I would start early as we didn't start until last summer and it was hard for my big kids to get used to it. I think if they were brought up with the rosary from day 1 it would have been easier.
We try to change things up if needed, read bible verses about the mysteries, different people lead different decades, voice intentions before each mystery (and it's funny how new prayer requests come to mind as you are hitting the 5th decade!) and move to different rooms/beds each time.
Hope that helps. It really has made a difference in our family!!
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JodieLyn
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Make sure you have beads that they can handle or.. if you do a search there are other ideas.. like a basket of crocheted roses that they move from one basket to another to count the prayers.
But my 4 year old will attempt to follow along on the beads. I have so many that need just a bit of help.. my older ones help with the littlest.. that the last time I took to holding my beads up so they could see which bead I was holding and giving a quick "switch" command between the prayers so that I could help mulitple kids at once.
I also find that it helps me soooo much to use a CD. Then I can help the kids and it means a lot less concentration needed on my part. And we keep it moving and not get bogged down.. and I can of course pause it if we do need to.
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MaryM
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There have been many beautiful and creative suggestions on this topic through the years, so I wanted to add those in an easily accessible way. I'm linking some of those past threads I think are most helpful. What a beautiful tradition and family devotional you are endeavoring to instill. God bless.
General threads containing lots of suggestions and resources:
Family Rosary for little ones?
Family Rosary Tips
Family Rosary - help
Teaching the Rosary
Specific ideas for hands-on helps for little ones:
Cheerio Rosary
Rosary boxes?
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mamaslearning
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JodieLyn wrote:
Make sure you have beads that they can handle or.. if you do a search there are other ideas.. like a basket of crocheted roses that they move from one basket to another to count the prayers.
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I saw the crocheted roses somewhere (maybe here) and since I cannot crochet I bought fake roses and cut off the stems. The little ones mostly play with them right now, but it's still a good introduction for them.
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MaryM
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mamaslearning wrote:
JodieLyn wrote:
Make sure you have beads that they can handle or.. if you do a search there are other ideas.. like a basket of crocheted roses that they move from one basket to another to count the prayers.
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I saw the crocheted roses somewhere (maybe here) and since I cannot crochet I bought fake roses and cut off the stems. The little ones mostly play with them right now, but it's still a good introduction for them.
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This idea and the link to Kimberlee's blog with pictures is in the first old thread I linked above.
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DominaCaeli
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Not too early!  My two oldest are 4 years old, but we've been doing a daily Rosary with them since they were babies. I think you're right that even just having them in the room with you while you're praying with cultivate a love for and familiarity with the prayers and the mysteries, so it's good to start young.
Since it will be new to them, I agree that visual aids, tactile aids, and other ways of teaching could be useful...or they might not. We have kept it very simple with my little ones and just let the story of the Rosary speak for itself, and I think it has worked well. A few thoughts on how it works in our house:
::They do have rosaries, but they only use them on Sundays; when our children are able to use the rosaries every day, they lose their novelty and become more like toys. So we keep them special for Sundays. The older two know how to follow along on their fingers, so sometimes they do that on the other days.
:: We have the two 4yos introduce each mystery, and sometimes we have them lead a decade. Otherwise, they join in on the prayers when they want. They do always say the Hail Holy Queen at the end with us.
::As for behavior, our two 4yos are expected to kneel nicely and quietly next to me or Daddy. They can pray along out loud or they can just rest.
::We sometimes get out images for the mysteries, but usually we do not. However, they're familiar enough at this age with the stories of the Rosary that they are able to follow along.
:: As for my younger two: the 2yo either kneels next to me or walks around playing with her dolly. She will talk but usually talks quietly. The baby is the baby. 
Anyway, I would definitely encourage you to try it out. You can start small, if you think that will work best for your children. There are a lot of great ideas here and in this post if you don't think a more bare-bones approach like ours will work as well with your particular children. Either way, give it a shot!
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Lacy
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I had a link up on Catholic Icing for people to add their rosary ideas for kids, and my readers posted some really cool ideas!
Rosary Ideas for Kids
My oldest is turning 5 next week (where did the time go?!) and because they're so young I am more likely to pray just a decade with them rather than the whole thing. I like to pray a decade each time we drive somewhere in the car. We also have "learning rosaries" that my kids hold while we say our "rosary prayers"- just one of each. Here's my post on our "learning rosary". Good luck, and more power to ya! 
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Lisbet
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We started a nightly family rosary 14 years ago when my oldest was 2 and my second was newborn. We have used various aids and methods over the years - but by far my favorite way to pray the rosary is by tracking Ave's on newborn baby toes! :) 
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mamalove
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The family rosary is a wonderful gift because of the graces we recieve, but also it is the perfect time to train the children to behave during prayer. This leads to better behavoir at Mass! I have seen the fruit of training the children during the family rosary pay off at Holy Mass in my own family
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aussieannie
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The rosary is such a special communal prayer for families and often you see that in the past when so many families were losing the faith during the last twenty years, even though they had good Catholic parents, the families who prayed the daily rosary together navigated these turbulent times with a more intact family, faith-wise. I know of so many personal examples of this. So I really believe in the promises attached to the rosary.
Louis deMonfort's book The Secret of the Rosary is a timeless classic ~ if you follow the link the whole book is online to read. It also has been republished with new editions to the book, bringing it up to speed with the Luminous Mysteries etc.
We too were inspired by Kimberlee's post Praying the Rosary with Little Ones and we are still in process of having our crocheted roses made.
Lastly, what has been a tremendous help for our family of late, even for dh and myself is using beautiful old masters paintings to view during the mystery. We usually have 5 images in a folder per mystery and we have 4 folders for each mystery so that they are well rotated. It has transformed our rosary nights. I am sharing all of these images I have collected on the net, over at my blog, here is the link to the images for all the mysteries of the rosary, and an explanation of how we use them etc.
May Our Lady help you in your endeavour to honour her Christ Child through the recitation of the Holy Rosary.
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aussieannie
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Just linking Melinda's thread Fifteen promises of the Rosary it's encouraging reading and Helen shares her thoughts on daily rosary with the family.
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Topic: Weekly family rosary
