Digital and
Printable

We believe in partnership for the common good, so we’ve made our full curriculum free and ready for you to use immediately. View, download, or print a single lesson or entire modules as soon as you sign up.

Catholic Without
Compromise

Children need a strong foundation to face the world they live in. We have until eighth grade to help them become disciples of Christ. We can’t afford to water down the faith.

Engaging Catechesis

A curriculum is only impactful if children engage with it in a meaningful way. Our approach gives children ample opportunities to engage with the content while enjoying every minute of it.

For Every Child

Born because we could not find a curriculum that resonated with children of varied backgrounds, our approach connects with every child, no matter their zip code.

Teacher-Friendly

Catechists love the thoughtful guidance with room for flexibility to make each lesson fit their classroom. They find that they grow as disciples, too, alongside their children.

An Introduction to El Camino Curriculum

Dear Catechists, Pastors, and Bishops:
St. Thomas Aquinas captured so well the reason for our work when he wrote that a person cannot love what he or she does not know. As catechists, we are entrusted with the immense task of guiding young souls to Heaven, and we do this by teaching them about our Catholic faith.

Any parent or catechist knows how challenging this task can be. For that reason, we have developed the El Camino Catechesis Curriculum. It is the fruit of much prayer and collaboration among theologians, pastors, parents, and educators who are committed to serving the Church by forming our youth.

Read the full Introduction

Stephanie Saroki de García, Co-founder of Seton Education Partners and El Camino

As is often the case for catechists, this project—whose goal is to strengthen the faith of our young disciples—strengthened our faith. It challenged us to get at the core of Christianity. Studying what we believe and how to communicate it opened up our eyes to how paradoxical our faith is. The examples are endless: man-made bread becomes the dwelling place of the Creator of the Universe; billions of people from all ethnicities and corners of the earth are made brothers and sisters of the same Holy
Father; a simple young woman becomes the mother of God Himself; two thousand years of scholarship from history’s brightest minds barely scratches the surface of who God is.

A paradox of our faith that is particularly relevant to our work is that we catechists often learn more about the faith from our students than they do from us. This adage is not just a nicety; indeed, Jesus Himself foretold it when he said that the Kingdom of God belongs to little children (Mt 19:14). Any parent or teacher knows this is the case because children have an incredible ability to understand the core of what something is. And in the case of Christianity, the core is a Person: Jesus Christ. In their simplicity and joy, our students often remind us that the goal of our lives is to know, love, and serve a Person.

Our hope is that El Camino Catechesis Curriculum facilitates for you an authentic encounter with Jesus Christ: a Person who reveals Himself in the Scriptures, awaits you in the Sacraments, encourages you
through the community of the Church, and counts on you to give your students the courage to live as disciples in this world and saints in the next.

Catechism
You Can Trust

Commissioned by Seton Education Partners and based on Pope Saint John Paul II’s Catechism of the Catholic Church, our curriculum has been granted the imprimatur from Cardinal Dolan.

Imprimatur:
+His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan
Archbishop of New York
July 16, 2020
Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

How It Works

Want to learn more? Walk through everything from our standards and scope & sequence, all the way down to our modules, units, and lessons. Every lesson is free, digital and printable.

Our Standards

Using Backward Design—content spiraled from eighth grade to kindergarten—our standards ensure the building blocks of knowledge are solidified and complexity is developmentally appropriate.

Curriculum

Ready to dive in? Our curriculum draws on Scripture & tradition, but also on great works of Catholic art and literature as well as the lives of the Saints.

Praise for El Camino

Did you teach him how to pray? He prays every night now even by himself. I love coming into his room to hear him.

– Parent of an El Camino Disciple

As an alumnus of traditional Catholic schools, I couldn’t tell you what I learned in religion class. Lessons were often dry, forgettable, and filled with “facts” to memorize without a compelling “point." I had the privilege of teaching El Camino’s dynamic, rich curriculum to first grade students. I witnessed them rapidly growing in moral virtues and brim with wonder for the truths of the faith and the Person of Christ so much more than I ever had in my religious education. My disciples couldn’t wait to go to class and learn more about God, and to be honest, neither could I!

– Nico Silva, El Camino Catechist

Teaching the El Camino curriculum is a huge joy for me. I was impressed and amazed at how the curriculum challenged and brought the best out of our Disciples in the classroom. The way in which we were able to deliver a content-rich curriculum aligned with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in a way that was manageable for third-graders, is nothing short of incredible.

287

The El Camino Network has resulted in 287 baptisms since our first sacraments in 2014

28%

28% of 5th graders have seriously considered religious life

⅔

2/3rds of families attend mass more often since enrolling in El Camino.