Formation
Ongoing formation for parents as the primary educators of their children. Lectures, recordings, printable resources, and opportunities to grow in faith across Houston.
The Weekly Collect, our newsletter, often includes a reflection like these, along with events and resources throughout the year. Past issues are archived in The Commonplace.
CHECH members have a guide to Catholic life across Houston. Open Catholic Resources →
On This Page
A monthly guide with a poem, a hymn, art, and stories for your family’s gathering time.
Four years of CHECH themes, from A Timeless Approach to The Formative Home.
Questions from CHECH families on faith, schooling, and family life.
Retreats, conferences, and discernment for parents, teens, and families.
Talks from CHECH speakers, free or discounted for members.
Guides for faith at home, starting with A Child’s Guide to Confession.
Formation at the table
Daily formation for the whole family, not only the parents.
Before the Lesson
One printable guide a month and one story a week for your family's gathering time: a liturgical theme, a poem, a hymn, a composer, sacred art, and the old stories told aloud by Mrs. Marie Romero of HomeLore, whose lecture on fairy tales appears below. Ten minutes at the table sets the tone the whole day works inside. September is free for every family.
Explore Before the Lesson
A path through the years
Formation happens slowly, and CHECH has walked it with families one year at a time. Each year since our founding has carried a theme, and each theme takes up one question about the education of a Catholic child. Read in order, they trace a single path: from what home education is, to how a child learns, to what he learns about, to who the home is forming him to become.
2023–2024
A Timeless Approach
What is home education?
Recovering the wisdom of home education and the home's long history as a place of formation.
2024–2025
An Invitation to Wonder
How do we learn?
Curiosity, attention, imagination, and delight, as the child learns to receive reality through story, art, poetry, music, nature, history, and faith.
2025–2026
The Great Conversation
What are we learning about?
Scripture, tradition, literature, nature, one another, and God, in a conversation across generations that teaches the child to listen before speaking.
2026–2027 · CURRENT THEME
The Formative Home
Who are we becoming?
The home as the place where the human person is formed for communion, virtue, self-mastery, and mission.
Going deeper with this year's theme
Each month, the newsletter's Theme Spotlight takes up one dimension of The Formative Home, beginning with beauty in September. The Commonplace, the CHECH blog, expands each spotlight into a full post, and every post is gathered under its year's theme.
Our Lady's Counsel
Counsel from experienced Catholic mothers, the saints, and the teaching of the Church for the questions that come from educating at home.
Dear Mater
An advice column for Catholic parents educating at home. Mater takes up questions from CHECH families on faith, curriculum, discipline, family life, and the weariness that comes with all of them, drawing on Scripture, the saints, and long experience raising children at home. Bring your questions, your tired moments, your worries, and we'll lay them under Mary's mantle together. Some will be answered in the column, and others will become workshops for CHECH families.
Read the columnRetreats around the city
Opportunities for prayer, reflection, discernment and encouragement hosted by parishes around Houston.
Video & Lecture Recordings
Digital download sent to your email.
Shadows and Images of the Eternal in our Fairy Tale World
Marie Romero
How fairy tales illuminate eternal truths, revealing shadows and images of heavenly realities that can lead our families more deeply into mystery, wonder, and ultimately our Heavenly Home.
Members: FREE · Log in
The Homecoming of Boethius: The Great Conversation and the Community of the Mind
Dr. Andrew Hayes
Recorded live at Magna Conversatio 2026.
How the Great Conversation, the centuries-spanning dialogue among the great thinkers, forms the heart of classical education, and how families educating at home are uniquely positioned to enter into it.
Members: $5 · Log in
https://membership.chechtx.org/offers/u7W9J6K3/checkout
The Sound of Footsteps in the Garden: Why Spending Time in the Natural World Is Essential for Your Family
Katherine Leaño
Recorded live at Magna Conversatio 2026.
How time in nature grounds family life, helps children develop roots and identity, and cultivates the wonder and attentiveness that lie at the heart of home education.
Members: $5 · Log in
Printable Resources
Downloadable guides for your family's faith and formation.
A Child's Guide to Confession
A step-by-step guide to help children prepare for and receive the sacrament with confidence. Includes four examinations of conscience, prayers, and a take-to-confession checklist.
 Members: $2.50 · Log in
Catholic Resources for Members
CHECH members have a guide to Catholic life across Houston: churches with relics and perpetual adoration, retreat centers, parish festivals and feast days, lecture series, Catholic authors, artists, and bookstores, the religious communities serving our city, and programs for marriage and family life.
Join the CHECH Community
Members save on recordings and printables, register first for enrichments, and open a guide to Catholic life across Houston: churches and relics, retreats, festivals, lectures, religious communities, and family life.
Become a Member