For pastors and confirmation teachers
An eleven-week course on Luther's life, ready to hand out.
Every unit below is a complete session: a story to read, two puzzles to play, terms to learn, and a passage to take home. Print the handouts for the whole class, keep the answer key for yourself, and use as much or as little of the site as you like. It costs nothing, and it always will.
A session, start to finish
Built for a forty-five minute class. Shorten it by dropping the puzzle, or stretch it by playing both.
About the memory work
The Memorize page holds a passage for every stop, plus the Catechism itself: the Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Daily Prayers. Each unit's own passage is either a documented thing Luther said or wrote, put into plain English, or the idea that stop is best known for. The lead line above each one says which kind it is, so you always know what you are handing a student.
Scope and sequence
Eleven units, roughly chronological. Units marked in gold form the six-week short course for classes that meet less often or start late in the year.
The six-week short course
If you have six sessions rather than eleven, use units 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, and 10. That keeps the turning points of Luther's life, the whole of the Small Catechism, and the church year, and it drops the units that are richer in detail than in doctrine. Nothing in the later units depends on the ones you skipped.
What the students keep
Progress is saved on each person's own device, under their own name, so several students can share one tablet in a classroom without writing over each other. There are no accounts and no sign-ups, which also means the site cannot report back to you who finished what.
If you need proof of work, the honest answer is paper: collect the printed handout, or have a student open the Passport page and show you their stamps. That is a deliberate trade. We would rather not hold a roster of minors' names on a server.
A word about Luther himself
Luther's later writing about Jewish people was harsh and shameful, and it was later used to justify real harm. The ELCA formally repudiated those writings in 1994, and this site follows that lead: the units cover his life, his translation work, his hymns, and his teaching, and build nothing on the writings the church has disavowed.
If it comes up in your class, and with confirmation students it sometimes does, it is worth saying plainly rather than working around. The About page has the same note in language a student can read.
Using it in the room
- No devices? Print the handouts. Every unit works on paper alone, answer key included.
- One screen at the front? Run the crossword as a group. Students call out answers and one person types.
- A tablet per table? Have each table add its own player name so progress stays separate.
- Mixed ages? The word search has three difficulty levels on the same word list, so a younger sibling can play the same unit.
- Sending work home? The printed handout and that stop's memory passage are the take-home for every unit.
Copy it freely
Print as many handouts as you need, for any congregation, without asking. Grace is a gift, not a payment, and it seemed wrong to build something in Luther's name and then charge for it or count the copies.
Questions, corrections, or something that does not hold up to a second look? We would rather hear it. See the About page.