Our Lady of Mount Carmel...Pray for Us

Today, July 16th is the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.

There is a wonderful site, Santus Simplicitus, that has a great story to read to the kids about today's feast day. 

Also, at the bottom of this post is a beautiful coloring page printable to download.

This site also has many great printables, including planners for both kids and moms.the

I especially love the "Catholic Child's Daily Journal". 

This site is a great site for our domestic church.

 



Tt is for Saint Therese

T is for St. Therese, and since it is Tt week we have spent quite a bit of time learning about this Saint whom is such a wonderful example for children.

Kim and Luke have learned the little saying about Saint Therese from An Alphabet of
Catholic Saints.

We really enjoy the Catholic Treasure Books, and have learned a lot about St. Therese's young life, including the fact that her sister made her "sacrifice beads."

Whenever Therese and her sister performed a "gift for God" or made a little sacrifice, they moved a bead toward the crucifix. At the end of the day, the girls could look at their beads and "see" the gifts they gave Jesus.

I found easy to follow instructions to make the 4 younger kids sacrifice beads

at The Little Ways website.

Amy was my assistant. (a much needed assistant)

All ready for little pockets.

And now all the little pockets around here look like this!

The Legend of Saint Christopher

It's vacation time around here, which means we have been traveling almost everyday to find some nearby fun.

Today we enjoyed a nice quiet afternoon, so I thought it would be a perfect day to learn about Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.

I got out our Catholic Mosaic by Cay Gibson and the Fenestrae Fidei: A Coloring Companion for Catholic Mosaic.
I read and discussed with the kids The Legend of Saint Christopher by Margaret Hodges.

We are also loving the Loyola Treasury of Saints.

In the legend, Christopher carries the Christ child across a deep and wild river. When they get across, Jesus tells Christopher who He is. Christopher doesn't really believe Jesus, so Jesus tells him to take his staff and plant it beside his door, in the morning it would be growing, with flowers and fruit and vines.
Cay suggested as an activity to have the kids plant their own "staff" and decorate it with vines and flowers.
This was the perfect activity to a slow afternoon.

I couldn't have done it without Danny's help---I was out-numbered.

Mark wins the prize for the tallest staff!!

Our backyard now has 4 great looking Saint Christopher staffs!

I'm sure Saint Christopher is proud.

Ascension Thursday for our youngest- an Ascension Craft

We enjoyed a quick and easy craft for today's Holy Day, Ascension Thurday.

Today is the day that, after spending 40 days on earth after His Ressurection, Jesus rose up on the clouds, into Heaven.
We simply used cardboard, ribbon, cotton balls and pictures of Jesus for this craft.

We put ribbon onto the corners of an oval piece of cardboard and then glued cotton balls to the cardboard, representing clouds.

I used 2 copies of a picture of Jesus and glued them to each other for the center of our "cloud".
I made a little card stock "stand" for Jesus to "stand" on.

We glued the stand to the "cloud".

We also have some of the apostles underneath the cloud, looking heavenward.

Have a wonderful Holy Day, everyone.

Roses for Our Lady-Saying the Rosary with Little Children

Kimberlee at Pondered in My Heart shared this wonderfully creative way to help little children learn, and take a special part in the devotion to the Holy Rosary. She has provided all the links and directions she used for this activity at her blog---I will not share them here---I want you to head over to Pondered in My Heart and meet this beautiful family for yourselves.
It is so simple, yet so meaningful. I explained to the children that saying a Hail Mary is like sending a beautiful rose to Our Blessed Mother. I made a red set of ten roses for Kimberly and a set of blue roses for Luke. I also made each a bigger white rose, that represents the Our Father prayer as we say the rosary.
The link to the mysteries of the Rosary printables can be found here. We have started "learning" to say the Rosary, saying one decade at a time. This is just for my 3 and 4 year old. We also try to say the whole Rosary as a family in the evening.

When we say a Hail Mary, Kim and Luke each put a rose at the base of our Lady of Grace statue.
When we finished just one decade, we were so pleased to see how many roses we had sent to Mary with our prayers.
Grace is also working hard with our cards depicting each mystery, learning all four Mysteries in order. (I have written 1-5 on the back of each card so she can check her success.)
I have also gotten each child this coloring book.

This is a wonderful coloring book to help learn the meaning of each mystery.

"Hosanna to God in the Highest"

So begins the holiest week of the year.

We will be putting aside most of our regular schooling this coming week and spend our time preparing for Easter. I have special book reading planned, crafts and activities all related to the days of this Holy Week.

We have begun with a few Palm Sunday activities. I found all of these activities and coloring pages at DLTK Easter Section.

I cut out this donkey for Luke. He put it all together on his own! We read the stories of Jesus' triumphant entrance into Jerusalem out of our two children's bible stories books. Kim and Luke listened very attentively and enjoyed making the donkeys.
Mark and Grace made palm branches using this pattern.
Mark is putting a pipe cleaner on the back of his palm branch so he can wave it when we re-enact the first Palm Sunday, as Jesus entered the city.

Amy helped also. (Gotcha! Amy!)

We have a nice display now to remind us how the people felt about Jesus just 5 days before His crucifixion.

We also read Benjamin's Box today, and opened our Resurrection Eggs. (You can still get these for an amazing $6.99 at CBD)
The book tells the story of Benjamin, a boy living during the time of Jesus. As Benjamin follows Jesus, he witnesses the events of Holy Week and picks up an item to remind him of the events. He saves these small items to help teach others about the Good News of Jesus. The Resurrection Eggs contain these items, telling the story of Holy week in a way even the my youngest children enjoy.

Catholic Mosaic-The Most Beautiful Thing in the World

I was browsing through my copy of Catholic Mosaic, written by Cay, and came across the book, The Most Beautiful Thing in the World.

I have just begun teaching Grace the Act of Contrition in preparation for her First Communion next year, and this book was the perfect addition to her lessons.

The Amazon review of this book says, "The youngest angel in Heaven is sent on a quest to find the most beautiful thing on earth. A red rose? Birds and butterflies? Puppies and kittens? A beautiful baby?

No, each time the other angels send him back to earth to keep looking. Finally the angel visits the church and finds a surprising answer.

Illustrated with full-page colorful pictures, this simple story shows the importance of the true love of God. An endearing, delightful tale also suitable for small children."

This book is not just suitable for small children, it is suitable for anyone learning about sorrow for sins and the beauty God finds in this sorrow.

For a project to go along with this story, we searched, as the youngest angel in the story did, for beautiful things that God created. (If you only give your children Ranger Rick magazines to cut up, expect to only find pictures of animals on the poster.) We found many beautiful things that God made, but on a seperate paper we wrote the following.....I attached the Act of Contrition prayer, and a happy picture of Mark and Grace) to this sheet of paper. It is by our dining room table for frequent discussion and review. (We seem to learn the best in "the little house" when the walls do the teaching.)

Quick and Easy Ten Commandment Tablets

Mark and Grace are learning about Moses and the Ten Commandments during religion time, so I decided that we needed a visual to hang on one of our "learning walls". (Our "learning wall" has now become just about every wall in the house-therefore, "walls")

Mark posed nicely to show the foam core board that Daddy cut out the night before in the shape of our tablets. He used an exacto-knife to do this. Anything else would have squished the board.
He then mixed the perfect stone gray color with black and white tempra paint.

Sponging on the paint gave it a nice stone texture.

The kids then helped type the Ten Commandments on Microsoft Word. We enlarged it until it seemed to be the perfect fit.
The finished product, along with two of the books we are using for this unit. The main text we are using in Seton's Third Grade religion.

They also worked as a perfect All-Saint's Day costume accompaniment.