Beginning the Lenten Season

Yesterday we got busy and prepared for Lent. I got Amy's help making our traditional salt dough crown of thorns.

This year I changed the recipe a little. I used : 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, 1 cup of cinnamon, and about 1 1/2 cups of water. Mix with a spoon at first, then dig your hands in to finish up the mixing. It's smells heavenly!! Roll the dough into three long "snakes" and then carefully braid. Form the braid into a crown and then insert toothpicks which are removed from the completed crown when sacrifices are performed. Bake at 250 degrees for about 4 hours.

I really like the color of our crown. We usually need to paint our it, but the cinnamon makes it a very nice brown.

We also have started our Lent "learning wall". Our Lenten countdown calendar can be found over at Catholic Icing. We are also enjoying this years Holy Heroes Lenten Adventure.
This great programs offers free videos, coloring pages and worksheets. I especially love the Holy Heroes audio rosary. It gives such deep meaning of the mysteries geared toward children. It is a wonderful program to get our children's hearts and our own hearts ready for the coming of Easter.

Our Lenten Journey---The Holy Heroes Stations of the Cross

I didn't want another day to pass without sharing some of the activities we are concentrating on during this Lenten season.

We have been working with our beautiful three part rosary cards, learning all the mysteries of the rosary. We also use these with the little children, so they have something to look at during the family rosary. The download for these beautiful cards can be found at The Bookworm.

Also, in the picture above, you can see the Holy Heroes Stations of the Cross CD and the accompanying coloring book-The Road to Calvary.

To put it mildly, I was amazed with this remarkable cd. My 3, 4, 8, and 10 year olds were mesmerized while we listened to this rendition of the Passion on Christ. We all took part in the prayers and it was a very moving experience, even for my teenagers.

Right now, Holy Heroes is offering a special price of $5.00 for the cd and coloring book, and considering the normal price of the cd and book is over $16.00, this is an amazing deal.

Kimberly working on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary cards.
Several years ago I made a set of Stations of the Cross pictures. Simply laminated, they have lasted for years. I am sorry to say that I can't find the link to this pdf. file anymore.
We place these around the living room to make praying the Stations of the Cross more meaningful in our home.
The last two images of the Stations of the Cross end at our Stations votive candles.
And to provide full disclosure about the "real" truth of living with 10 people in a 960 square foot home, I give you this picture of our beautiful prayerful area of our living room...

Yes, it is on top of the little children's toy kitchen.

God bless, and have a holy and blessed Lenten season.

It's time to sign up for Holy Heroes Advent Adventure

It is time to sign up for the Holy Heroes Advent Adventure.

This years Advent Adventure is going to focus on the Jesse Tree.

"The Jesse Tree helps you follow the revelation to the Jews, leading up to the birth of the Messiah--through tracing Jesus' family tree. You learn so much about God's plan for our salvation when you do"

This is a totally free Advent program, and Holy Heroes offers the following explaination of this program: " You’ll see short videos, listen to short audio selections, download coloring pictures, word searches and games, take quizzes to see what you’ve learned, and more. Great for your children from the youngest to the oldest (and you, too)."

My family had a wonderful time taking part in the Holy Heroes Summer Faith Adventure.

This was a week long "at home" vacation Bible school. If you click on the link above it will take you to my post of the 5th day of the program, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the post you can see the fun from days 1-4!

Make sure to sign up for this years Advent Adventure now, so you won't miss any of the fun.

Sign up here and then watch your e-mail to join in the fun.

Summer Faith Adventure--day 5

Today was our last day of Holy Heroes: Summer Faith Adventure. And what a great day for a surprise to arrive in the mail. 4 Holy Hero chef's hats along with a cd of the Summer Faith Adventure songs and a cd of the Joyful mysteries of the Rosary.

The kids were sooo excited and all they did was want to bake!

Today we learned about the Communion of Saints and how, along with the saints in Heaven and the souls in Purgatory, we make up the Communion of Saints and the Catholic church and how we rely on one another on our journey to heaven, and even after we are in heaven.

The snack was fun today,

especailly if you are a hungry nine year old!

Simply add together in a bowl,

goldfish crackers, which represent the "fisher's of men" the apostles.

Animal crackers, symbolizing God's creation.

Pretzel sticks for shephard staffs.

Pretzel twists for praying hands.

Oyster crackers, which represent unleavened bread---which we use for the Eucharist,

and M&M's for the sweetness of life.

Mix together and enjoy!

Today we also learned about the Sacrament of the Annointing of the Sick.

One of our favorite parts of the Summer Faith Adventure has been learning the wonderful new songs. I hope you enjoy hearing the kids singing one of these songs, along with the Holy Heroes Cd as they color today's pictures.

You can check out the past days fun here:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

I hope you have enjoyed our sharing of the Summer Faith Adventure series. Make sure to check out the Holy Heroes website for lots of great material to help you and your children learn about the saints and the Catholic Faith.

Summer Faith Adventure--day 4

We began today's day-4 of the Holy Heroes Summer Faith Adventure by saying the second decade of the Luminous mystery's of the Holy Rosary--The Wedding Feast at Cana.
I will take this quick opportunity to share this gorgeous rosary that my dear friend Ruth sent to me! It is such a special rosary, I will treasure it forever.

After saying our decade of the rosary, I took this time to read about Jesus' first public miracle in our children's bible. We discussed how Jesus performed this miracle for his mother even though He didn't feel it was time to begin His public life, from this we learned about obedience, especially obedience to your parents.

We then began working on our family tree to remind us of all the people close to us whom we should pray for everyday, even those who have died.
Our family is very large, so we just concentrated on grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins--and, of course, brothers and sisters.

The Collins' kids have 47 cousins---so we have alot of praying to do---and this is a great way to remind us to keep all this wonderful family in our daily prayers.

Another neat idea from the Holy Heroes kids was to make flowers to put near our family tree. These flowers have the names of our friends,they may not be in our family, but they mean so much to us, we want to pray for them everyday also.

We have a lot more flowers to add, and will do that tomorrow---I believe Gracie is offering everyone "peace" but I am not sure what Kimberly is doing.

I chose to have the kids color the picture of the Wedding Feast at Cana.

We learned that the last recorded words of our Blessed Mother in the Bible took place during the wedding feast. Mary told the servers at the wedding, "Do whatever He tells you." We talked a lot about what the words mean to us---and we know that they mean if we follow Jesus and "do whatever He tells us" we will live forever with Him and Mary in Heaven.

What would a Summer Faith Adventure post be without snacktime! Today was rice krispy treats--to signify that families "stick" together.

I was happy, because today's snack didn't contain the ingredient flour, so I thought it wouldn't be too messy.

We made chocolate rice krispy treats.

Grease the pan--ok--our technique is a little messy.

Mom was in charge of the melted marshmallows and butter--not messy.

Licking out the bowl--okay--this is going to get messy.

And sticky....

really sticky, on hands, faces, tables, hair, clothes, chairs, and the floor,

but they we were, oh, so yummy!!

You can check out:

Day-1 here

Day-2 here

Day-3 here

Summer Faith Adventure--day 3

After a one day hiatus, it was on to day-3 of the Holy Heroes Summer Faith Adventure.

You can check out day-1 here

and day-2 here.

This is how we watch the daily videos featured in the Summer Faith Adventure. Daddy has provided us with a way to hook the laptop to the computer in the dining room. This works great for a lot of our schoolwork. If you aren't familiar with Ten Kids and a Dog, you don't know that the house is pretty small, all 900 square feet of it, so the dining room is used for a schoolroom, for dining in, and for watching tv.

Today's craft was to make a personal prayerbook. Mark and Grace enjoyed this. Holy Heroes provided beautiful printable artwork to add to the books.
Kimberly also wanted to make a prayerbook. She found her own paper, so I knew we were going to make something. So I got out a little Lawrence Lovasik book to use to cut up for pictures. If you don't know about this great bargain, Amazon has many of these books for $1.50 for a 10 PACK of certain titles. It is also offered as a buy 3 get one free, which makes these little books less than .15 cents each. For this price we can afford to cut them up!! It is less money than printing pictures!! (Of course, they also make great gifts. I have packaged up several titles together and sent them all over the country as gifts for little ones.)

Cutting and gluing is one of Kimberly's favorite things.

She has now "read" her prayerbook over and over to anyone who will listen.

Today's snack was homemade pretzels. First we learned about the symbolism of pretzels to the church and then got busy.

There have definitely been a theme to the first three days of the Summer Faith Adventure snack: flour. Fluffy, puffy flour----everywhere, on the table, the floor and the children, but what wonderful memories. I don't generally let the kids get quite soooo involved in the baking process, but this gave us a great opportunity to get messy!

We began with yeast and warm water.

We then kneaded and kneaded and kneaded. I wasn't sure how this overhandled dough would do---but having 12 hands wanting to "work" on the dough didn't hurt anything at all.

Notice the abundance of flour!

Yep, flour is fun--especially paired with a Kool-aid smile.

My 20 year old employed baker had to show the kids how it is really done!

Looking good!

Daddy had to get into the act when Luke decided he wanted to keep his dough to make things with (think playdough), but with Daddy's encouragement, he gave up his dough for one more pretzel

Paint on an egg wash, sprinkle with salt, and we were ready to bake.

The finished product.

Matt had just gotten home from work and was hungry so Kimberly shared the first tastes with her big brother. They both agreed, and so did all of us, these are very, very yummy pretzels. We had never made any before and I had my doubts after so much "help" but they were so good, several kids wanted me to make more right them---so did Daddy! These will definitely be a treat that we indulge in often!

Check back tomorrow for more Summer Faith Adventure fun from TenKidsandaDog.