Catholic

C is for…

/ Stacie / 2 Comments

C is for…Columbine fairy and St. Cecelia.  After reading Serendipity’s Flower Fairy story, Joseph and William colored pictures of the Columbine fairy.  Joseph also did some copywork from the poem that is in the Flower Fairy book (which he did while listening to the Flower Fairy CD).  Then we looked up the actual wildflower in our field guide.  We read about Saint Cecelia in our Alphabet of Catholic Saints.  Joseph did some copywork and both boys colored a picture of Saint Cecelia.  We also used the picture from the book to practice the letter C formation.  We read about cherubims in Letters from Heaven. 

C is for…the letter C.  We practiced letter formation using the Cuisenaire Rods Alphabet Book, Do A Dot, Salt Dough letters, and Pin Punch letters. 

C is for…Castles.  We read about life in a castle and then used our wooden castle to act out the story.

C is for…The Constitution.  We used Betsy Maestro’s book A More Perfect Union to learn the history of the Constitution.  We’ve added the Preamble to our morning routine, right after we say the Pledge of Allegiance.  We also watched The Preamble on Schoolhouse Rock (the song is so catchy that we usually end up singing the Preamble rather than reciting it!). 

C is for…St. Christopher.  We read Tomie dePaola’s book Christopher: The Holy Giant, after which Joseph did a narration and illustration. 

C is for…colors.  We had lots of fun with colors!  We did some color clothespin matching and some color mixing. 

C is for…creeks. After reading Box Turtle at Long Pond, we visited a nearby creek and saw lots of turtles. 

C is for…cat.  We studied Joseph Interpreting the Dreams of His Fellow Prisoners and then did a narration and illustration.

C is for…compassion and cookies.  I found these great coloring pages and we’re including one each week along with a virtue story.  This week the theme was Compassion.  To supplement our virtue studies, we read the book Cookies: Bite Size Life Lessons …one of my absolute favorites (and the kids’ too!) 

C is for…candles and cake.  We baked a cake in honor of Auntie Leslie’s birthday and then even blew out candles. 

C is for…Connect Four and chase!

In our book baskets this week (I’m choosing one book from each basket to have Joseph do a narration and illustration of):

History (The Constitution): A More Perfect Union;  If You Were There When They Signed the Constitution 

Science (creeks): Box Turtle at Long Pond; Follow the Water from Brook to Ocean

Favorite C Books:  Chicka Chicka Boom Boom; Chicka Chicka 123; The Carrot Seed; Cowboy’s Secret Life; Curious George books; Clifford books; Chrysanthemum; Corduroy; Charlie Needs a Cloak; A Child’s Rule of Life

Good Friday

/ Stacie / 1 Comment

As part of our Easter preparation, we did a preschool version of the Stations of the Cross Friday morning.  We used a beautiful book The Story of the Cross by Mary Joslin to guide us through our experience.  I read the description of each station while Joseph matched the picture of the station with the title of the station (I downloaded these from here) and then Joseph read the prayer for each station from the book.  The best part?  I know Joseph was imagining how Jesus must have felt because when we got to the 9th station and Jesus fell the third time, Joseph very compassionately asked, “oh, Jesus, you fell again…are you okay?”

 

Ash Wednesday

/ Stacie / 1 Comment

William is at “that age.”  That age when he’s mobile and so very eager to get down and explore, yet too little to understand the necessity of being still during Mass (or at least being in one place, specifically the pew).  Taking that into consideration, we decided to celebrate Ash Wednesday a little differently this year.  I wanted both of my kids to experience the fullness and beauty of the day so we decided to have our own celebration at home (well, at my parent’s home since we were visiting them). 

The night before, we enlisted the help of Dad.  He and Joseph found and burned the palms from last year for our ashes. 

The morning of Ash Wednesday, Joseph and I baked pretzels.  According to tradition, the pretzel is an ancient Christian Lenten bread, going back as far as the 4th century.  Since Lent is a time of fasting (at that time fasting included no milk, butter, eggs, cheese, cream, or meat) the pretzel is a perfect Lenten bread.  It consists of basically flour, salt, and water.  The shape of the pretzel symbolizes the form of crossed arms because that is how people prayed in ancient times, with arms crossed over their chests.  I found a delicious pretzel recipe at www.cdkitchen.com for Aunt Annie’s Soft Pretzels. 

After our pretzels were ready, we invited Leslie and Alex down to join us (Alex is at “that age” too!) for our Ash Wednesday ceremony.  We mixed some oil with our ashes and Joseph helped me to set up a beautiful makeshift prayer altar (our Jesus Box was at home). 

Our ceremony began with Joseph blessing our pretzels.  We used a prayer from Catholic Culture.  Here is our shortened version:

We beg you, O Lord, to bless these breads which are to remind us that Lent is a sacred season of penance and prayer. Grant us, we pray, that we too, may be reminded by the sight of these pretzels to observe the holy season of Lent with true devotion and great spiritual fruit. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

After the blessing of the pretzels, Mom read to us Isaiah 58:5-10. 

Next we distributed our ashes.  As we did so, we recited from Ecclesiastes 3:20 “All come from dust and to dust all return.” 

To conclude our ceremony, we had a grand time burying “Alleluia” and “Gloria” since those are words that are not used in Church during Lent.  I gave Joseph the letters for the two words and he spelled them out and then he found hiding places for the words. 

Our Ash Wednesday ceremony was a success…it was nothing elaborate, but it was filled with ancient tradition and beautiful prayer.  The best part was there was no pressure to keep the little ones quiet…while this is not a feasible option for most Church celebrations, it was a nice break for Ash Wednesday.   

Just a note: If we choose to do it again at home in the future, I will add the gospel reading from Matthew 6 and discuss fasting, praying, and almsgiving, although by next year, William will be past “that age” and we’ll probably go back to celebrating Ash Wednesday with Mass…but I think this year set the stage for a few new traditions of our own, including the pretzel ceremony.