Lent and St. Patrick Lesson Plan

Today I had a rather ambitious project and fortunately, I had another teacher come in and help during it!  I decided to have my students make Erin's Easter Wreath that she offers for free to her readers at Wee Little Miracles.  It goes from Palm Sunday to Pentecost and each event has scripture verses printed on an Easter egg shape.  It's so cute and educational for it has the main events of the Passion of Jesus, His Resurrection and Ascension; and then Pentecost.  It's all in one place on a cute wreath for my students to hang in their homes.  Each time they walk by it, they can remember the sacrifice Jesus made for them....for us.

My sample copy was placed on our prayer table.  

It was propped up by Saint Ciaran and St. Patrick.

Here's a close up of the Easter wreath.  It's perfect for young children with pictures and scripture to tell the real story of the last week of Jesus' life on earth up until Pentecost.

I also used Jessica's St. Patrick free printables to attach to chocolate gold coins.  

You can find them at Catholic Cuisine.  Thank you Jessica!  

Holly also has cute ones that she made over at

Three Sided Wheel Blog.  Thank you Holly!

Aren't they cute?  I didn't get a picture of Holly's but hers are really sweet too.

I tend to make a few extra because a few older siblings of my students tend to stop by our
classroom to see if I have any extras!

I tried to take a side view to show the different colors of the chocolate coins.  

At this time of the year, you can get the chocolate coins in many colors over at Party City.  

They are 10 cents each!  I used gold, green and orange.

But I bought a few more in dark and light blue that I used a few weeks ago, as the coins 

that Judas' accepted to betray Jesus.

The lighting was bad but the colors are such fun!  Party City also had them in pinks and purples.  

Very colorful and fun!

Then, I went to CeAnne's blog, Sanctus Simplicitus and downloaded her St. Patrick's bookmarks.

 She has many great ideas and resources on how to celebrate this popular saint.

When I told my students that St. Patrick was a real man that loved Jesus and lived a long time ago,

they were shocked.  

They were thinking he was a leprechaun!

Even though St. Ciaran's feast day is in September, he knew St. Patrick
and is considered the first Irish Saint.

The library has a few good books about the real man, St. Patrick.  Here are the ones I found:

By Joyce Denham

                                                              

                                                                             By Ann Tompert

By Joyce Denham

St. Patrick, pray for us!

Last year, I made THIS CRAFT with my students to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and explain the Holy Trinity.

I linked up with Jennifer at Catholic Inspired Lenten Link Up.  Come on over and see what other bloggers are doing to celebrate Lent!

Blessings,

Noreen

Happy Feast of St. Patrick!

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day this year, I decided to be a bit more festive than usual.  For my inspiration, I went to Xhonane HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.  Thanks Xhonane!

My new camera broke so I brought it back to where I bought it and they've sent it in to be repaired or replaced.  So, I do not have any photos of my creations which turned out pretty good but not as good as the sources where they were found.  I'm going to use their lovely photos and give them the photo credit.  Here they are:

I made the cinnamon shamrock from Jessica of Catholic Cuisine and Shower of Roses Blogs.  It turned out very good.  To work with the cinnamon dough, you need to defrost it in the microwave for about 20 seconds so you can make the shamrock shape and then decrease the overall cooking time.  It should be baked for about 20-25 minutes instead of the 30-35 minutes the Rhodes Cinnamon Rolls calls for.  If you don't know Jessica, you should.  She is the best at creative ideas for celebrating the feast days during the liturgical year.  She completely amazes me and I feel blessed "to know her" through the blogosphere.  Thank you Jessica!!

photo credit

This one came from Jill at Kitchen Fun with my 3 Sons.  Mine did not turn out as neat as Jill's because my shamrock cookie cutter was a tad bit too big.   About half of my tops came apart in 2 pieces. I was able to put them back on top and they still look cute.  Jill has many other very fun and festive ideas for celebrating this day.  Thank you Jill!!

photo credit

This next one came from Lolly Jane Boutique and these twin sisters Kristi & Kelli are crafty geniuses!  I love their use of color in their decorating and they've kindly offered the St. Paddy's printable for free!  Head on over there if you'd like a copy yourself.  While you're there, peak around at their other very cute crafting ideas to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  Thank you Krist & Kelli!!

photo credit

Here are some books that my son and I read over to learn more about St. Patrick the man.  They're all picture books but my son still enjoyed reading them over.  I found them through our local library.  I love that!

St. Patrick Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola:

St. Patrick's Day by Gail Gibbons.

Then, Saint Patrick by Ann Tompert.

The other day, I sent my godchildren and my RE first graders a St. Patrick's card with a couple of chocolate gold coins with an image of St. Patrick  Jessica from Shower of Roses created them and offered them for free!  Thank you Jessica!

This time I had a one inch circle punch which made it much easier!  They are so cute and festive!  Thank you to all the wonderful ladies whose generous hearts bless the rest of us!

I shared this post over at Community of Catholic Bloggers.

St. Patrick, pray for us!

Blessings,
Noreen

St. Patrick's Craft

I've been seeing so many cute and fun St. Patrick crafts that celebrate the man/priest/bishop ~ Saint Patrick.  Not the secular view of this "day of partying."  Xhonane from Familia Catolica recently listed various crafts on her blog to celebrate this famous beloved saint of the Irish.  I decided to try my own hand at creating a St. Patrick craft that was educational for my first graders yet fun and simple for them to make.  As usual, my inspirations were Jennifer of Crafolic and Tiffany of Family at the Foot of the Cross who have really great craft ideas to celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick.  Then Xhonane of Familia Catolica and Gardenia of Love My Little Flower have created liturgical folders for many Catholic feast days throughout the year.  With this in mind, I worked on a couple of St. Patrick books that include how he supposedly taught the people of his time about the Holy Trinity and his Prayer for the Faithful.  Here is my first result:

On white card stock, I used a white crayon to write out Happy St. Pat's Day and then used watercolor paint over it.  Crayola site says it will work great but it didn't pop out enough for me on the paper so I went over it with a green marker.  Using watercolor paint on card stock made the paper wrinkle up a bit so I glued it to construction paper to stabilize it better.  Then used pretty ribbon to hold the book together.

I used this site for my large shamrock template.

St. Patrick's Prayer for the Faithful, I found at Our Catholic Prayers. The picture of St. Patrick was found  at St. Thomas Aquinas Church and I reduced in down quite a bit.  (Tiffany led me to this one on her St. Patrick Wreath).

The images of The Holy Trinity were found at Jennifer's Crafolic site HERE.

Here is my second result:

I worked with the same shamrock template as above on white card stock.  To create the little shamrocks on the cover, I used Jennifer's idea that she explains HERE.  A little bit of green paint and a Q-tip can make a very cute clover.

That's my attempt at being creative and crafty to celebrate Saint Patrick.  I'm very grateful for Jennifer, Tiffany, Xhonane and Gardenia for all of their generous hearts in sharing their ideas and resources!  Tomorrow morning, my first graders will be the recipients of their craftiness hearts!

Blessings,
Noreen