Saint Scripts 2 Review

I was given the opportunity to review Saints Scripts Series Two from Equipping Catholic Families which was a collaboration of mom and daughter.  Her daughter, Kelly, provided the wonderful and unique artwork and Monica did the rest!  They're a great team to teach others about the Saints and Mary!  Each saint kit includes 20 full color saint cards with picture and biography. Each kit ALSO includes 20(+1) half page black and white templates with the colorable picture, plus information format for kids to research and fill in the Saint details.  Monica includes instructions and suggestions for different ways of using each Saint Scripts Cathletics Craft Kit at home or in the classroom!  Once you purchase a saint kit, then Monica sends you the link to download it to your computer.

This weekend, I brought them to my Homeschooled Religious Education class that meets once a month.  During the rest of the month, the parents are teaching their children at home.  My job is to assess their progress and help fill in the gaps if needed.  Our syllabus doesn't address saints until early next year, but Monica sent them to me so I could review the kit during the month of November so I brought them in.

Here is what I did: I had printed out the saint cards on cardstock for durability.  I placed them out on a table and my class gathered around.  I have young students from 5-7 years of age so some are early readers and others are just learning.  They're first reaction was to guess who the saint was and they were able to tell some of them from Kelly's artwork.

Kelly's artwork is really special.  It has a fun and youthful tone to it.

 Then the readers in the group, took initiative and read the saint names aloud.

This started a discussion of what each saint was holding and why they were holding it.

They especially liked the archangels and Mary.

I had out the black and white templates and waited for their response.

It was as I suspected, can I do this one?  Can I take it home?

They were eager to learn about the saints!

It worked wonderfully well at exciting my class with learning about the saints.  

The illustrations drew their interest and the map made it real that these saints once lived and walked this earth.  And that they too, can be a saint.

Thank you Monica and Kelly for giving me this opportunity to review one of your saint kits!  I intend to print out a second copy of the colored ones to be used for a memory game and will let them pick a saint from the pack of black and white templates to learn more about with their family.

Peace & Blessings,

Noreen

Prayer Starters & Patron Saints

Our religious education program has changed at my church this year.  Instead of having a classroom of first graders each week, we've switched to a homeschool program.  Which means the main teachers of our students are the parents.  The families will come in once a month and divide up into parent and children groups.  Even though I miss having my students each week, I'm happy that I get to review once a month, what they've learned from their parents.

Today we talked about prayer and the various types of prayer.  I found the best prayer starter prompts over at Catholic Icing and if you are a subscriber, you can download her printable for free!  Lacy has fabulous hands on resources for young children to learn about God and their faith.

There are 24 prayer starters in each set.

Since it was our first class, I introduced them to two patron saints of students

This idea came from Jessica over at Shower of Roses:

St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Catherine of Alexandria

I'm offering up prayers for all of our parents, as the primary teachers of their children, may they find inspiration and guidance through the grace of God.

Peace & Blessings,
Noreen

Pentecost Lapbook & Activities

I found this site called Christian Preschool Printables that has a section 

on Fruit of the Spirit Games they offer for free!

I printed a couple of these pages out and used them in a circle activity.  Students took turns and selected a card and read the situation out loud such as,

"while you are in line for snack time, a student comes and cuts in front on you.

How do you show patience?"

Each scenario asks the student to practice a Fruit of the Spirit (i.e. love, gentleness, self-control).

Even though I have first graders, they were able to brainstorm and share ideas
 on how to respond as God would ask them to.

We then worked on our Pentecost Lapbook.

I found the Pentecost picture over at Agape Worldwide.

On the inside, I included a Subway art picture of the Fruits of the Spirit that I found at La Dolce Vita.  

Kacie has created a lovely assortment of them in different colors.  

She offers them for free on her blog!  Thank you Kacie!

 I also made a book of the Symbols of the Holy Spirit which I made off of my computer.  

Nothing fancy but it gets the point across. 

Here's a close up of Kacie's work.

I also made the list of the Gifts of the Spirit and wrote the name on the outside

with an explanation of the gift when you lift the flap.

Under the picture of the Holy Spirit sending his gifts to the apostles,

I included this prayer.

Here's a better view of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.

On the back side, I used Monica's beautiful drawing of the Holy Spirit 

she offers for free at Little Jesus and Me blog.  

She is an amazingly talented artist that offers her readers 

printable coloring pages for faith formation.

Thank you Monica!

I also found this Pope Francis trading card at That Resource Site that I gave to my students.

I give it to them in a shape of a book mark and instruct them to use it as such.

My last activity to celebrate Pentecost was an interactive discussion of how the 

symbols represented a Gift of the Holy Spirit.

I found it over at Lacy's Catholic Icing blog and realized it's geared towards 

older students but I thought my first graders would understand it well enough.

Thank you Lacy for the idea and the directions!

This was my last class for the school year.

I will miss my students!!

I sent them home with their Pentecost lapbooks, symbols of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit with the instructions, and the Pentecost cupcake.

I have shared this post over at Monica's Catholic Bloggers Network.

Blessings,

Noreen

Pentecost Lesson Part 1

I've jumped ahead again in the liturgical calendar for my class since 

I won't have them during the actual feast days.  

I have one more class this coming Sunday and then our classes are finished.
I'm going to miss my sweet class!

We didn't get the chance to fully learn about Pentecost so we'll celebrate

 our church's birthday next week too. 

This is what we've done so far.

After our book work, we viewed a very silly yet informative DVD called 

The Bedbug Bible Gang Pentecost Party!

I found it through my inter library loan network system. 

It's an animated story of the very first Pentecost which includes the 

Fruits of the Spirit, and the story of Philip and the Ethiopian. 

 It's geared towards young children from 3-8 years, so
 it. is. silly. 

 I have a class of 6 & 7 year olds and they loved it. 

 Giggles and giggles and giggles.  

They sang the silly tunes but it worked.  

They were able to recall all the main points.

My inspiration for our craft came from Dawn's at By Sun and Candlelight and 

Jessica's from Showers of Roses Pentecost Windsock.  
Thank you Dawn and Jessica!!

It took my students longer than I thought it would to create it.

It was a bit challenging for them in assembling it but it turned out very well 
since they helped each other.

Each flame listed a Fruit of the Spirit.

Jessica offers a free printable of it HERE.

Note:  I had made one hard copy and then shrunk it to 72% on my printer.

Thank you Jessica!!

I prepped the majority of the project and made the mistake of having 
too many color choices of ribbon :)

My students ended up with a rainbow assortment of colors which turned out really cute.

Yet took too much time to select.

I was concerned I didn't have enough red so I brought all I had from home including streamers.

I found these cute free bookmarks at Bible Story Printables.

They have many other cute ideas to teach the Fruits of the Spirit.

 I hope to make these cupcakes for our last class. 
I found then over at Catholic Cuisine.

And I will be spending time looking through Pinterest Pentecost 
for inspiration for next week's class.

Blessings,

Noreen

Ascension of Jesus Lesson

My Religious Education Class has two more sessions after today so I wanted to cover 

the most important celebrations in the church.  

Therefore, we jumped ahead on the liturgical calendar to learn about the Ascension of Jesus.  

This holy day of obligation is 40 days after Easter which falls on Thursday, May 9th 

but the church will celebrate it on Sunday, May 12th.

To enhance our bookwork, we made an Ascension of Jesus craft that I found at Ten Kids and a Dog

 and used a picture of Jesus ascending from Catholic Inspired.  

I didn't have enough staplers to use in my class otherwise we would have done it exactly 

as Jennifer demonstrates in her blog.  

But we did use her idea of a LED tea light and put it in the clouds, behind the picture of Jesus.  

It doesn't light up as great as when using a plastic bag, but it did alright.  

Thank you Joann and Jennifer!

Here is our sample:

 It was front and center on our prayer table but it does kind of blend in with the prayer cloth.

As our treat, I sent them home with this Heavenly Jello. I've seen it several places with different names but the recipe can be found at Anastasia's Palace.  

It doesn't indicate the size of the jello package but I needed to use two 8oz packages.  

It's more than enough but one 8 oz package wasn't enough. 

The blue and white are to represent the sky and clouds:

I found these cute Ascension of Jesus cupcake toppers over at Celebrations in the Catholic Home.

I had intended to attach them to the back of the jello cup but my students 

wanted to use them as a bookmark.

It's a very pretty bookmark!

Blessings,
Noreen

Easter Symbol Bag

I read over on Charlotte's Waltzing Matilda blog how she had created a cute Easter Symbol booklet that outlines the meaning of each symbol.  I also read her post where she made all of her Easter Symbols herself.  A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!  I then read over on Jessica's Shower of Roses blog the sweet candy she made of each symbol.  The majority of them hand crafted in candy molds with different colors. UNBELIEVABLE these ladies are! Among their many talents, they are  candy artisans too!  

Thank you Charlotte and Jessica for my inspiration!

I knew my attempt at creating these candy symbols myself would be futile.  

So instead, I looked around on the internet and found some great ideas from Lacy at Catholic Icing.  

Thank you Lacy!

The rest I found at Walgreen's for either 50 cents or $1.  I was unable to come up with alternatives for each symbol listed over at Charlotte's or Jessica's blogs but I did what I could.  

And was happy with my result.  

I also found the chocolate praying hands and included them in the symbols.  

I told my students that the hands are a symbol of us in prayer of thanksgiving to Jesus.

Here is what I put in my students Easter bags with an explanation sheet of what each symbol meant.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of my symbols so I found pictures online to show you.

 LAMB

Source


EGG

Source

BUTTERFLY

Source

LILY

Source

CROSS

Catholic Icing

PRAYING HANDS

Source

This was a fun and educational project to do with my students.  My fellow Catholic bloggers have been a blessing to my students once again!

Blessings,

Noreen

Easter Lesson Plan

I have found so many wonderful ideas and ways to teach about Easter that it 

gets hard to choose at times, what to do!  

This was my last class before Easter and I wanted to impress the importance of the Passion of Jesus and His Resurrection on my students.  

I wanted them to remember His Suffering and Death and His Glorious Resurrection this coming Holy Week.  And not focus so much on Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny. 

I think through our activities, they walked away with a basic understanding.

At least, I pray they did.

Here is our prayer table.  I kept the crown of thorns and purple cloth since we focused on Holy Week as well as Easter.  We will change our cloth when we return in a couple of weeks.

The St. Joseph trading card (which I left in a shape of a bookmark) came from That Resource Site.

I found both books at my local library, they are Legend of the Dogwood by Brenda Gough

& Father and Son:  A Nativity Story

(it talks more the role St. Joseph played in raising Jesus).

I have an active group of first graders who enjoy games so I started them out with a 

Stations of the Cross Scavenger Hunt.

I had 14 items that represented each station partially hidden around the room and

 sent them off to find them.

Here is an example of the one I used from Holly at Three Sided Wheel blog.  I didn't have on hand

all the items she mentioned so I changed a few of them.

You should check out her blog for many great Lenten Activities!

I downloaded a picture of  Michelangelo's Pieta &

the Shroud of Turin.  

My printer was acting up and the pictures turned out discolored :(

I'll be needing a new printer, I think.

Here is a picture of all of my Scavenger Hunt Items:

Once my students found all of the items, we put them back in my green container (Holly has a much cuter labeled container!) And gathered together in a circle.

I used Jennifer from Family in Feast and Feria blog's colored Stations of the Cross printable.

She kindly offers them to her readers for free and so much more to celebrate Lent.

Go check out her blog HERE.  Thank you Jennifer!

Here's a better view.  They're really beautiful!

What we did was I announced a station and read what it was.  Then I asked one student to find the symbol in the box and try to explain it's purpose.

They each were able to look at the picture and handle the symbol.

This was a very hands on meaningful way for the children to learn the Way of the Cross.

Then just a couple of days ago, I found this super cute Resurrection craft from Jen at Enter Under My Roof blog.  I didn't have the needed felt so we created ours from cardstock.  Not quite as cute as Jen's but it did turn out nicely.  Here is my sample:

(it doesn't show clearly in the picture but I lightly shaded the tomb with a grey colored pencil.)

The tomb opens up to reveal a stained glass announcement of 

"He is Risen!"

I pre-cut many different rectangular colored shapes for my students to pick and choose from.
The idea is to make it look like stained glass.
Jen's stands out really good with the felt, but this worked cute.

 Jen has a great step by step explanation on how to make her craft out of felt.

You can see it HERE.  Thank you Jen!

I also found a really nice coloring page of St. Joseph at Sanctus Simplicitus.

Thank you CeAnne!

I sent home a bag of Easter Symbols as a small gift to my students.

But this is long enough, so I'll make that post in a day or two.

Thank you to Holly, Jen, CeAnne and That Resource Site for sharing all of your talents and creativity with the rest of us!  I often wish that I could learn how to create my own activities and share them with others, but I don't have the skill set to do so.  And yet there are so many wonderful sharing Catholic bloggers out there that I don't have to re-invent the wheel!

I've shared this post at Jennifer's Lenten Link Up at Catholic Inspired.

Blessings,

Noreen