How Lent Went (2)

:) 1. artwork    2. Lenten basket

Inspired by Montessori-style seasonal baskets, I decided to make a small grouping of items for M to look at and use as a springboard for his own little reflections during Lent.  I feel like I could’ve added a lot more to this, but I wanted to keep it simple, and honestly couldn’t come up with a lot of ideas that would be quick to put together (Lent had already begun when I finally got around to this – next year I intend to be a bit more on the ball).
I used a large rectangular basket, covered it with a purple cloth, and put the following items in it…

First, a wooden cross from Dollar Tree, which we’ve been using to learn about the various liturgical colors.  I originally came across this idea in Maria Montessori’s book, The Child in the Church , and then saw some “Father Pines” over at Catholic Icing.  I made simple little vestments for our cross and M enjoys changing them depending on the season and/or day.  To prepare the cross M sanded it a bit:And then gave it a good rub down with some olive oil, which apparently didn’t make it onto the camera, darn it.
We also have a little laminated flip booklet with the stations of the cross:I used scrapbook paper and stickers (Dollar Tree!) on the fronts of the cards, and some meditations and prayers, found here, on the backs of the cards.  We have gone over these, simply by stating what each station is called, looking at the picture, and thinking a bit about it.  I’ll save the meditations and prayers for another year, as this seemed to be enough for M right now. 
The sticker pack had two sets of stickers in it so I used the other one to make simple little stations, backed with felt:M used these to match up to the cards mentioned above, and he could also place them on the flannel board if he wanted.
I also placed a wooden crucifix into the basket (this is a San Damiano Crucifix, which I absolutely love):
We read quite often from Little Acts of Grace: So into the basket it went too.  It’s a sweet book of little ideas for showing our love for Jesus.
Last of all, the “A” word was hidden in an egg, and taped shut. :)  All through Lent we refrain from saying “Alleluia”, and then on Easter morning the Alleluias break out all over the place. :)  It really makes for a joyful Easter!  We placed our little felt Alleluia inside a purple egg, taped it shut, and waited.  This was a big deal to M; he loved the idea of a secret word!  Then Easter morning we took it out and placed it high on our Lenten Countdown Cross, which is what I’ll post about tomorrow. ;)  Stay tuned!
Have a beautiful day! :)
 

How Lent Went

:)  1. Artwork

Ah, it feels good to be back blogging. :) 

Before I forget everything we did while observing Lent this year, I want to write a few posts about it.  So today and the next couple of days may not bear much relevant reading, but it will give me something to link back to next Lent, heh.  ;)

First, I’m going to share the Lent-specific arts and crafts we worked on.  We have a door that goes from our kitchen into our breezeway and is made up of glass panes.  I want to call it a French door, but I’m not sure that’s correct.  Anyway, you get the idea.

It is perfect for filling up with sun catcher-type artwork, which, as you know, is really overdone around here.  Although, as I sit here and look at my kitchen walls which are covered with the creations of a 4 year old, I’m realizing maybe we just overdo art, period.  Or maybe Mama has a problem with throwing some art away from time to time.

Or maybe we are just happy and don’t want to change a thing. :)  It won’t always be like this, right?!

Anyway, back to my kitchen door.  To celebrate Lent and a few special days within Lent we decided to create 7 pieces of art and arrange them on the glass panes of the door in the shape of a cross.

And, for fun, we experimented with a few new (for us) artsy ideas in the process. 

I started by cutting black frames for each section of the door, then brought one out on each special day, along with whatever other supplies were needed.  We looked through the calendar and chose 7 special days to create something for our door.

First, on Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), M made a purple cross pane.  The cross was made from construction paper, and sandwiched between two pieces of wax paper.  To make it pretty M sharpened some old crayons then used the shavings to decorate the empty areas, and I ironed it a bit to get them to melt:

  
This was our first attempt at this, and I like how it turned out, although I could have used a bit cooler iron, I think.

Next up was St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th.  We melted crayons and painted with them, which was a huge amount of fun!  The texture of the finished artwork is fabulous.  We made a shamrock with a rainbow stem, and talked about how St. Patrick used the shamrock to explain the Trinity.  We used some sketch pad paper for this one.  It is heavy enough to hold the melted crayon and still let the light through a bit.  I’ll be writing more about this fun activity in an upcoming post.       

M had so much fun painting this way that we decided to make a heart also, for the top section of our cross.  After painting it, I cut it out and taped it to a piece of wax paper:

And our window cross began to take shape:

 

For St. Joseph’s feast day (March 19th), and The Annunciation of the Lord (the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary, celebrated on March 25th, 9 months before Christmas), we used small cut-out pictures from online or magazines, contact paper, and tissue paper…

St. Joseph:

I love how this simple activity looks so pretty and a lot like stained glass: 

For the Annunciation, we added in some pieces of aluminum foil around the picture of Mary and the angel, for a bit of bling:

 

The finished pieces made the horizontal cross piece:

For Palm Sunday I knew we should use a palm leaf in some way, but I wasn’t quite sure what to do.  M cut one of our palms into sections and we arranged it on a piece of contact paper.  M wasn’t interested in using tissue paper again, so I dug through my ribbon collection and found some beautiful sheer ribbon that looks gold on one side and red on the other.  We snipped it into pieces and placed them on the empty areas of the contact paper: 
Doesn’t it look nice?  However, once it was hanging in the window, the fact that it is very sheer ribbon meant that you could barely see the colors of it.  We took it down and lined the back with white tissue paper, which helped a bit; but, as you can see in the picture below, this one didn’t turn out as vivid as the other panes:I like the idea of using ribbon in this way, but next time we’ll find something a bit more solid or use a darker color behind it.

 

Last, but not least, was Holy Thursday.  We used a picture of the Last Supper printed from online, and some wax paper.  You could use parchment paper for this too, but I really thought the wax paper gave more of a pretty glow in the window. 

I intended to use our oil pastels, but could not find them – ack!  I love those things, so I hope they turn up soon.  We ended up using some Elmer “Slicks” which are very much like oil pastels.  They are a creamy sort of crayon, but a bit messier than pastels.  Window crayons would work too.  I used a gold paint pen to draw random lines on the wax paper, and M (who, I must say, learned to color within lines overnight it seems) used the Slicks to color each section:

Then we taped our picture of the Last Supper in the middle, framed it and hung it on the last pane of our cross:(I think this was my favorite of them all!)

 

Our window cross was finished just in time for Good Friday:

To finish up our Lenten artwork, we made a super easy Easter (or Paschal) candle.

This idea was straight from Catholic Icing’s Paschal Candle post.

Simply scratch your design into the candle with a toothpick, paint over it, then rub off the excess with a wet paper towel.  We didn’t have cloves, but M did want to add some star “jewels”.  We kept the design very simple – a cross with the year, and a shining sun on the back.  

We’ll leave our window cross and our Easter candle up for the entire season of Easter (it’s a 50-day feast!).  Our “door cross” is beautiful, and a really lovely reminder to take time to reflect on our faith; while our candle reminds us of the wonderful Light we have been given.

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Preschool / Bible Craft – Shining Our Light

Yesterday I wrote about how we are trying to integrate our faith more and more into our every day life as a family.  Occasionally we do little crafts or activities (if I can think of any) to go along with this.   

This weekend, the Sunday scripture reading from the Gospel of Matthew is about how Christians should be salt and light in the world.  (Matthew 5:13-16)

We talked about this a little and then did a fun candle craft.  We’ve done this once before and M loved it.  He’s  been wanting to make another one, and this was the perfect opportunity (especially considering that I just used up a jar of chicken bouillon, the perfect size for a little candle. ;) )

We started off with some tissue paper scraps, our jar, white glue thinned with water, a foam paintbrush, and a small picture of Jesus with His mama, cut from a Christmas card:

I explained to M that this is called decoupaging.  He just loves those big words. :)

Paint on a thin layer of glue, press on tissue paper pieces, then carefully paint another thin layer of glue on top.  Keep doing this until your jar looks “just right” to you:

It took some extra glue to get the picture to stick on.  I would suggest using a cutting from a magazine instead of a card, or using generous amounts of double stick tape to put the picture on, then covering it with the thinned glue:

 

When it’s dry, pop in a tea light candle and watch your little light shine. :)

the back

the front

We’ve also been singing This Little Light of Mine, using a battery-operated tealight to “hide under a bushel” (his cupped hand) and “blow” out. :)  M really, really loves this!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Candlemas and a bit of miscellany :)

public domain image

I love saying that word (I mean miscellany, although I do love to say Candlemas too, now that I think of it), but it’s not often that I get a chance to use it in everyday conversation. :)

I thought I’d quickly share with you what we’ve been doing in the way of faith-based activities.  This is a routine we’ve only just started, and there will be some adjusting, and perhaps adding as we go along.

At the beginning of last year we started going through M’s little Children’s Bible, one story per day, completing it in late spring.  We truly enjoyed it and when it was done I was a bit stumped about what to do.  Silly, I know (we could simply have started over)… but I wanted something that would be simple and easy to do each day, with the possibility of more involved learning and extension activities once every week or a couple of times a month.

I also wanted something that would keep us in line with the rhythm of the liturgical year.  I’m a good Baptist girl who fell in love with a good Catholic boy (and eventually became Catholic too), and I’ve been so appreciative of how the Church lives the life of Christ throughout the liturgical year.  None of this used to make any sense to me, but as I’ve learned about it I’ve really been drawn to the depth and beauty of it. 

My conversion story is probably not of interest to any of my readers, other than a few family members and possibly friends who have known me forever, and with whom I normally shy away from discussing this kind of thing (conflict has never really been my thing, and since my dad was a pastor in my early childhood, you can imagine there’s conflict surrounding this subject).  So, I won’t go into any of that here, except to say, one thing I love is that the Catholic Church has a 2 year cycle of daily Bible readings – including passages from the Old Testament or a New Testament letter, the Psalms, and one of the Gospels.  (This is not including the Sunday readings, which are on a 3 year cycle.)  So, reading through these passages daily, you’ll end up reading the entire Bible every 2 years.  The first reading and Psalm always relate in some way to the Gospel reading also, which is really neat.

Whew – that was more of an explanation than I intended, but I’ll let it stand. :) 

I’ve been reading the daily readings to M, from a “real” Bible, not his Children’s Bible, and he is doing just fine with comprehension.  I do tend to look the reading over first and simplify anything that might be confusing, or too mature for him (I edit other books as I’m reading them too; just because it’s the Bible, doesn’t mean a small child is ready to correctly comprehend everything in it!).  We usually do this as he eats breakfast and then we talk a bit about it while I’m cleaning up the kitchen.  It’s very simple and relaxed.  We are going through the Gospel of Mark right now, with all the wonderful miracles that Jesus performed – there’s a real “wow” factor in them that I appreciate so much, seeing them through the eyes of a 4 year old boy. :)

There are many special days throughout the year, one of which was this past Wednesday – Candlemas  - also known as the feast of the Presentation of the Lord.

The Presentation of the Lord – public domain image

This was when baby Jesus was taken to the temple at 8 days old, and Simeon and Anna saw him and praised God for the savior He had sent into the world.  Jesus was revealed as the light to the nations that had been prophesied in the Old Testament.  So – in Catholic churches everywhere candles are blessed and a very simple tradition in the home is having candles lit all day long in honor of this important day in the life of Jesus.

 I love the peacefulness of lit candles

We believe that parents are responsible for passing on their faith to their children.  Our church does provide Sunday School, but I still feel that it’s important that what they do there is only supplemental, and what we do at home is the real foundation and formation in this area.

Do you make a point of celebrating your faith in your home? I’d love to hear and learn about your family traditions during this “ordinary time” of the year!

Have a beautiful day! :)

This post has been edited to add the following:

A commenter asked about finding a list of the 2 year cycle of daily readings.  The best I’ve found online is here:

http://wau.org/meditations/current/

In the upper right hand corner, below the heading, you’ll see the following box:

Click on the month you want and it will bring up a printable .pdf listing all of the daily readings for that month.  As you can see most of the months available in this list are from 2010, and the list is updated with the current month.  So… you will need to visit the site again in March to get March’s reading list and so on.  If anyone is interested in having the entire 2 years of reading laid out for them, you could purchase a Missal, which not only lists, but also has the text for each reading (these are expensive; we received one as a wedding gift).  Otherwise, many local Catholic bookstores provide small booklets with the listings for each year for only $2 to $3.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Art – Epiphany Stars and Corn Syrup Painting

Today is the 12th day of Christmas – are your little drummers drumming?  If they aren’t, I bet they will if you tell them they can. ;)  I’m sure mine will, although that’s only one drummer, not twelve.  I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be ok with it if I had twelve drummers!

Tomorrow is Epiphany, and we’ll be moving the wise men all the way to the stable, where they finally get to see the baby they’ve been looking for.  They will bring gifts, and I plan to have a little something (a very little $5.00 something) for them to give to M also.

We decided to make some stars to help celebrate, and I turned it into a full-fledged art project by introducing a technique we’ve never tried before – painting with corn syrup.  This was fun and I wished we’d tried it sooner.  It is not as messy as it sounds!

Here’s what you’ll need:Corn syrup, food coloring, small paint brushes, glitter, craft sticks, and stars cut from cardboard or cardstock.  And, because I just wouldn’t be me if I included all the supplies in the photo, we also used parchment paper, double-stick tape, scissors, and an ice cube tray.

First, pour a puddle of corn syrup onto one of the stars: 

Then use a craft stick to spread it out towards the points.  You want to cover the entire star:

Next, squeeze on a couple of drops of food coloring: 

And use the pointy end of a paintbrush to swirl the colors (you could use a toothpick or skewer for this too, obviously):

We loved watching the colors swirl around – so pretty!

Keep swirling out towards the points, until you have it just the way you want it.  We should have left it at that, because it was beautiful.  However, M was sure a little glitter would be great, and a little glitter probably would have been fine.  I think I liked it better before the glitter, but apparently I forgot to get a photo of that.  Here’s with glitter:

You can’t tell in the photo, but the corn syrup makes it very, very shiny – perfect for a star!  It almost leaves it looking like painted glass or ceramic.

Leave them to dry overnight.  Depending on your humidity level, drying could take a couple of days.  Our air is very dry these days, and it only took one night for our stars to dry.  They look just as shiny after they are dry, but are no longer sticky.

Next, we decided to try painting our cardboard stars with colored corn syrup and paint brushes instead of a craft stick.

I poured a little corn syrup into four wells of an ice cube tray, added some food coloring, and a tiny amount of glitter: 

We each painted one star (after watching, I just had to try this for myself – it was a lot of fun!):

Painting with the paint brushes left a much thinner layer of corn syrup, which meant less mess and a shorter drying time.  However, we weren’t able to achieve the swirling effect from earlier.  The swirling was mesmerizing and beautiful to watch.  When we do this again, we will paint plain corn syrup onto our paper, then drip on food coloring and swirl.  Hopefully that will mean a thinner layer of corn syrup, while still having the swirled look.

Our finished (painted) stars:

We have company coming over for dinner tonight, and one last evening enjoying the light of our Christmas tree.  We may watch The Little Drummer Boy, read Little Star, and sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  We’ll read the story of the Three Kings from M’s little Bible tomorrow and I have a little mosaic crown project set up for him (pictures of that later).

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)