RE Teacher- Catholic Religious Education Resources

Parable of the Lost Sheep

2012-01-29T14:37:00.000-08:00

Last week, we read aloud the story of the Lost Sheep. This is the parable Jesus uses to teach about his love for his people...if you get "lost" by turning away from God with Sin, he will come find you and celebrate your return once you are found, just like the Shepard in this parable.

Our introduction/gathering activity was the Lost Sheep coloring page from our book, EZ Bible Stories, (link to follow if I can find this online...I purchased this at Family Bookstore).

In circle time, we read out loud the story from our Beginner's Children's Bible which is easy to read and full of colorful pictures.

We then played the "lost sheep" game. Prior to class, we made up sheep hats for each child. In past years, we've made them in class, it is easy and fun to do, but the catch is that the glue takes awhile to dry, so this would work well to do on one day then play the game the next day. To make the hats, we purchased white foam visors, for $1.00 each, from our local Michael's Craft Store. We also purchased large googlie eyes from Michaels, and several bags of triple-sized cotton balls from the drug store. We glued the cotton balls to the visors, using either hot glue gun (me) or white elmer's school glue (my seven year old "helper" daughter). We also purchased a safari style foam hat from Michael's...I would have loved to have a shepard's hat but wasn't able to find one on short notice. I've posted both the visors and googlie eyes on my Amazon store if you want to order them online.

To play, one child wore our "shepard" hat and the rest wore their sheep hats. The shepard had to hide in a corner, while one child was selected to be the lost sheep by giving the child a small item to hold onto (we used a dice). The sheep went around on all fours making "baa" sounds, while the shepard was then released to find the lost sheep. He or she would approach each sheep and ask if he or she was the lost sheep, and if yes, the sheep would answer with two "baaas" and for no they would answer with one "baa" This continues until the lost sheep is found, then we had the lost sheep be the shepard, and the former shepard pass of the dice to pick the next lost sheep once the shepard was back in the corner. We continued until all the kids had their turn at each role.

For our craft, we completed the origami sheep project featured on DLTK kids. We used white paper, black small puff balls, white cotton balls, and had them color on the sheep nose with pink (pictured right). We folded the project as a class together, which worked best with our children.

Baptism of Jesus/First Luminous Mystery

2012-01-21T21:30:00.000-08:00

In class this past week, we shared the scripture story of Jesus's Baptism. In seeking out ideas for our lesson plan, I stumbled upon a version of the first luminous mystery to pray with young children. I ws excited to find another way to incorporate the Rosary into our class.

We started the class with our kids arriving and completing a coloring sheet on Jesus' Baptism. We used one from one of our coloring books with reproducibles, however, Catholic Mom also has some nice pages for free to print HERE.

Once all the kids arrived, we moved to our circle. In the center of the circle, I used our green cloth for ordinary time, and topped it with a baptismal candle, mini baptismal font, white cloth and shell. We asked the kids to identify the items, and guess what we were talking about, which they did with some prompting and clues.

We then told the story of the Baptism of Jesus out of a children's Bible. We then got out our rosaries, explained what they were, how to hold them, etc. and walked the kids through one decade with the first luminous mystery, as outlined in this Baptism of Jesus Luminous Mystery handout from www.silk.net.

Most of the kids followed along, we added our own commentary in between some of the Hail Marys with the parts of the story included in the handout. Probably 10 out of our 12 K-1 graders followed along, the other two were squirmy but quiet, I figure they were experiencing the rosary and mystery in their own way.

Adopt a Family- Sugar-y Sweet Gifts!

2011-12-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

After lots of planning, shopping and wrapping, our family was finally ready to drop off our gifts to our adopted Christmas family through our church.

When shopping for presents, we spotted this fun pink candy holiday paper at Target, and decided this would be our gift packaging theme.

Our family (number 31) has a mom, dad and a five year old girl. We were tasked with purchasing a small gift for the mother and father, and a clothing item and toy for the child, along with stockings for each family member.

Here are the details of what we got/made:

For the dad, we decorated a simple candy green stocking by gluing on colored buttons to spell out dad. To stuff the stocking, we filled it with socks, gloves, toothpaste, deodarnt spray and some snacks.

For the mom, we decorated a purple stocking with bright buttons as well. We filled her stocking with candy shaped soap, a cupcake lotion/bodywash set, socks, hairties, a toothbrush and toothpaste.

For Gissele, our five year old girl, we decorated a pink stocking. We weren't able to fit her name on the top with buttons, so we used stick on felt sparkly letters and spelled her name on the stocking instead, and added a small piece of felt and a button in a candy shape to tie it in with the other stockings. We filled her stocking with socks, headbands, a zipper pouch, candy shaped soap, hairties and candy themed jewelry, along with some small toys.

For the gifts, we wrapped them in our candy paper, tied them with green and white curling ribbon, and attached each with a hand made name tag and decorated each package with a candy shaped ornament.

For Gissele, Maddy picked out a set of horses by Melissa and Doug (the girl had requested horses), along with some pink pajamas with horses on them, and a unicorn plush blanket set....all super cute.

For the Mom, we found some warm holiday pajamas, and for the Dad, we found a nicer package of socks and a nut gift set.

We also included a card, with similar colors and candy featured on the card as well, along with a gift card to a local grocery store.

We were able to fit everything into one large plastic tub, label it clearly, and sealed it up before dropping it off this evening.

All done! What task will our family take on next as we prepare our home and hearts for Christmas?

Master of Disguise--Blessed Miguel Pro Juarez, Feast Day November 23

2011-11-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

In case you didn't have enough costume changes and dress up opportunities during Halloween and All Saints Day (we went from orange and black free dress at Catholic School, gymnastics leotard, Halloween Kit Kittridge costume on Halloween, to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, to Brownie Girl Scout the following day...my daughter needed her own wardrobe team), November 23 is a Feast Day to one of the original Masters of Disguise, Blessed Miguel Pro Juarez.

This is a fun saint to study at home or in your religious education class. He was born in Mexico in 1891. He started his studies to be a priest in 1911, but by 1914, Mexico's government had become Anti-Catholic, and Juarez was forced to flee to the United States. He eventually made it back to Mexico in 1926, but the government hadn't changed and he was forced to practice his ministry underground. He is best known for his creative disguises, dressing up as a beggar to sneak out to baptize infants, dressing up as a police officer to minister to those in jail, and dressing up as a businessman when ministering to those in wealthy neighborhoods, to name a few of his clever disguises.

To celebrate his unique lenghts he went to in his ministry, here are two activities to try:

Dress up Relay: Fill two paper grocery bags up with various types of dress up clothes (hats, scarves, larger dresses, coats, etc.). Each bag should have an equal amount of items. Divide the children up into two teams, and have them start on the side of the room opposite to the bags. On "go" have them walk as quickly as possible, put all the clothing items in the bag on them, and then walk back to the line. They then take off the clothes and the next person puts them on, walks down and around the bag, and takes off the clothes while the next person puts them on. The first team to have all team members complete this task wins the game.

Secret Message Craft: Have the children write a message, such as "Jesus Loves You" with a white crayon on write paper (or you can pre-write these out on white paper for kids not yet able to write). The kids can then give the message to another student in the class, and then the student can paint over the entire paper with watercolor paints, and the secret message will pop out.

Liturgical Year Perpetual Calendar- Free Printable

2011-11-17T17:54:00.000-08:00

One of our favorite and easy projects is to have the kids create their own Liturgical Year perpetual calendars.

I have created an easy printable that the kids color using the correct liturgical colors. We usually set up our tables with a bunch of the appropriate colored crayons on each table, and have the kids rotate through the various tables.

Preprint the number of sets of documents as you have children. Printing on cardstock is preferable for durability. They should then be pre-cut in half. Each child will then assemble their own book, and put a hole in the upper right hand side of each half page and put them in order on a binder ring. They can then post the calendar using the binder ring, and turn the calendar to the next season as the liturgical year progresses. As we are getting ready to start the new liturgical year, it is an excellent time to introduce this lesson to your kids.

Liturgical Year Perpetual Calendar

Happy New Liturgical Year to you all!

Giving Back- our family's holiday giving plans

2011-11-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

Our family has a favorite "pet" charity in our hometown, the Hope House . Hope House is a small organization, run out of an old rectory on one of our town's Catholic Churches. It is a simple "business" plan, they take in donations from parishioners and community members, and distribute the items during certain hours, allowing individuals to "shop" for free for what they need. This includes clothing, household goods, and basic toiletries and food.

My daughter and I started volunteering at the Hope House after driving by it each day and first becoming donors, purchasing items on their "most needed" list on their outside whiteboard. We eventually started volunteering one Saturday a month, sorting and organizing goods. This past Friday, we were back at Hope House sorting, and my little girl made it three straight hours sorting out the books and toys...I'm so proud of her.

So this year, for the holidays, we are adopting a family identified by Hope House for Christmas. We will get to purchase gifts for another father, mother and a five year old girl, and I'm looking forward to letting my daughter be involved heavily in the process to help keep her focus off of only"what I want from Santa."

Through my employer, we also "adopt" the children of parents in one of the Drug Courts, and will be able to provide them with small gifts, and a party with Santa to allow the parents and children some special and happy time together (many of the kids are still in foster or relative care while their parents work on chemical dependency issues).

I'm looking forward to the shopping, wrapping and praying for the recipients of our gifts, and hope that they are able to see the love of Christ through our anonymous actions.

What are you doing this year to "give back" with your kids and set the giving back example?

Parable of the Vine and the Branches

2011-11-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

This week's lesson will focus on the Parable of the Vine and the Branches. With some quick internet research, I've located a few resources to help us teach this lesson.

Sermons4kids features a nice description of an object lesson involving a lamp. If it isn't plugged into the wall, there is no light. Kind of like Jesus as the vine, supporting the branches (us) and helping us to bear great fruit. We plan on using this for our circle time discussion after reading the story. New Church Vineyard also features a lesson plan with great discussion questions.

For our craft activity, I love the idea featured on Danielle's Place. The craft is using Grape KoolAid as a watercolor paint to create a scratch and sniff portrait. We have purchased a tablet of watercolor paper from Michael's, and will have the kids free hand draw a bunch of grapes and a vine on the paper. For the paint, we added some red food coloring to the grape koolaid to help it look more purple instead of black. We will then glue on some fake foilage around the vines to give more dimension to the project (we have left over greenery from our Crown of Mary craft featured on an earlier blog posting). At the bottom of the page, we had the kids cut and paste on (and trace the letters) pre made tracer letter pages stating "I am the vine, you are the branches". You can make your own tracer pages at www.Handwritingworksheets.com . We will also print out the entire verse for the kids to paste on the back of the page.

If your kids can't draw the grapes free hand, I found a grape bunch coloring page that might also work for you on First School's site. This could also be used as an intro activity as the kids arrive to the classroom as a coloring page.

Top 5 Thanksgiving "What I'm Thankful For" Activities

2011-11-11T19:37:00.000-08:00

As we start to prep for Thanksgiving in both our homes and in our classrooms, I've decided to post a round up of some of my favorite activities from the world wide web and many of my fellow bloggers.

1. Thankful Tree: Family Fun features a quick and easy tree project featuring a stick tree and paper leaves with writing on each leaf as to what the child is thankful for. I would think that it would be easy to duplicate on a smaller scale for the classroom-- you would just need a smaller pot or even a styrofoam or plastic cup (the kids could decorate), some type of medium to hold the stick (concrete, rocks and hot glue, plaster of paris?). If I were making this for class I would make the sticks and containers ahead of time, and have the project in class be decorating the pot/container, and making the paper leaves.

2. Paper Thankfulness Turkey: DLTK Kids has a simple, ready to print and go turkey project which shares the same general idea as the thankful tree (above). I've featured this in a previous post in 2009, and have used this project sucessfully in my class. Because I have young kids, I found the actual printed version from DLTK's website to be too small, so in my post (click the title link) I describe the specifications in which I enlarged the DLTK printouts on the copier for our kids.

3. 3D Stand-up Turkey: Crafts for All Seasons is a nice little website that promises "crafty inspiration at your fingertips." This turkey is a 3D version of the paper version, above, and features my favorite medium, the TP roll!

4. Thanfulness Wreath Chica and Jo's website features several different clothespin wreaths. I could picture a smaller version, perhaps on a small cardboard circle (with the center cut out) for a classroom version, or completing the wreath as pictured as a class together, each child completing a few clothespins, or this would make a nice at home project to complete as a family or in a homeschool setting. This is a substantial craft that would stand the test of time, being brought out to decorate the front door year after year.

5. Felt and Yarn Turkey : www.parents.com features a cute turkey made out of styrofoam balls, yarn, craft sticks, paper feathers and felt. I love the idea of having the kids wrap the balls with yarn...a fun change of pace and good use of fine motor skills. The version pictured here is pretty large, as mentioned above, this size would be good to make as a class together, or at home. I'm thinking of trying it on a smaller scale in my class with smaller styrofoam balls, and smaller feathers with one word ideas as to what the kids are thankful for, and attaching them with toothpicks rather than craft sticks.

What are your favorite thankfulness crafts? I would love to see your page and possibly link to you in a future story (or use your idea in my class this year, we haven't decided what to do yet), just leave a comment.

I'm thankful fo all of you reading my blog! :)

Awesome Resource from Catholic Icing for the Teaching the New Mass Responses!

2011-11-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

I love the Catholic Icing blog in general, but todays post couldn't be more timely or more awesome! The author has created a free, printable mass responses booklet for kids based on the new mass responses going into effect on the first Sunday of Advent.

I'll be sharing this with my class, and will probably be peeking at my daughter's copy for awhile until I learn all of the new responses myself. Check it out: Catholic Icing's New Mass Responses Booklet for Kids

Thank you Catholic Icing for another great idea!

Jesus Said Let the Children Come

2011-11-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

picture from www.sermons4kids.com

This week's topic was Jesus and the Children. This story, in sum, is where Jesus is meeting the crowds. Children attempt to reach Jesus, but the disciples turn them away, probably trying to be of assistance to Jesus in keeping them out of the way. Jesus tells the disciples to let the children come to me, and tells them that in fact all people should come to Jesus as a child would.
Kids don't have the level of doubt, and questioning that adults have, at the age we work with, they just accept Jesus as presented, and have unconditional faith in their love of Jesus.

For our class, we started out with a coloring book from our New Testament Make and Take Bible Stories, which you can purchase from my Amazon site by clicking the link. These small coloring books are a great intro activity for our kids, we have them color them until all the kids arrive and we are ready for circle time (and at the end of the class should we have extra time). They are a great take-home representation of what was covered in class, and the stories our basic enough that even though they are not specifically Catholic, they have worked fine in our class.

In the circle, after opening with prayer, we read the kids the story of Jesus and the Little Children from our Children's Bible. We then retold the story giving all the kids puppets and having most of them be children, a few be disciples and the teacher was Jesus. We had the kids come to Jesus, the disciples stop them, and then Jesus going and welcoming the children. We did this a few times because it was simply fun to play with puppets and it reinforced the story. We completed some discussion questions taken from an online lesson plan I found at the Birmingham Church's website , specifically the questions following the story on Page 3.

After the story, we played a modified version of Red Light, Green Light. We made a hand help stop sign, using wooden rulers as the handle, and one side of the sign being green poster board and the other side being red poster board in an octagon-type shape. On the green side, we pasted a picture of Jesus and the children and the words "Let the Children Come." On the red side, we pasted a picture of the diciples, and the word "STOP." The game was then "let the children come" (green light) and "stop" (red light). We played this several times so that all the kids could be the sign holder.

For the craft project, each child made their own signs. We preassembled the signs with the poster board cut outs and ruler, and had the kids just color their pictures and cut out the words and glue it on to the signs.

Here are the pictures we used:
               Jesus With the Children (from the Beginner's Bible website) for the green side. I reduced
                 this by 50% on the copy machine.

               Disciples (from Sermons4kids website) for the red side. No size altering was needed.

Here are the photos and the text in one document, pre-sized, for ease of use.



http://www.sermons4kids.com/First_Disciples.gif

Bumblebee Prize Number 2

2011-11-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

For our second prize to go along with the bumble bee certificates for kids in our class memorizing their second prayer, we made them small bumble bee tins.

These were relatively simple to make. I used a two inch scalloped paper punch to cut out circles from black and yellow patterned paper. I hot glued these round discs to the lids of small tin wedding favor boxes. I then attached a bumble bee sticker to the top. Pretty simple, and pretty cute!

I've posted the supplies needed for this in my Amazon store if you would like to purchase the items and support my fledgling blog at the same time.

Supplies:

Matte Silver Tin (.50 cents each as of 11/2/11)

Scalloped Paper Punch (2 inch) ($11.77 as of 11/2/11)

Bumble Bee Stickers ($5.32 as of 11/2/11)...Note, I couldn't find the exact same stickers on Amazon, these are from the same company. Mine were Sticko stickers from Michaels.

Add these to either yellow or black plain or patterned paper, and a hot glue gun, and you are all set. Happy crafting!

Saint Costume: St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

2011-11-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

This year's Saint for All Saints Day was St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first American-born saint to be cannonized. She started the first Catholic School in the United States, and founded the Daughters of Charity. She grew up in the Episcopal Church, but converted to Catholocism as an adult (one of the many reasons I like her!). One of my favorite quotes of hers is "Live simply so that others may live". Profound even for colonial and early American times, this speaks to both environmental and social justice causes of today.

Since I don't sew, we purchased the costume. My favorite piece, the black bonnet, is actually sold as an Amish style hat. I've looked up the pieces on Amazon.com, and linked them to my store. Here are the essential pieces to recreate the costume: a black bonnet , currently retailing for $7.99; a basic black robe (I would suggest cutting off the hood, as I did here), which currently retails for $8.99, and a short black cape , which currently retails for $4.99. The total costume on Amazon.com would be around $21.00, and I'm anticipating reusing the pieces in future All Saints Day Costumes.

For accessories, the top photo shows my daughter's choices: A chalkboard (to represent her starting a Catholic School); a rosary, as St. Elizabeth Ann Seton loved the rosary, and a Bible, as she was an avid Bible reader (likely due to her Protestant roots).

Top 5 All Saints Day Activities

2011-11-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

This post could also be titled five projects I wish I had time to do if I homeschooled or had more time in my classroom each week. Here are some of my favorite Saints activities that I've seen on the web:

1. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Craft: "I am contractually obligated to list this craft as my favorite...." which is lawyer speak for this is my own craft so I particularly am found of it. Have your kids make a craft out of a tp roll and duct tape to make a cute saint. If one had time, I'm sure the simple format of this little saint could be modified to make a collection of saints like some of the other ideas listed here.

2. I love these adorable Saints Paper Dolls....and she even uploaded the patterns she used for sharing. How cute and fun would these be to do at home or in an RE class? Check out all of the details at Ana Braga-Henebry's Journal blog.

3. How about a fun activity at home (using the clues on this website) or modified for the classroom or church use? An All Saints Day Scavenger Hunt! Kate Wicker has included instructions for this fun activity including clues to use for an around the house hunt. You can check out her webpage here .

4. In case paper doll saints and tp/duct tape saints aren't enough, check out the adorable Wooden Spoon Saints featured on the Cottage Blessings Blog . I really like how these crafts lend themselves to something you can add to each year, what a great family or classroom tradition!

5. Oh, collages...a great go to activity when you need something that doesn't involve a lot of teacher prep work. We've actually started a box in our classroom where we keep old magazines and extra pictures of saints from projects, fliers, etc. just for this purpose. Catholic Icing has a great cloud bubble All Saints Day project. I haven't tried this specific one, but I'm thinking about a modification with pictures of loved ones that have passed and perhaps at the bottom, we are praying for you for an All Souls Day project?

Hope you enjoy these ideas, I know I have and that I appreciate all of those hardworking homeschooling moms and religious ed teachers that share their great ideas with the world!

Bumble Bee Bulletin Board Prayer Tracking

2011-10-30T16:20:00.000-07:00

As promised earlier, here are some photos of our bumble bee themed bulletin board that we are using with our bee hive prayer books to help the kids in our class learn their prayers.

Each child has a bumble bee cut out purchased from our local teaching store, Launching Success. You can purchase the same bees online at my amazon store here (we saved the matching flowers for a future project, tbd).

Next to the bumble bee, we have the grade level appropriate checklist (included in the bee hive prayer book downloads on that post).

Each time a child gets a prayer correct, we add a bumble bee sticker on the check box (you can see this next to one of the bees here).

As mentioned, we then give them a bee certificate, and a bee themed prize, and will let them choose something from our larger prize box once they memorize and recite all four prayers to us.

Pretty simple, but something fun for memorizing. We put a copy of our hive prayer books up on the board , along with our attendance chart.

Great Commission

2011-10-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

We retold the story of the Great Commission with the kids today. This is an awesome story when you really think about it, that humankind, through St. Peter and the original apostles, and the further linage of the papacy and the church (and us!) were given the task to share the love of God with all of the people in the world.

As the kids arrived, they colored the Jesus Returns to Heaven storybook encompassing the story of the Great Commission before Jesus ascended into heaven. The book is entitled New Testament Take Home Bible Stories, and contains a great set of reproducable stories that can be used along with your religious education class. You can purchase a copy (and support this site) by clicking through to the Amazon Store on our sister site, One Year To Living On One Income, here .

The kids watched a skit about a boy who hiked to the top of a hill and recieved the most amazing flashlight even seen by any child from a wise woman. He was able to keep the flashlight, but was asked to share the flashlight with others that might need it in the world. On the boy's first trip down, he had lots of chances to share his flashlight, but was worried that if he shared his light, he wouldn't have this amazing toy for himself. However, he ran into the woman again, and she showed him an amazing trick, if you shine the light out and share it with people, the light gets bigger and you still have your flashlight to keep. The boy then went out and happily shared his flashlight with those in need.

After the skit, we read the story of the Great Commission from Matthew, which is part of the Ascension story in most children's bibles. The scripture excerpt and further prayers and questions are included on the Parent Take Home Sheet, linked to this page.
For our craft, we made glass globes with small battery operated candles to signify sharing the Light of Christ with the world. I found this craft on another blog, but despite my attempts to find the craft and give the author credit, I have been unable to do so (If you are reading this and know, please leave the address in a comment).

The craft is simple. I purchased small globe vases from the dollar tree store in our area. I purchased a pack of blue and a pack of green tissue paper for .$97 each from Wal Mart. I used Mod Podge Glossy that I had at home (this can be found at Michaels). I also purchased small sponge brushes for the kids to use in class.

I pre cut the blue tissue paper into three inch by two inch (approximate) rectangles. I cut larger pieces of green tissue paper to hand out to the students. To make the craft, you cover the entire outer surface (except the bottom) of the glass globe with Mod Podge. You then cover the outside with the blue tissue paper, and paint another layer of Mod Podge over the top. We then had the kids cut out loose continent shapes from the green paper and attach to the still-wet Mod Podge layer. They then painted a final layer of Mod Podge over the continents.

The kids were given small battery operated candles following our story. In our circle time after the story, we had the kids demonstrate hiding the light and sharing the light by covering and shining the lights. They will be placed inside the globe to light up the world, so to speak.

UPDATE as of 10/31/11: Found it! The globe idea should be credited to Twig and Toadstool's Blogspot Page , where the globe craft was originally featured as a Earth Day craft. Thanks Twig and Toadstool for the great idea!

Bumblebee Prayers Prize One

2011-10-29T17:01:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in earlier posts, we are using a bumble bee theme in our classroom this year to assist and motivate our K-1 children to memorize the required four prayers for their grade level (Archiocese of Seattle requirements).

When each child is able to successfully recite a prayer to a teacher, we are giving them a small bumblebee certificate (we got ours on the back of an attendance poster from our local teaching store) and a small prize, along with a sticker on their beehive charts, with the goal of four stickers completing the chart resulting in a fun toy prize from our prize box.

For the first prayer the children memorize and recite, we have given them a small bumble bee bookmark that I made prior to class. When they recited the prayer, I wrote the name of the prayer on their bookmark and gave it to them along with the certificate. Our plan is to have four different bumble bee prizes to go along with each certificate for prayer memorized. To stretch this out and allow for us to have enough time to assemble all prizes (or come up with them....I'm still trying to think of a fourth prize) we are only letting them recite one prayer per week. So far a little over half of our class has recited one prayer.

Here are the instructions and photos for the bookmarks.

For supplies we purchased Foamies Tounge Depressors (made of craft foam), but a wooden one would also work. I used two Foamies sticks for each bookmark as they are kind of floppy on their own. We also purchased large black pom poms, and slightly smaller yellow pom poms, black chenile stems (pipe cleaners) and small googly eyes.

To assemble, we first glued the two sticks together to make them sturdier for a bookmark.

We then used glue to attach the large black pom pom to the sticks.

Next, we again used glue to attach the smaller yellow pom pom on the center of the black pom pom,

and finally glued on the eyeballs to the yellow pom pom.

We allowed them to dry. Once dry, we attached the black chenile stem wings.

We folded a pipe cleaner in half, and wrapped it around the black part of the bee...

in our picture I show you what it looks like off of the bee for demonstration purposes, but while making them, we formed the wings on the bee body itself.

On the day of class, we wrote the name of the prayer recited on the bookmark with a permanent marker. Pretty cute!

Beehive Prayer Books

2011-10-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

One of our tasks as RE teachers is to ensure our kids learn the required prayers for their grade level. For Kindergartners, it is the Sign of the Cross, Prayer Before Meals, Prayer After Meals and Prayer to One's Guardian Angel. For our First Graders, it is Glory Be, Hail Mary, Our Father and the Prayer at the Stations of the Cross.

This year, our class adopted a Bumble Bee theme. Our attendance poster, purchased from Launching Success Learning Store here in Bellingham, features bumble bees and hives. On our Bulletin Board, each child has his or her own bumble bee along with a small hive listing the required prayers for their grade (photos to follow in a future post). A link to these checklists can be found here: Kindergarten Prayer List Hive and here: First Grade Prayer List Hive . Each time a child memorizes a prayer and recites it to one of the teachers, they earn a bumble bee sticker on their hive and a small prize and certificate (bumble bee certificates from the back of our attendance chart).

To help the kids learn their prayers at home, each child assembled a Bumble Bee Hive Prayer Booklet to take home with them. These are hand drawn by me, so they are not super fancy, bee warned! You can download copies of the books here: Kindergarten Bee Hive Prayer Booklet or here: First Grade Bee Hive Prayer Booklet.

Once you print out the booklets, you can copy them onto yellow or tan paper to make the beehives. Each child should get one complete set of hive materials. Have each child cut them out separately, they should end up with five separate pieces.

The pieces then stack from largest on the bottom, to smallest on the top. The top of the stack can be assembled with a few staples.

To the Left, you can see a sample of the documents

stacked in progression:

Our Finished Product....

7 Days of Creation Paper Plate Book

2011-10-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

For our first class of the year, we had the kids make books of paper plates, hole punched and tied together with yarn, to tell the story of the seven days of creation. I found this idea on a website, and modified for our purposes.

On the first plate, we had the kids write "God Made" and their names on the back of the plate.

On the second plate, we had them color half of the plate yellow and half of the plate black.

On the third plate, we had them make water and sky. For the water, we had cut out small rectangles (2 inches by 4 inches) of blue transparent wrap (basket wrap from the craft store) and had them use a glue stick to cover the bottom half with glue. They then placed the blue clear paper, crumpled, on the glue to represent water. For the sky, we had them color the top half light blue for the sky, and gave each child two small cotton balls to stretch out and glue to the sky for clouds.

On the fourth plate, we had them make the land and plants. For the land, we used cork shelf liner, cut in small rectangles, approximately 2" by 4") which they peeled off the backer and stuck to the bottom of half of the plate. For the plants, we had them use a glue stick to attach two fabric flowers from a plastic lei, and had them draw in the grass and stems with green crayon.

On the fifth plate, we had them make the stars, sun and moon. We had them color half of the plate light blue, and the other half black. On the blue side, we had used a circle paper punch, about an inch and half in diameter, to make yellow construction paper suns for each child. They affixed this with the glue stick. On the black half, we made crescent moons out of more of the yellow circles we had punched, and gave them small silver star table sprinkles to attach for the stars.

On the sixth plate, we had them attach small orange fish, pre cut out from construction paper. On top of the fish, we had them attach more of the translucent blue basket wrap, crumpled, to represent water. For the birds in the sky, we had them color the top half light blue, and gave each child a bird foamie (you could also use stickers or just have them draw a bird).

On the seventh plate, we had them draw green grass on the bottom half, and attach animal foamies and a person foamie on the top half to represent animals and man. Again, you could also just have the kids draw these if you don't have the stickers handy.

On the eighth plate, the kids wrote "God Rested". They were all hole punched at the bottom and attached with yarn.

Prior to class, we had printed out short narratives for each day and glued it on the respective day. Link to our document here: 7 Days of Creation Narrative for Plate Backs

This went fairly well, although we had 18 kids and had only prepped for 15, so we had some scrambling. Upon reflection, we would preassemble the plates, and instead of yarn, use binder rings to secure the sets of plates. Otherwise, the mix of coloring, gluing and stickers seemed to work well and keep it interesting, while allowing the kids to create a tool to take home to practice retelling the creation story, one of the objectives for their age group in our archdiocese.

Crowning of Mary

2011-07-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

crown only

Crown next to a standard bottle of hand sanitizer (for size!)

This is from May (of course)! One of our May lessons was regarding Mary, Queen of all the Saints. To celebrate her, we read a story about her childhood, and made simple crowns for the kids to take with them to either crown a Mary Statue they had at home, or one of the ones in our Parish Center at our church. I remembered to post this because even in late July, I saw one of our kids' little crowns atop of Mary's head in the Mary near our classroom.

To make the crowns each child was given two chenille stems (pipe cleaners). We used green, as you can see in the picture. With the first stem, they made a circle, and then they used the second stem to twist and wrap around the first stem, creating a loosely braided type of look.

We then gave the children access to a variety of small flowers (that I had previously cut off of their stems from some sale bunches I found at the craft store). The kids stuck in the flowers. Many stuck in on their own, but we also used the hot glue gun for the flowers that were loose. The kids loved the simple project, and the next week proudly told us where they had placed their crowns.

Empty Tomb Easter Centerpiece

2011-04-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

My 6 year old's sample

Picture of Book Cover

During Lent this year, we worked on telling the Easter story and the story of the Stations of the Cross and Holy Week during most of our lessons.

Last week, I found a new book at the local Family Christian Bookstore in my area. It is called "Paper Plate Christian Crafts" by Maxine Kenny (link below)

Paper Plate Christian Crafts (Amazon)

We adapted one of the crafts, Jesus Arose, on pg. 111, for our classroom to create Easter centerpieces. These were fairly simple and fun to put together.

I purchased the "bare" Solo brand bowl-type of square plates from the store. For the empty tomb, we had the kids crumpled up 1 or 2 sheets of gray copy paper and make it into a cave type shape. I affixed these with hot glue for the kids. They then cut out a circle from gray cardstock for the rock that rolled away to reveal the empty tomb, and glued to the side of the cave with regular elmer's-type glue.

We used the shapes from the book (Angel, Tree and Mary Magdelene) and had the kids affix thes with elmer's glue (small tabs at the bottom bent backwards allowed them to stand. We then set up a table with all sorts of accessories (stuff we had around the house--craft moss, felt, craft rocks, etc.) and let the kids create their landscapes using more elmer's glue. We ended up with quite the assortment.

At the end of class, we had the kids retell the short story of what happened when the women (including Mary Magdelene) went to the tomb on Easter morning. My six-year old daughter's version is photographed here.

What is Heaven Like?

2011-04-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

We get this question a lot, and like many the children pose, we don't have an exact answer. In our circle time, we had them close their eyes and imagine what heaven was like and who they might see in heaven.

For our craft, we had the kids create their version of heaven. For supplies, we gave them small clear plastic plates (from the dollar store, ours were about 4-5 inches in diameter, cotton balls, and made copies of an angel and star shape (some free ones from the internet are here, I used some from an old teacher's book that I had and that is what is pictured here.

Most kids made one layer of cotton balls with their angel and star, as you can see from the photo, my daughter went a little crazy and put lots of cotton balls on hers (but hey, who am I to say what heaven will look like?!)

We used elmer's glue on plates and had the kids dip in the cotton balls to minimize the mess. We used about three bags of cotton balls for a class of 13 kids. This worked well for all of our kids (4-7 years) as the younger kids didn't need to read or cut out a lot, and the older kids like anything to do with glue and any non-paper materials.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

2010-10-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

For our second class of October, we decided to cover Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

For our intro activity as kids arrived, I printed and used the following coloring sheet of Blessed Teresa (follow the link):

Mother Teresa Coloring Page

During circle time, we talked about Blessed Teresa, the difference between the title Saint and Blessed, and how we can be like Blessed Teresa in our everyday lives. The book we used was informational and had lots of pictures, covering her life and death:

Mother Teresa Biograph (Amazon)

Finally, we worked on a Mother Teresa craft. For each craft, you will need a toilet paper roll, one pipe cleaner, white duck tape, a wooden or peach bead, a small foam ball, peach paint, tissue paper, blue crayons or markers and glue.

We first covered the toilet paper roll entirely with white duck tape. We then painted the stryofoam balls peach with acrylic paints. We then made the hands and arms by putting a bead in the center of a pipe cleaner, and folding in the sides to the middle to make a figure 8. We then covered each side by wrapping it in white duck tape, and attached the hands to the front of the body by taping them with more duck tape in the back. We had the kids draw on faces (we had painted the balls the night before so we wouldn't have to wait for them to dry) and had them draw blue lines on the edge of a 6" by 4" piece of white tissue paper. We hot glued the heads to the top of the tp roll, and then used elmer's glue to attach the tissue paper around the ball head.

We finished the class with the activities from our Blest Our We textbook (Chapter 19) and had each child tell us how they will do something to help others to live out Blessed Teresa's example during the week.

St. Francis Feast Day

2010-10-04T18:35:00.000-07:00

For our first class of the year, we learned about St. Francis, as his feast day was the day after class (October 4).

We had the kids color a hand-made coloring book called "St. Francis: A guardian to god's creatures" which had them color a picture of St. Francis on the cover and then think of an animal on each page that St. Francis loved. I'll try to get this scanned and up on Google docs soon.

For circle time, we gave each child a small wooden animal (.25 cents each at Michaels) and had them say a way they think St. Francis would have shown love to that animal (feeding, taking care of, giving a mud bath to pigs- we had all sorts of creative ideas.

We then read a few pages from a beautiful book on St. Francis that we found at the local bookstore. St. Francis of Assisi, A Life of Joy, by Robert Kennedy Jr.

http://www.amazon.com/Saint-Francis-Assisi-Life-Joy/dp/0786818751/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1286242768&sr=8-12

First Sunday of Lent- Bread and Stone

2010-02-25T15:44:00.000-08:00

We found this lesson online and decided to use it as the basis of our first lesson in Lent.

http://www.silk.net/RelEd/011299plan.htm

It is called "Bread and Stones: Preparation for Penitential Celebration" on www.silk.net- Resources for Religous Educators. The suggested age was third grade and up, so we slightly modified the text as we were reading aloud the speaking parts to make sure the kids were following.

We followed the directions of the lesson, brining in a rock and a loaf of french bread. Following our pre-activity as the kids came in (a coloring sheet from www.catholicmom.com on Ash Wednesday, http://www.christiancoloring.com/cmpdf2006/ash_wednesday.pdf .

We started the lesson in our circle on the floor with our liturgical seasons mat, this time with the candle in the purple square, and discussed the new season of lent, moving from ordinary time, and preparing for Holy Week and Easter through our lenten activities.

We then used the reading from the Bread and Stones lesson plan, with my husband and I alternating the parts. The kids were able to follow along just fine, and having the props of the bread and stone really seemed to give them something to focus on while we were reading aloud.

After we were done with the reading, we discussed with the group which they would like to be like- bread or stone- during lent as in the lesson plan.

We then worked on a craft, which was heart cut out of a full sheet of red paper, with a rock on one side (gray paper cut into a rock shape by the kids) and bread on the other (brown paper cut into a loaf shape by the kids). We snacked on the french bread while they worked on the project.

As a final activity, we purchased enough mini popsicle sticks for each child to have 40. We had them color them purple with crayons, and then played a simple counting game....one child placed anywhere between 1-9 sticks in the center of the circle, the next child had to place the number of sticks to make a total of ten, which were then bundled with a rubber band. We continued until we had 4 bundles, or forty, and practiced counting by tens to get to forty, then discussed why we would have picked purple for our sticks (color of lent) and the number 40 (days in lent). Each kid went home with 40 sticks to play with their brothers and sisters...interesting this activity kept our five year old busy the rest of the day.

Jesus' First Miracle- Water into Wine

2010-01-17T19:09:00.000-08:00

Today we followed the Gospel reading and read the children the story of Jesus, when he was twelve years old and attending a wedding. As you know, they ran out of wine, and Jesus turned six jugs of water into what was described as the "finest wine."

For our project, we had the kids draw jugs out of orange construction paper. We used a hole punch and paper reinforcers to make holes in the jug handles. We then had them add blue paper to one side of each jug, and red to the other, to represent water and wine. We then helped to string them up on yarn, and allowed the kids to retell the story with their new props.

New Year, New Supplies

2009-12-31T17:42:00.000-08:00

As we have a few weeks off from Religious Education over the holidays, I have time to review some new literature for Catchesis of the Good Shepard, a Montessori-style approach to teaching children about Mass and our Catholic faith.

In my dream world, they would have a training locally that I could attend, but my searches do not show anything soon that I could reasonably travel to.

Given this, we instead are blessed to have received a set of Catchesis supplies (child-sized Mass and Communion items) that we can integrate into our classroom. My hope is to be able to make Mass more meaningful to the children when they attend.

Hopefully once I've read more and tried out a class lesson or two, I'll be able to post and share my experiences here.

For now, I'll just include a link to the site where we purchased the items, as well as the Catchesis of the Good Shepard site, for your review and inspiration.

http://www.cgsusa.org/

http://ourfathershouse.biz/shopsite_sc/store/html/page29.html

I also noticed a set on Catholic Child suitable for younger children that want a hands on experience...you may want to check this out here:

http://www.catholicchild.com/WEE-BELIEVERS-MY-MASS-KIT/productinfo/20671/

2nd Week of Advent- "Waiting" Collages

2009-12-06T14:40:00.000-08:00

Due to the Thanksgiving break, this was our first class during Advent this year.

We started out our circle time discussing the color change in the church, from green to purple, using our liturgical colors mat in the center. We then discussed times we had waited for something, for a new baby brother or sister, a new toy, a birthday, or a holiday, such as Christmas.

We told the story of the birth of Jesus from one of the children's books in our classroom, and discussed what it might have been like for Mary and Joseph to be waiting and preparing for baby Jesus.

We then turned the kids loose with a large sheet of construction paper, and many magazines. Their task was to cut out things that they had to wait for, and we again discussed Advent, and the use of "purple" in the church as a color of waiting and preparation.

Thanksgiving Activity

2009-11-22T17:56:00.000-08:00

We found a cute and easy activity for Thanksgiving (or the Sunday before in our case). We used this to remind kids about Creation as the kids identified things they are thankful for.

DLTK Kids has a cute Thanksgiving "give thanks" paper turkey craft.

http://www.dltk-holidays.com/thanksgiving/m-givethanks-turkey.htm

This took about the entire hour to complete. We used large pieces of construction paper (11X18) and blew up the pictures above to 154% on the copier. I just cut the feather separate from the rest, only used one strip of feathers, and placed in the top left hand side of the copier, making two sets of these for each child. I placed the rest of the pieces also in the top left hand side as well, one page for each child. (This may be obvious to some, but for me it took some trial and error!).

We had the kids write in what they were thankful for, then cut out and glue to the colored paper. We then had them share their turkeys with the class before we left. An easy project for a week we are pretty busy with lots of family and school commitments.

Family Christmas Party Project

2009-11-15T13:53:00.000-08:00

My daughter (5) and I started our Christmas project today. We are in charge of holiday decorations for my husband's family Christmas party. We decided we will decorate each table in honor of a saint and picked out the following:

St. Lucy (Lucia): Feast day is in December, she is associated with December and one of my daughter's favorites, so one table will be for her.

St. Nicholas: Obviously now associated with Christmas, and his feast day is in December.

St. Joseph: Foster Father of Jesus, made sense to include him because of his presence during this time of year

Mary: Mother of Jesus, we are thinking of focusing on Our Lady of Guadalupe, a feast day in December, as well as her presence in the Nativity.

Lorenzo Ruiz: First Filipino saint- since my husband's family is Filipino, this one also made sense

St. Therese: Not reallly a December saint, but my daughter's favorite, so a very good reason to include it.

So at this point, we are just working on decoration ideas...we will share more after we get ready for the event next month.

Blessings!

Noah's Ark

2009-11-15T13:25:00.000-08:00

Today we covered Noah's Ark. We started out class by working on a coloring sheet for our Mary coloring books (see earlier post). We then went to circle time, where we continued to work on the Hail Mary prayer, and used our new liturgical mat (see separate post) with a candle to discuss the liturgical season and color (green/ordinary time).

We retold the story of Noah's ark, with a children's bible and a small Noah's ark toy. We then completed our art project for the week, a Noah's ark made out of paper plates.

We found the project description here: http://christian-parenting.suite101.com/article.cfm/make_a_noahs_ark_paper_plate_craft

Basically, we bought the cheap paperplates from the drugstore. On one whole plate, we had the kids draw the top half with a rainbow, and the bottom half was left blank. We cut a separate plate in half, and colored it like a boat, and stapeled it to the blank half. For the animals, we had the kids draw animals or use cut outs included with our Blest are We handouts (if you have this curriculum available to you).

This worked well for our kids, perfect for kindergartners, maybe on the more basic side for first graders.

Liturgical Year Game

2009-10-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

This week we are covering the Litugical Year. Ideally, kids come into class with some idea of the changing seasons in the church, as they attend Mass, encourage kids to notice to colors of the vestments and fabrics in the church- as they learn colors, they can easily learn the basic seasons in the church.

Purple, for example, is a time of waiting in the church, and can be exciting as we prepare for Easter and Christmas in our homes.

We have used various methods to teach the Liturgical year in the past, including our usual activity, making a "perpetual calendar" of sorts with a half-page sized card with the name and a symbol from each season, and have the children color it in the appropriate color. We then punch a hole in the corner of each card, place the cards in the order of the liturgical year, place them on a binder ring, and they have "calendar" to keep track of the seasons as we move through the liturgical year in the church. Document to come at a future date.

Since we did this last year, we decided to come up with something new for this year since we have many of the same children again. We are making a game this year, based roughly on Candyland. I've used a basic game board template, and made basic cards, to be printed out on cardstock. I'm still trying to think of what to use as the game pieces, I may find some poker-like chips or the like to use with the kids, so we can each send them home with two markers, a game board (on cardstock) and one set of cards.

The game will work like this- the board will be colored in the colors of the seasons. The cards will be with the names of the seasons on them. The parent (or a reading child) will read off the name of the season, and the child will go to the nearest color of that season on the board (think candyland).

Liturgical Board Game

Liturgical Game Cards

Creation Lesson Plan

2009-10-10T16:25:00.000-07:00

This week we focused on Creation, that God created the world. We started our class by coloring another image of Mary (see our prior posting for our ongoing Mary coloring book details).

We then read the Creation Story to the kids out of a Children's Bible. This followed with lots of interest, and questions, including "but my sister told us we come from allergy." We think he meant algae, but in any regard, it was a great jumping off point for a discussion from the Catechism on Creation- see 282-289 in the Catechism to discuss with your kids. (a link if you don't have a hard copy: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm ).

Our craft project for the day was Creation Lacing Cards. We found the activity ready-made in a book called "Easy Christian Crafts- Pk-K" that I purchased at a Christian book store. However the activity could easily be duplicated by creating a half-sheet "card" for each day of creation on card stock, and punching holes in the perimeter with a hole punch. We used regular yarn for the "laces" and covered the ends with tape (like a shoelace end) so that they wouldn't frey.

The book can be purchased on Amazon, here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Christian-Crafts-Education-Resource/dp/0887247946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255217736&sr=8-1

This project was a hit with the kids, however, if we do it again, we will be better prepared and have all the cards cut out and punched in advance so that the kids could just work on coloring and lacing, and bring some type of bag (ziploc or paperbag) to bring the cards home in, along with the yarn.

Mary Coloring Books--First Class of 09-10 year

2009-10-10T16:11:00.000-07:00

For the first class, we started with introductions and learning the "in the name of the father, son, holyspirit- amen" prayer.

Our classes follow a simple pattern, and this year will be no different. As kids arrive, we have a simple coloring activity, followed by circle time. Circle time begins with a prayer, then involves a story or section from our text books, and then this is followed by our craft project.

This year, we decided that the coloring activity each week this year will be a image of Mary. On the first day of class, we gave each child a blue three-prong folder, which they decorated with Mary images and took home. Each week, the intro activity will be another image of Mary, three hole punched, so they can add it to the book.

Mary images/coloring sheets can be found online. Our inspiration for this book was a coloring book of our daughters, called "Mother of God" Coloring Book, that we found at a Catholic Book Store. It is a beautiful, but simple, coloring book that introduces young children to famous images of Mary, with brief descriptions about each one.

Here is the link to the Mary Coloring book on Amazon through my Amazon store: http://astore.amazon.com/oneyeartolivi-20/detail/1586171038

For some free printable options, check out these links:

http://dailycoloringpages.com/images/mary-and-jesus-coloring-pages-05.png

http://cdkenterprises.com/coloring/Christmas/images/MaryJesus3.gif

http://cdkenterprises.com/coloring/Christmas/images/MaryJesus2.gif

Since younger kids are naturally fascinated by Mary, they loved this project and are looking forward to each Mary picture that we will offer weekly. This coincides nicely with our attempt to continue to learn "Hail Mary" which about half of our class knows, and half will be learning this year.

3rd Sunday of Advent- Nativity Coloring Book

2008-12-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

We've been snowed out! Unfortunately, RE was cancelled. However, I will post what we would have done, had their been a class today. I don't know how it would have been received, but my guess is that it would have been received well given past experiences with similar projects.

Since this is the Third Sunday of Advent, we would have reviewed our prior projects from the past few weeks (the wreath and the Jesse tree) and asked the kids to discuss the colors in the church (purple/pink) the number of candles lighted on the wreath and any nativity sightings they have seen- the idea is to get excited about the upcoming birthday of Jesus.

At home, we have a couple of nativity scenes- one is a beautiful, hand made ceramic set made by my grandmother (now deceased). We set this up w/o baby Jesus, on the first Sunday of Advent, and add Jesus on Christmas morning (or afternoon as soon as we get home from our holiday travels). This nativity is special, and one that is "look only" in our house. Unwrapping it each year has become a fun tradition.

Our other Nativity scenes include a Little People Nativity. I love this product, as it is perfect for playing, in a very respectful way. We have this set up, but the figures make the journey from around the house to the stable, arriving on Christmas day (we help the figures get closer each night). This is a great discussion prompter at night.

Finally, we have a nativity waterball that sits on our table near our advent wreath- a nice reminder of what we are waiting and anticipating during advent.

Back to the lesson... after discussion, we would have created Advent coloring books. My husband found coloring sheets online, already set up for this purpose. We would have added purple construction paper covers to end up with a nice project to take home and review as we wait for Christmas.

Here is the site for the coloring book: http://www.dltk-bible.com/advent/index.htm

One more week!

Second Week of Advent- Jesse Tree

2008-12-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

This was a crazy weekend, as this was our annual "Craft Fair" weekend with my sister and mom, so I was busy all morning Saturday selling our wares our local craft fair for kids to shop at for their parents and family. I also was signed up to serve as a Lector at the 5:00 p.m. Saturday Mass, so this week it was up to my husband to come up with the Lesson plan.

He researched Advent, and decided to teach about the Jesse Tree, and to make a Jesse Tree in our class. The story behind the Jesse Tree can be found at http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=545 and http://www.cresourcei.org/jesse.html

Basically, this is a tree that traces bible stories back from Jesus back to the Old Testament. It has great references back to bible stories and bible verses, which I personally like as a Protestant convert. The trees provide great discussion points for during advent, and a great opportunity to crack open the Bible with the kids at home.

We used half sheets of white posterboard, one for each child. We printed off the symbols from the OSV website: http://www.osv.com/Portals/0/images/pdf/JesseTree.pdf. We then reduced them on the copy machine at 80%, which made them still easy enough to color, but small enough so that they could all fit on the half sheet of posterboard. On each sheet of posterboard, we drew a line down the middle (long-way) and parallel lines across the middle line in the shape of the tree.

In class, we had the kids color all of the symbols, and cut them out (words/bible references included in the cutout shapes). The kids then attached the symbols with glue sticks, starting with the Jesus symbol at the top, and the Mary and Joseph (the carpenter) symbols slightly lower and next to Jesus. The rest we let the kids put on the "trees" in any order.

These turned out pretty cute, and hopefully a valuable conversation starter at home during advent. We sent home information about the Jesse Tree for those parents who might not have seen one before (I hadn't).

This class was a success, but it took nearly our entire hour-- no time for our traditional circle time. We just did our explaining as the kids worked.

First Week of Advent- Advent Wreaths

2008-12-07T12:54:00.000-08:00

Today we celebrated the first week of Advent with our K-1 class. We used our circle time to discuss what Advent means, a time of waiting in the church for Jesus's birthday. We discussed the changes in the church- the colors (purple) the evergreens and the Advent Wreath.

We explained the symbolism of the different parts of the wreath-- why there are pink and purple candles, why the wreath is round, why evergreens are used, etc. A great reference on Advent Wreaths and their history and can be found at: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0132.html . This background was helpful in reviewing the parts of the wreaths we were going to make with our kids.

Additionally, we shared the information from http://catholicism.about.com/od/adventactivities/p/Advent_Wreath.htm with our parents, as it provides more instructions on what to do with the wreaths as a family at home.

For our craft, we purchased the Advent Wreath Making kits available on Oriental Trading Company. Real greenery would have been better, but I live on a treeless lot, so this wasn't really an option. The foam wreaths can be found at: http://www.orientaltrading.com/ui/browse/processRequest.do?demandPrefix=12&sku=48/712&mode=Searching&erec=9&D=advent&Ntt=advent&Ntk=all&Dx=mode%2bmatchallpartial&Ntx=mode%2bmatchallpartial&N=0&requestURI=processProductsCatalog&sd=Advent+Table+Wreath+Craft+Kit

You can get 12 kits for less than nine dollars, and they are pretty nice, with wooden candles.

This wreath kit was actually pretty doable for our age group (youngest is 4, oldest is 7). It is primarily a gluing project, elmer's glue or a similar type of fluid glue will work best. Our one tip from going through this project-- the wreath forms that come with the project are floppy and thin to start with, and when combined with glue, made it impossible to carry home. We made due by ripping up some cardboard boxes in the room and sending them home on the pieces of carboard, but in the future, we will plan ahead with precut cardboard, perhaps covered with a purple piece of paper, so that it looks nicer and we don't need to worry about floppy wreaths and glue overuse...

We sent the kids home with handouts based on some of the information we had researched above. All in all, a positive class.