Crowning of Mary

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.

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

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.