Feast of the Presentation of Jesus

This Sunday we are in that odd time between Christmas and Lent.  We aren't quite ready to start with the Lent lesson plans yet, so we decided to look to the calendar for our lesson plan.  February 2 marks Candlemas, or the feast of the Presentation of the infant Jesus at the Temple.

This event is the fourth Joyful Mystery when praying the Rosary, so we will use this as a chance to pray a decade of the Rosary with our class as well.

Our opening activity will be a mini coloring book from New Testament Take Home Bible Stories on the story of Simeon to introduce the topic.

Once all of the kids arrive, we will move to our Circle Time.  We gather in a big open space on the floor with a cloth (in the color of the liturgical season) with a candle in the middle.  We will tell the Bible story of the Presentation of Jesus, then pass out Rosaries and pray a decade of the Rosary and explain the Fourth Joyful Mystery to the Class.

For our project, we will have the students make "Two Turtle Doves", the sacrificial gift brought to the Temple.  DLTK Kids has a printable TP roll Dove craft we will use with our students.

How will you teach the Presentation of Jesus with your kids?  Feel free to share your ideas in the comments below.

Ascension of Jesus Craft

Challenged by a post on www.catholicicing.com to make a modification of an Ascension craft at www.orientaltrading.com.  By shrinking the Jesus drawing on Catholic Icing, making two of the same size, and a middle cut out and clouds, I made up a quick printable sheet, found here.  I purchased blue plastic cups at Rite Aid for a dollar for sixteen cups.  I colored and glued each Jesus drawing on each side of the cut out, then punched a hole in the top.  I attached a string through a small hole in the bottom of the cup, and tied a wooden bead on the top.  I then cut out and glued on the clouds on the cup, and the craft is complete!

Divine Mercy Sunday

For Divine Mercy Sunday, we started the class off with having the kids color St. Faustina while all of the kids arrived.  Click here to go to a free coloring page sheet on Saint Faustina.com.

We then moved to circle time, and passed out a rosary to each child.  In the center of our circle we had a small white cloth and an easter candle to celebrate the season.

We told the kids about the ABC's of the Divine Mercy...

A:  Ask for His Mercy; B:  Be Merciful; C:  Completely Trust in Jesus.

We prayed the beginning and one decade of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.  I put together some info I found on the internet here as a Divine Mercy Chaplet take-home sheet. 

Finally, we created the craft pictured above, with toilet paper rolls and the cute print out design from Catholic Icing.  Instead of fan folding the blue and red light streams, we used my Fiskars paper crimper, which the kids loved using.

Baptism of Jesus/First Luminous Mystery

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.