All Saints Fair

Saints Alive!

What a great way to learn about the saints.

This year, Father developed an all-school extravaganza! The CCD classes were included as well.  Everyone took part.

Each classroom was given a country from which to research saints.  The students created displays of all kinds.  The classrooms were decorated, music and art was included, to make each room feel as though visitors were truly taking a journey around the world.  There were even regional snacks in some of the "countries".  Family members were invited for a fun filled evening visiting all the classrooms.  Everyone received a "passport" which was stamped as they visited the many countries.  It was quite a success!

Our country was Ireland.

(I am French by marriage only!  I'm an Irish lass at heart!)

We spent several weeks learning all about St. Brigid and St. Patrick. 

The students each created a fantastic display board, complete with colored holy card images of each saint, a map of Ireland, the Irish flag and a biographical paragraph (kinder-version!) about each saint.  Each munchkin also made a St. Brigid cross and a St. Patrick shamrock. 

We created a great hallway display, turning our doorway into the entrance to Kildare Abbey with Brigid spreading her cloak on one side & Patrick driving the snakes into the sea on the other.

Our classroom had some fun snacks...

Saint Francis' Snakes

Irish Mints

and

Trinity Shamrocks

So many of our munchkins visited the fair.  It was so fun to see them all!

Father ended the evening, gathering all the kids in the gym for a Saints Trivia game.  Too fun!

It was a fantastic evening and it was such a great way to learn about so many of the wonderful saints of Heaven.

May they all pray for us!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

Our Lady of Fatima

The Day the Sun Danced

Our Lady of Fatima falls on Saturday this year, and Father has a wonderful Rosary Rally planned for the parish...so to get the munchkins ready for this big event, we spent a day learning all about Francisco, Lucia and Jacinta.

We created a fun "dancing sun" and colored a beautiful image of Our Lady as she may have appeared to the children. 

We also watched "The Day the Sun Danced" with the First Grade.

(and shared some "dancing sun" cookies with them!)

Of course, being Friday, we ended our day with an all-school Rosary. 

Very fitting!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

The Feast of St. Francis

Good St. Francis

We continued to work our way through the first week of October, celebrating each day along the way!  Boy that first week is filled (and next week promises to have several wonderful days as well!)

Today was especially special!

St. Francis is the patron of our Kindergarten classroom. 

And what a beautiful example of how to grow in holiness and live close to Christ.  That is why we study the saints!

We created a fun little woodland scene for St. Francis and all the animals of God's creation that he loved so much. 

The munchkins did a wonderful job making the trees and the setting.

  

  

Then they added all sorts of critters...stickers are sooooo much fun!

When finished, there was a little time for a coloring page, too.

And to end our day, we read the story of the wolf at Gubbio.  What a terrific story.  The munchkins always love it!

We enjoyed wolf paw cookies as a special treat and them we watched

St. Francis: Knight of Assisi

St. Francis, Pray for Us!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

St. Michael

Another Angel

After learning all about our Guardian Angels, we took a day to learn about some other very special angels...The Archangels.  The Feast of the Archangels took place over the weekend this year, so we added it to our week when we had some extra time!  But...because we squeezed this feast day in...we didn't have time to learn about all the archangels.

Our focus was St. Michael!

We read about St. Michael our Protector and learned his prayer.

We enjoyed devil's food donuts, too!

And we made shields of virtue with St. Michael's image.

St. Michael the Archangel

Defend us in battle.

Be our protection against the wickedness

and snares of the devil.

My God rebuke him, we humbly pray.

And do thou, of prince of heavenly hosts

By the divine power of God

Cast into hell, Satan

And all the evil spirits

Who prowl about the earth

seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

Our Guardian Angels

Kindergarten Angels

Well...on to the second feast day of October!

The Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels

We read a cute little book called Angel of God: What's Your Name?  The munchkins had really never thought about the fact that their angels are with them always and that at any given time during the day our classroom is filled with angels! 

We made a quick, easy and oh-so-glittery angel project, which included the Guardian Angel Prayer, to remind us to invoke the help of our Guardian Angel each day and night. 

Then we had angel food cake!

(Although not all the munchkins liked it...)

Angel of God

My Guardian Dear

To Whom God's love

Commits me here

Ever this day

Be at my side

To light and guard

To rule and guide.

Amen

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

The Feast of St. Therese

Learning About

The Little Flower

Other than December, I'm not sure there is a month with so many wonderful opportunities to learn about the amazing lives of the saints of our Church.  October is packed full of beautiful feast days and we began right off the bat today with one of our favorites...

St. Therese of the Child Jesus

The munchkins enjoyed listening to the Glory Story CD of her life while they worked on a fun make-and-take project.

We created a cross with craft sticks and colored an image of St. Therese for the bottom portion.  The top was decorated with little flowers, much like the cross in the coloring page.  They turned out so lovely and the munchkins couldn't wait to take them home and tell everyone how to follow St. Therese's "little way" to become a saint!

And to top that off...we had "little flower" cookies!

Yum!

St. Therese, Pray for Us!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.



Happy Birthday Mary!

A Special Birthday

Our school celebrated the Nativity of Mary with a special afternoon birthday party, complete with cake.  Our class enjoyed celebrating with the first and third graders. 

The cake was super yummy...

But unfortunately, we only had a handful of munchkins at school that afternoon. 

It was a special way to dedicate the afternoon to Our Blessed Mother.

~  Happy Birthday, Mary  ~

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.



Our First Feast Day

The Queenship of Mary

What a great way to start learning the feasts of our beautiful liturgical year!  Today we celebrated the Queenship of Mary.

(Thanks to Charlotte for the beautiful coloring image.)

We ended our mid-week activities with an end-of-the-day snack to represent Mary on the clouds of heaven.  This was a quick and easy first recipe of the year, but the munchkins enjoyed placing their teddy graham Mary in the center of the donut cloud and sprinkling it with heavenly Marian blue sprinkles.  Of course, they loved eating it even more!

I'm sure it's the start of another year of wonderful Wednesday afternoon recipes and yummy fun!

Mary, Queen of Heaven, Our Mother ~ Pray for Us!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

The Feast of the Annunciation

She Said Yes!

The Feast of the Annunciation falls on a Lenten Sunday this year, so it will be officially celebrated on Monday, March 26.  We decided to end our week by preparing for the feast day, even though we are a few days early.

We revisited our Atrium infancy narrative box with the beautiful pieces for retelling the Annunciation story.  Then we sang one of our favorite little songs: She Said Yes

We also re-read the story from one our many Bibles.

(The munchkins love to read from different Bibles!)

Then we were on to the fun part.  Anything that includes glitter is fun, right?

The munchkins traced and cut their hands and one foot (yes, with the shoe off and everything!). 

All the pieces were assembles to create what could be considered an angel!

(Although, many of the munchkins decided it looked more like a turkey!)

We added a pretty glittered halo, though.  Then it looked more like Gabriel!  We also added a prayer to the back.  The munchkins began learning The Angelus after Christmas break and now THEY KNOW IT!  So, this was the perfect project to add it to...

As the munchkins finished, they had the chance to color the beautiful image of Gabriel and Mary from our atrium work folder.

And then my camera battery gave out!  I guess it was time to stop taking pictures...

How sad!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.