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Holy Guardian Angels Feast

angel-craft-3 Happy feast of the Holy Guardian Angels! Today we have a great opportunity to help our children  develop a  deeper relationship, understanding and appreciation of angels.

What is an Angel

An angel is a pure spirit created by God. The English word “angel” comes from the Greek angelos, which means ‘messenger’. For more information about angels see my previous post Feast of the Holy Angels.

My kids are super excited to have another tea party followed by crafts this afternoon. Each year for this special feast we have made lots of angels which we have used to decorate our home by hanging them off our dinning room light and displaying them on the wall.

Last year the kids made three to four angels each. They made St. Michael, St. Raphael, St. Gabriel and an angel to represent their guardian angel. They used a sword with St. Michael and came up with other symbols to represent the different angels.  We then glued prayers onto some of the angels.

This craft is super easy to make and personalized as each child gets to trace and use their hands as the angels wings. The kids love tracing their hands hence why they each wanted to keep making more angels. I can’t think of a year when the kids only made one angel each. Here is my ANGEL Craft post with instructions.

Here are some prayers that you can include on the angels:

PRAYER TO your Guardian AngelIMG_0216

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,
Rule and guide.
Amen.

 

PRAYER TO Saint Michael the Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,
and do thou,
O Prince of the heavenly hosts,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan,
and all the evil spirits,
who prowl about the world
seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

 

PRAYER TO Saint Gabriel

Blessed Saint Gabriel, Archangel We beseech you to intercede for us at the throne of divine mercy:
As you announced the mystery of the Incarnation to Mary,
so through your prayers may we receive strength of faith and courage of spirit,
and thus find favor with God and redemption through Christ Our Lord.
May we sing the praise of God our Savior with the angels and saints in heaven forever and ever. Amen.

 

Other Fun Crafts for the Feast of the Holy Angels:

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List of sites with free printable or great easy ideas for crafts to do with kids on the feast of the angels:

Catholic Icing has 10 great ideas to help celebrate the Feast of the Guardian Angels

Cute Hand Print Angel Craft

Free Printable Angel for Preschools in Colour or Black & White

Easy Stand-up Angel

Nice Peppermint Angel Craft – Makes a nice Christmas gift too!

Nice Full Colour Old Fashion Stand-Up Angels

 

 

angels

 

Happy Feast of St Therese!

Today is just such a beautiful and special day. It is a day to celebrate an incredible women and soul. One who inspires me continuously to strive to do everything with more love, more joy and more smiles. St. Therese may have lived for 24 years but her example and love will live on forever.

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Feast days are always such a fun way to bring joy and love into your home. Whom doesn’t love to celebrate – especially children? So today after school we will pull out our fancy fine china tea cups, our beautiful teapot from my sister and a delicious baked good (still need to make this lol).  We will gather around talk about St Therese beautiful life, her example and how we can show love more in all that we do. Then after enjoying our goodies we will make some new crafts that I found for us.

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Celery Rose Painting

Who doesn’t love pinterest – at the click of a few buttons you find so much inspiration. I found this adorable simple and fun painting to make – you simply need white paper, green & paint for the roses (red, purple, pink, yellow, and/or blue) paint, celery, scissors, and your imagination.  You could even use coloured construction paper and use white paint instead for white roses. We will have a lot of fun making different variations with this idea. It is also a great craft from preschoolers to adulthood.

Here are some of the paintings we made at our tea party today after school!

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St Therese Greeting and Prayer Cards

I found wonderful website this week that I just have to share its called Shining Light Dolls. This wonderful website offers lots of free cute and colourful Catholic Saint and Mary printable. These images will come in handy throughout the year – with all saints day coming up, birthdays, feasts. My head is just whirling with ideas to use these cute images with.

In past years 0ne craft that the kids and I have enjoyed making on the feast of St Therese is greeting cards which we mail out to grandparents, great grandparents, godparents and some aunts. After finding this lovely image of St Therese I know we will have to send this beautiful image out without greeting cards to family members with a special love of St Therese. We will print the image, print out beautiful quotes by St Therese and then glue them on coloured paper and personalize the cards.

One of my favourite quotes is: Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.  Story of a Soul, Chapter VIII

If you looking for a cute or special gift for a baptism or birthday Shining Light Dolls have adorable little dolls, charms and prayers cards too!

Saint Therese of LisieuxLovely St Therese Paper Doll

Another craft ideas is this adorable free St Therese paper doll. Paper Dali offers this free, cute printable, she even has a page of accessories with roses, a cross and the holy face of Jesus. I would recommend printing this on card stock if possible if not, I would colour the doll, then glue it to construction paper, let it dry and then cut out the doll so that it is stronger and lasts longer for your little girl!

 

 

 

 

sacrifice-beads-coloursSt Therese Good Deed/Sacrifice Beads

A fun and wonderful activity to make for the feast of St. Therese, advent, lent, preparing for 1st Holy Communion, as a baptism gift or a catechism group activity is the St. Therese Good Deed/Sacrifice Beads. You can find instructions on how to Make the Good Deed/Sacrifice Beads here. What better way to teach the children how to offer up little acts of love throughout the day then by following little St. Therese own example as she did as a child. st-therese-and-lisieux-page-sm To the right is a picture of the beads used by St Therese when she was little. She used her beads faithfully each day as she prepared for her holy communion. What I love about St. Therese is that she offered Jesus the good too – ie she would eat her dinner and she would tell Jesus that the dessert was for him, she offered up her joy, not only her suffering. I think that this is an important step towards making your entire day and act of prayer and love as she strived to do daily.

Here is a link to an older post when we made a beautiful 3D Rose craft to celebrate the feast of St Therese.

If you have other craft ideas please share them in the comments below!

Whatever you do today, wherever you go, may you spread love and joy!

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Amazing Saint Craft & Gift!

Every now and then you fall in love with something that is just so amazing that you have to share it! Well a few weeks ago Catholic Icing came out with this beautiful A-Z full color Saint Set – it is just gorgeous! I fell in love and purchased the set right away it was on sale for $6 at the time but is still only $8. I had it printed in glossy card stock paper so that we didn’t have to wait for 26 toilet roll holders. Let me tell you they printed beautifully. They are so beautiful we couldn’t keep them to ourselves  so we printed them and have given them as a little surprise gift to our godchildren as well as some close friends. Everyone whom has received them has glowed as they received them!

saint-therese-printable-craft

There is so many ways you can use these too:

  • cut them and use them as decorations to reinforce feast days or letters of the alphabet
  • paper dolls
  • great craft for a catechism class or classroom
  • Makes a great gift!
  • link together as a banner in a room
  • cut and tape side by side to use as wall paper
  • cut the saints out and glue them on to cards for name days, baptisms, birthdays

I am sure people have even better ideas then I do – so if you do please share them on the comments below!

saints

Happy Feast of the Archangels!

A couple weeks ago I was apart of a little discussion on Facebook. Another women had asked ‘how do you celebrate the feast of St. Michael”, to which I replied a craft, prayers and a tea party. I laughed as I posted it and it turned out my post caused much laughter as people thought about brave St. Michael being celebrated in such a way. But I was not alone in celebrating the feast with tea and angel food cake. My kids love celebrating feast days – we are blessed with a faith that has so many wonderful saints and traditions to celebrate. You could celebrate everyday is you wanted to really with the list of saints. We are just so blessed.

May your family have a blessed and joy filled feast of the Archangels!

happysaints

 

St. Michael the Archangel means ‘Who is like God’ – whom is referred to as the ‘prince’ of the heavenly hosts and whom can be seen in the book of Revelations. (Jude 1:9)  Free St. Michael the Archangel Colouring Page by Matilda

Angel Gabriel –means ‘Strength of God’ –who is best  known for the Annunciation to Mary, that she would be the Mother of Jesus, the Son of God (Luke 1:26-38) – Nice St. Gabriel Colouring Page by Matilda

Angel Raphael – means ‘Medicine of God’ -whom we see in the book of Tobas Free St. Raphael Colouring Page by Matilda

angels

Free St. Valentines Printable Cards and Crafts!

Valentines Day seems to have started early in our house hold – my kids are busy making beautiful personalized Valentine’s Day cards for family and friends. We printed a nice little message, got some big foam hearts, small foam hearts and stickers from the dollar store and with their imagination they have created endless beautiful cards they can’t wait to give with love on the feast of St. Valentines! They have spend hours already and still have many hours to go to create a special message of love for everyone on their list! Who can blame their wonderful excitement – their joy if just contagious – the count down is one to celebrate this feast of love!

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Easy Valentines Day Heart Crown!

If you have a special princess of prince in your life you might consider making a special heart crown for them – just cut out hearts about 3 – 4″ high all the same size and glue them in a circle to fit their heads and you have a beautiful crown of hearts!

About St. Valentine – from Happy Saints

‘Love One Another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.’ John 13:34

St. Valentine was a holy priest who lived during a time when Christians were not welcomed in the Roman Empire. He helped many who were imprisoned or were hiding from Roman soldiers. In the end, St. Valentine himself was captured and killed for his faith. He died on February 14, which became known as St. Valentine’s Day. St. Valentine’s Day became a lovers’ holiday because it was said that St. Valentine was killed for marrying Christian couples. Another tale had him writing letters of encouragement to the jailer’s daughter when he was in prison. What is important is that St. Valentine loved as Jesus loves. Jesus loves us so much He sacrificed His Life to save us. Likewise, St. Valentine risked and lost his life while helping others through selfless love. Let us love each other as Jesus loves us!

st valentine
Click here to download the above free St. Valentines Day Card  PDF (Can be used free for personal and non-commercial use only!)

If you like this free resource and want some more than visit the Happy Saints project where you can download a couple more free printable or you can purchase printable ebooks from Happy Saints to learn more about Happy Saints visit my precious post on them.

Free St. Valentines Day Scripture Count Down

I used this lovely craft with my own family last year and this year as part of a Catechism lesson for 3 & 4 year olds. We talked about how God has written us Love Letters and after the lesson they each completed this craft to have their own love letters from God to read each day with their families as they count down to the feast of St. Valentine! They loved making this craft -(with lots of help;)) We just glued the first scripture verse to teh top heart by folding it in half and then continued the chain down to save on using the pipe cleaners.  You can download this wonderful free resource from Catholic Icing

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Sweet Printable Count Down Scripture Cards for Valentines Day from A Happy Home Fairy

As an alternative to doing a chain you might prefer making these sweet reusable countdown cards which could also be doubled up as valentines cards – by writing a personal message on the back!

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Sweet brown paper sewn heart valentine from I can Teach My Child

If you have access to a sewing machine, brown paper and some treats this might be the right valentines craft for you. I would add a sweet little message to the front – like Love is patient, Love is Kind, Happy, Happy St. Valentines!

sewn heart valentine

Happy Saints

Looking for cute, fun, catholic illustrations of saints or the stations of the Cross – then Happy Saints is the answer. This company offers adorable illustrations that can be printed as holy cards, birthday/Christmas cards, used as trading cards, to decorate cupcakes, for homeschooling, catechism, lent, coloring pages – well your imagination is the only limit!

Happy Saints offers a wide variety of products from e-books of Saints, cute adult and child catholic clothing,  soft covered books of Christmas, Stations of the Cross, Eucharistic Miracle Stories and so much more!

We love using these to decorate our cupcakes for All Saints Day and Feast Day Celebrations. We plan to use them to with our daughter to help her create her 1st Communion Keepsake Lesson Scrapbook!

 

 

 

 

Fun joke & animal fact app for families and kids!

In April our family began to start sharing jokes regularly with one another. My husband would look up new knock, knock jokes to share with our children – which would always result in lots of laughter and to our kids making their own knock, knocks and other jokes. Our four year old son really had a hard time getting the lines down at first he would tell them like this:

“Knock, knock” he would say “Who is..” I would start to reply and he would interrupt “Knock, knock who is there, who’s is the who!” it would lead me to giggling because he just wasn’t able to understand taking turns! But as time went on he started to grasp how to tell the jokes and really would get into it! One of his favorite jokes now is:

“Knock, knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Impatient cow!”
“Impatient…”
“Impatient cow MOOOOO!”

Which would lead to him making up one of his own such as:

“Knock, Knock”
“Who is there?”
“Cow”
“Cow who?”
“Can cow open the door!”

My daughter loved making up jokes and brainstorming about funny things different animals might do. When ever we had a gust over she would have to show them the jokes we had laid out with graphics to date! Here is one of the jokes she made of that we have included in the app:

As the months went on we started making up more of our own jokes. In the summer time when we were in a book store I saw a beautiful book in the children’s section with wonderful animal pictures – I showed it to my husband and said – you know you could make this with jokes so easily! The idea stayed in his mind for a few weeks and then one day he decided – he would make a joke app with beautiful animal images that kids could enjoy! We thought about it more and decided we would also add our families love of animals by including animal facts. Our family really enjoys animals – my older brother jokes that I am prepping my daughter to become a zoologist! We have enjoyed feeding animals at petting zoos, nature trails and farms so much – that when my son was two he would cry when we would go for a walk a wild squirrel or bird would not feed from his hand – he just could not grasp why they would not let him pet them or feed them!

We hope others enjoy this cute LittleCritter joke & animal fact app that we have enjoyed putting together so that other families can enjoy some wonderful laughs, make up their own jokes and enjoy each other’s company – at home, waiting at for an appointment or just when you need to add a little sunshine to your day!

Please feel free to share your families favorite joke or animal fact with us too – we would love to hear from you!

Fun St. Kateri Paper Doll and Coloring Page!

We printed the St. Kateri doll at 66% so that it fit nicely into the canoe! We glued the paper dolls to toilet rolls so they could stand up!

Here is a simple and cute paper doll of St. Kateri, Lily of the Mohawks I made for kids to celebrate her beatified on Oct 21st or to use for her feast day.

Step1: Print out this St Kateri Paper Doll PDF it works best on card stock paper

Step2: Colour in the picture

Step 3: Cut out doll

Step 4: Enjoy! Either play with your new St. Kateri doll or use it to make a nice table centre piece or laminate it and decorate a cake to celebrate her feast day!

For even more fun print out this FreePaper Canoe for St. Kateri, Lily of the Mohawks to travel in!

 

Coloring Page

Here is a simple St Kateri coloring page  that I made with the paper doll image too!

Learn more about St. Kateri and see other crafts to do to celebrate her on my previous post St. Kateri, Lily of the Mohawks!

 

Here is a wonderful link with a complete lesson plan and story to teach children of all ages about St. Kateri! You just need to end with Today she becomes a Saint or on Oct21st, 2012 she became a saint!

 

Below: We printed the St. Kateri Paper doll at 66% (using advanced printed settings) so she would fit into the canoe nicely and glued the paper dolls to empty toilet roll holders so they could stand up (bending her feet outwards at the bottom)!

 

 

Saint Kateri – Lily of the Mohawks!

On October 21st, 2012 a blessed becomes a Saint! The beautiful young women who lived from 1656-1680 whom we have known as blessed will now be Saint Kateri. Beatified by Blessed John Paul II in 1980, Kateri will be proclaimed the first Native woman saint by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21.

Tekakwitha’s baptismal name was Catherine, which in the Iroquois languages is Kateri. She lived a life of faith and hope! Kateri died at the young age of 24. Her last words are said to be, “Jesus, I love You!”. She is the patron saint of the environment and ecology.

Kateri’s Feast day: is April 17th (in Canada) and July 14 (in USA)
Here is a link to some beautiful original paintings of St. Kateri: Lily of the Mohawks 1 and 2 by Dorothy Speiser

“I am no longer my own. I have given myself entirely to Jesus Christ.”~ St. Kateri

 With so much excitement building around this special canonization I thought I needed to get in on spreading the joy too! Here are links to some beautiful colouring pages and crafts to help celebrate the special day with your children:

Cute St. Kateri Paper Doll

Catholic Icing has some lovely craft ideas to help celebrate St. Kateri

Free printable craft sheet for creating Christian native headband from Catholicinspired.com

Blessed Kateri Colouring Page   from Florida Centre for Peace

Holy Heros is offering a Free 6 page colouring book on St. Kateri 

Holy Heros is also offering a great deal spend over $15 and get a free Glory Stories CD of St. Kateri’s and St. Cecilia’s life and a free holy card too!

We enjoyed celebrating her feast on April 17th this year!

Adorable St. Kateri Finger Puppet from Pinterest!

Hide it in their Hearts!

Teach your child to walk in the ways of the Lord and they shall not depart. We can hear this hundreds of times in our lives. But how do we actually do it.

Teaching our Children to love and fear the Lord is essential;
Teaching them they have a Father who loves and adores them is important!
Helping them to have a personal and deep relationship with Christ is critical.

So how can we as parents, strive to guide their beautiful souls –to have a personal relationship with their heavenly Father from preschooler – through teen years to mature adults?

Well the journey there like any, has many routes to get to the final destination. But one sure way to help your child get to their ultimate goal heaven – is to give them an internal GPS if you will… Engrave something so deep in their heart; that they hear the right directions. Even though they might not always choose to follow them, they can always make a U-turn and like any good GPS program – you can be sure “Your going the Wrong Way” will be blaring somewhere in the roots of their hearts – (if they decide to take the wrong or long route – the GPS will help them find the right roads back to their original destination). Hopefully they will choose to take the right path – but ultimately – God gave our children free will – just like he gave us. So let’s hide it in their hearts – so no matter where they go in this life – they will always know the way or the way back! Just what is it that we want to hide there? The WORD! Scripture – God’s beautiful gift of the word!

I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you Psalm 119:11

Scripture is something I have come to love and appreciate more fully over that past few years. So when I wanted to start sharing scriptural memorization with my children – like any good sanguine (link to temperaments) – I jumped right in – but I have learnt along the way – although there are many scriptural verse websites and resources out there. Not all of them are written or geared if you will at young children. Let’s be honest a three year old can’t recite:

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

If it takes over two minutes to explain the text we have already lost them. So began my journey or quest if you will to find a fun, creative and interesting way to bring the word to life for my little ones (who were five, three  and under one at the time). I wanted them to be able to recall scripture in times of strife, sorrow, joy – for it to be a tool for them to carry with them throughout their lives where ever they went. So the light and love of our Lord would always be with them.

So I created this blog posting in hopes to share what I have learnt and what I learn along the way!

Tips, Tricks and Ideas for Helping Make Scripture Memorization work with kids!

1.       Everyone loves a reward!

My first great tip came from reading The Duggars: 20 and Counting!. In their book I read that they reinforce their younger kids with a candy when they can recite a scripture verse! Yes positive reinforcement – works! So find a reward that works for your family – a chocolate chip, sticker, lollipop, cookie, hug, etc (working with your Child’s Love Language would yield the best results)

2.       Did Somebody say Routine!

As a sanguine it is really easy and exciting for me to start new ideas – but follow- through can be hard long term. But like anything if we want to be successful – we need to form a habit – we need to build a routine. So choosing the right style and time that will work for your family is essential. We find that right after breakfast or dinner works well for us. This way we can get the verse in once or twice that day. My 6 year old can actually recite it back by them. Of course life has a way of changing so we mix it up if needed. During the summer we might only get to the verse once or twice during the week. Lately we have been trying to do it with night prayers.

Some families we know do the same verse everyday for a week; others just do a verse once or twice a week on a set day. Do what works for your family – remember something if always better than nothing.

3.       Keep it Fun – add a Gesture!

Keeping it fun and interesting for a three year old is essential – so we added hand gestures and movements. We do this as best we can to keep it fun and reinforce the scripture for easier memorization. Some verses are easier than others such as: You shall love the Lord your God. But the kids really enjoy helping to come up with the actions and showing them back to you! Especially when it involves things like jumping for joy.

4. Bringing it Home:

Bringing it home – don’t ask them to memorize something they don’t understand – engage them – ask them what do you think this scripture means? What is God trying to tell us? Use it as a teachable moment and clarify their answers. Most importantly offer a simple explanation i.e. –God loves us so much that he wants us to …

5.       If you fall off the horse:

If you fall of the horse just get right back on again – if you forgot to do to the memorization for a few days, don’t get discouraged just try again – your perseverance will be rewarded! It might mean that you need to change when or how often you are doing your scripture verse.

6.       Write it out/Print it out/Display it!

Have a special place to display your scripture verses. Have the older child read it or have them write it and decorate a q-card with it and display it on a picture frame in your kitchen window, tape it to a vase and have it in the centre of your table, post it on your fridge, etc! Get everyone involved and have the verse available to re-read throughout the day to help reinforce it. We actually painted our broom closet door in the kitchen and made it a chalkboard so now we can display our memory verses and see them anytime we need to! (This also gave me enough room to add my own scripture verse to learn too)

Other ideas – write the verses out on sticky notes – stick them in your child`s lunch, on the bathroom mirror, in the car, on their pillow, on their desk.

7.       Teaching

When they are young just teach them the word, once they are older teach them the reference to the quote. So they can recall the book in the bible to look it up – it won’t be hard to add the book because they will already know the verse! When they are older it is easier to get them to memorize the reference to the scripture as they are old enough to understand the context and can appreciate why it is helpful to know where to find it. i.e. – 1 John 3:7 doesn’t mean too much to my three year old but “God loves you” certainly does

8.       Live it out!

Lead by example, show your memorization knowledge – let them test you – let them see you read the bible. Actions speak louder than words – St. Francis said “Preach always and if necessary use words!”

9.       Quality not quantity!

It’s not about the quantity but the quality – revisit the same scripture verses if you think they are applicable to a situation your family is going through or if you think the little ones need to re-learn it. Follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance, be flexible!

10.   Share the word regularly!

Share the word regularly at bedtime, meal times or whatever time works best for your family. Read your children bible stories – everyday if you can – form them in the word.  We try to include at least one bible story a day at bedtime. Purchase some high quality attractive bible story books or devotionals that capture your young ones attention– Here are some Bible Story Books for Children that I highly recommend that my children love!

I invite you to join in and start today to hide the word in your child`s heart! It only takes a few minutes but it will last a life time!

A wonderful verse to start with is a very special one – every Jewish Child use to have to know this by heart:

“You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”
Deuteronomy 6:5 Translation: NASV

Another one if the greatest commandment:

He answered, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.
And you must love your neighbor as yourself.”
Luke 10:27 Translation ISV

Here are some fun  free Scripture Resources:

  1. Valentines Count Down Chain  – the kids really enjoyed doing this chain last year we counted down to Valentines Day then we repeated them and made the chain up again for the rest of February!
  2. Valentines Scripture Count Down Cards – going to try this one this year
  3. 10 Scriptural Affirmations for Kids  – beautiful print out!
  4. ABC Scripture Cards – Great for preschoolers
  5. Top Ten Scripture Verses to Learn with your Kids – nice scriptures to start with
  6. Character chart – easy to print out and have older children write out and decorate q-cards to learn!

Wonderful Websites to Help with Scripture Memorization with Children:

  1. Free Downloadable Scripture Set to Songs that you can download for free: Heart Seed
  2. Offers a Free Program to teach Scripture set to Nursery Rhymes and other Songs
  3. Free Printable Sheet of Scriptures and the Virtue they help to Teach

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