Category Archives: holy week

Holy Week: Helping Our Children Walk with Jesus

Holy Week is here! Do you feel like your children are ready for Holy Week? Are they ready to walk with Jesus? A couple of years ago, I had been stirring because I felt like my children were not really ready for Holy Week and the Crucifixion and, of course, Easter! Yes, we’ve been doing things all during Lent but I felt like now, they needed something more. One night I woke up in the middle of the night and the Holy Spirit gave me an idea! I say He gave me the idea because it was so perfect and brilliant that it could only be from God. So the next day, I put this together for our classroom! I am so proud of our children because they were so into our lesson as we talked about the days of the week and our Holy Week Journey to Easter Sunday! I really enjoyed making this and also loved its simplicity! What I wanted to accomplish with this was a visual of what Jesus, our Lord, went through during Holy Week. I wanted to help them walk with Jesus.

READ MORE….

Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!

Holy Thursday: Jesus Gives Us a Mandate

Yesterday, on Spy Wednesday, I said I wouldn’t post today but I dawned on me today that Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday, was too important and special NOT to say something on Raising Little Saints.  “The feast of Maundy (or Holy) Thursday solemnly commemorates the institution of the Eucharist and is the oldest of the observances peculiar to Holy Week.” (source: New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia). Do you know what the word “maundy” means?  In Latin, it means COMMAND or MANDATE.  So today is the day that we call the Thursday which the Lord left us a command.  What command would that be?  Well lets turn to Scripture for that:

 “If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is My flesh, for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us His flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth My Flesh, and drinketh My Blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day.” (John 6)


“Jesus was only nine months in the womb of Mary, three hours on the Cross,
three days in the sepulcher, but He is always in the tabernacle.
Does our reverence before Him bear witness to this most blessed truth?”
Based on John 6, the words of Jesus Christ, Himself.

How does anyone not read this and realize the whole of our existence depends on this single pronouncement? It is not bread, it is not wine, it is your Creator, giving Himself to you gratuitously. Does any Christian that believes in Sola Scriptura not see that their belief system contradicts the Bible, and that in this passage God does not speak cavalierly?

His allegories, or parables, are for instruction. This is NOT an allegory. This is a very POINTED, blunt, take it or live it literal commandment. He went out of His way to make this point.

If He wishes the redemption of humanity for all the rest of time, this giving of His Body and Blood is not a symbol, and it wasn’t just for His time. Those that believe in the Most Blessed Sacrament are the true fundamentalists, and we stake our very souls on this basic belief, that Jesus is Truth Incarnate.

He cannot deceive, nor be deceived. 
He redeems us all, in His Body, and His Blood. 
In this any Christian lives forever, or dies forever.

Agnus dei qui tollis peccata mundi,miserere nobis.
(Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.)


     
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!

Spy Wednesday: Flowers, Blushing, Shame and Betrayal

Did you know today, the On the Wednesday of Holy Week, is called “Spy Wednesday”?  I had never heard of it until I saw friends on Facebook posting it here and there and everywhere.  So I started looking into it…so here’s the gist of it. It is called Spy Wednesday because this is the day Judas conspired with the Temple leadership to hand Jesus over tot he Sanhedrin. He would accomplish his task the evening of the next day, but today he makes arrangements to hand Jesus over and is paid. Because Judas is thought to be sneaky, his actions conjured up the image of a spy. This is how the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 26: 14-25 recounts the events of today:

One of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?”  They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over.

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?” He said, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The teacher says, AMy appointed time draws near; in your house I shall celebrate the Passover with my disciples.”‘” The disciples then did as Jesus had ordered,
and prepared the Passover. 

When it was evening, he reclined at table with the Twelve.  And while they were eating, he said,
“Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” Deeply distressed at this, they began to say to him one after another, “Surely it is not I, Lord?”  He said in reply, “He who has dipped his hand into the dish with me is the one who will betray me.  The Son of Man indeed goes, as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.  It would be better for that man if he had never been born.”

Then Judas, his betrayer, said in reply, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?”
He answered, “You have said so.”

So after that reading and talking some with the kids, we decided to pick four words that had meaning for this day, they selected:  flowers, blushing, betrayal, and shame.  We made this into a step-by-step art lesson using a picture of the tree Judas hung himself from, now known as the Judas Tree (or it’s scientific name: )  We used our Draw-Write-Now book to start the tree off and then they each added something.  The details was either my 7 year old’s idea (like seeing Calvary from afar) or making gray clouds because “God was probably really sad at Judas,” as my five year old daughter suggested.  We used colored pencils, crayons, and markers to make it a mixed media project.  Here are their masterpieces:
Of course, the rope from the tree was the boy’s idea and he even added Judas.
My daughter went with the rope idea, minus
 the dead guy.  Kids!  ðŸ˜€
A Closer look at them:

They did these with just a little guidance from me, not bad for ages seven and five huh? 😀
While I won’t be posting the remainder of the week, here is my post from last year’s Holy Thursday,

And our Holy Week Journey from last year with a FREE printable!  ðŸ™‚
Have a blessed remainder of the week friends!

     
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!

Holy Week: Our Journey {Free Printable}

My beloved can tell you how much this has bugged me all Lent, it’s been keeping me awak actually, lol.  I’ve been stirring because I felt like my kids weren’t really ready for Holy Week and the Crucifixion and, of course, Easter!  Yes, we’ve been doing things all during Lent but I felt like now that they are almost 5 and 6, they needed something more. 

So I put this together (it took me some time to get it all together) for our classroom!  I am so proud of my kids because they were so into our lesson as we talked about the days of the week and our Holy Week Journey to Easter Sunday!  I really enjoyed making this and also loved its simplicity!

Here are some pictures of what it looks like:

The road has the days of the Holy Week on top, and the events at the bottom of the road…leading to the Resurrection.  At the bottom of this I moved our Stations of the Cross {I bought those here}
 
I took this opportunity to review the days of the weeks with the kids:

Here are two other looks from different angles:

Then we used our little kids Let’s Climb Closer to Heaven {from our school room door} found at That Resource Site to walk the road through Holy Week (this was my six year old’s idea):
Directions:
  1.  Print all of these out on card stock. {this will get you to the free link} If you don’t have cardstock, like me, then I would recommend that you laminate, I would recommend you do that so that you can save it to use in the future.
  2. Create a path, road, or something to that effect on a large paper to post in the room. Another option is to print these small and to make a file folder out of them and have each kid make their own to take home {more for CCD or school settings}
  3. Glue/tape the days of the week down first at the top of your path/road.
  4. As each day passes, read the Readings for that day and talk about these stories by using the events cards.
  5. I placed stations at the bottom. You can purchase these here: http://www.catholicartworks.com/
  6. The little kids walking the path are from http://www.thatresourcesite.com/

 Please only use these at home or with your religious ed. classes (or co-ops).  This cannot be sold.  If you want to share it with others on your own blog, please link up to me but don’t distribute it directly.  Thank you and I hope you can enjoy them as much as our family has!
Blessings!

***Don’t forget to grab our new button {it’s the one with the apple on the right column}  THANKS!  ***

Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!

A Six Year Old’s Take on daVinci’s The Last Supper

I am totally in love with all the Holy Week action going on over at Lacy’s {Catholic Icing} and got super excited to see the activity she prepared {and shared} for Holy Thursday.  She did this based on Leonardo da Vinci’s the Last Supper:



Lacy’s craft activity is super cute:

See?  I was so excited to get it going with my six and four year olds but never did I think I’d get the reaction I got.  Before I tell you what happened, I should tell you two things:  First, about my six year old.  Our little Jojo sees the world very different than most kids his age, very different than his own Mama, actually.  He sees things VERY black and white and there are no in betweens.  I tell Todd that he’d make for a very good priest because of this natural inclination of his.  Second, when it comes to meal time, we stress eating as a family A LOT and because of my beloved’s job situation in the past three years, that means almost all three meals {he has been laid off five times}.  At the table, everyone has a place where they sit, not really assigned..it kinda just happened!  For obvious reasons, Dada’s spot is at the head of the table. 

So as I {very excitedly} explained who da Vinci was, and his painting, my six year old’s first reaction was, “mom, there is something wrong with that painting?”  Me, “there is?  What would that be?”  “Why on Earth would they sit like that, that’s not the way a family sits and Jesus and his Apostles were like family!”  {his face says it all, he is mad, frustrated, and confused!}.  “Son, this is a very famous painting and it is the artist’s interpretation of the Last Supper,” I immediately replied to him.  “Mom, Jesus was their leader, like Dada is the head of our house, and he sits at the head of the table so Jesus would have to sit there and the Apostles on the sides!” he clamored. 

Okay maybe the kid had a point {he does very often, btw}…something I never really thought about, I mean I’ve seen the painting hundreds of times and heck it is Leonardo daVinci, why would I question it?  But my lovely six year old did, he challenged the great artist’s interpretation of the Last Supper! 

So what did I do, like a good homeschool educator, I went with it!  “So Jojo, what should we do because here are the directions from Mrs. Lacy and this is how she explained we should do it so that we have a nice piece to decorate the mantle for tomorrow?”  “Mom, I have a plan!” he stated…and he did.  Here is my six year old’s version of the Last Supper’s seating arrangement, lol:

 here he is proudly looking at his handy work:

 So what’s different from Mama Lacy?  Well he placed Jesus at the head of the table {far left} and the Apostles on the sides {six on each side}.  He also gave them place settings with their names.  I was glad he did this because at one point when they were cutting them out, Katie-Anne asked me who that one was and I had to look back at Lacy’s original.  So with name settings, there were no problems identifying each one.  I did try to get him to place them in the “right” daVinci order but he went his own route on this as well.  He was very specific in wanting Peter next to Judas!  He said that Peter must have known that Judas was a traitor an needed to sit next to him so that, “he could keep an eye on him!”  In addition, he wanted a title to the scene.   I made a label that says, “Holy Thursday, The Last Supper” and we placed it at the far end of the table opposite Jesus.  Here are more pictures:

Notice they chose to not color the food at the table {and that they wanted a table clothe}, they are going to cook {color} the food tomorrow!  😉

Katie-Anne wants her picture in too 😉
aerial view, oh and the “wood” chairs:

So I hope that Mama Lacy over at the lovely CatholicIcing, doesn’t mind that Jojo changed her plan up 😉  Thanks for sharing with us, Lacy!

Tomorrow, washing of the feet…guess who will be doing it?  Yup, Jojo…well at least at our house!  😉

Enjoy!

Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!