Category Archives: Brother Francis

Brother Francis, Children Movies, The Bread of Life, the Holy Eucharist

Brother Francis: The Bread of Life {Catholic Children’s DVDs}

January 4, 2012 RaisingAdmin 1 Comment

If you missed my review on Brother Francis: Let’s Pray, here’s the link! Today I’d like to help promote another wonderful DVD by Herald Entertainment, Brother Francis: The Bread of Life (the Eucharist)! It was a perfect addition to our family as our son is preparing for First Confession and First Communion. In this in-depth DVD Brother Francis makes great comparisons and explanations about the importance of Christ in the Holy Eucharist yet he does this so simply and clearly that even my five and three year old understood! I did tell you in my first review how much my children love Brother Francis right? They ask for these DVD all the time! Particularly this one because they love the story of Saint Imelda! They sing the catchy tunes as well. I’m totally in love with him too, he’s funny and smart, and athletic, a real ‘super hero’ of sorts that any mommy would want their kids to love as well!

Honestly, this DVD is jammed packed with so much:
1. the parable of the fruit and the vine
2. the Last Supper
3. about Saint Imelda and the Miracle of the Eucharist
4. staying healthy both body and soul

Here’s a great little preview to just give you a taste of this wonderful DVD:

This really is a fantastic addition to our family DVD library. I love it and the coloring and activity book we received in addition to the DVD, lots of beautiful pictures to color and activities to do. LOVELY! I seriously think this would make a perfect First Communion gift for any child! I wish I had this for my eldest, but feel super blessed that now my four smaller kids will get to grow up with Brother Francis as part of our family and their First Communion journey!

Here’s a description from their website:

Join Brother Francis in this delightfully inspirational and instructive presentation that teaches children all about the sacrament of the Eucharist!
This episode contains:

“The Last Supper”: animated presentation of Jesus instituting this blessed sacrament.

“The Story of Blessed Imelda Lambertini”: the Patroness of First Communicants

“I am the Bread of Life”, and “What More Can He Give”: two visualized songs

“Brother Francis: The Bread of Life” is an exceptional way to prepare children for their first Holy Communion.

So as I sat here typing this when my almost seven year old walks in and sees me and asked what I was doing. I told him I was writing about how awesome we thought that Brother Francis DVDs are and he said, “well that’s special to me!” He then said he wanted me to tell everyone this: “Brother Francis is a great teacher! I think he is a good guy who loves God very much. He teaches about the Eucharist and that is super important. The Eucharist is God and St. Imelda really wanted to receive Him. I want to receive Him too and I’m very excited about my First Holy Communion coming soon! It will be one of the BEST days of my life! Thank you Brother Francis for teaching me the way!” (That was word for word my friends of what he said, I need not say any more right?) 🙂

This mommy is happy that her kiddos are learning about the faith with Brother Francis! 🙂

Want to buy one? Here are all the details:

Buy Brother Francis Bread of Life for only $12.99

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Brother Francis, Children Movies, freebie

Kids DVD Brother Francis: Free Thanksgiving download

November 18, 2011 RaisingAdmin Leave a comment

Brother Francis has become a family favorite around here. I’ve reviewed the first DVD on Raising {& Teaching}Little Saints and will also be reviewing the other two: all three are FANTASTIC DVDs and I, personally, think that EVERY CATHOLIC HOME should have them available for their children. Even my three-year-old sings the theme song in the van and asks questions about what he learned from Brother Francis. On their website, Herald Entertainment has two other FREEBIES: 1. a Brother Francis Wallpaper for your desktop and 2. a sample Coloring book. Here’s the link to the free Thanksgiving download:

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Clich here to

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Brother Francis, Catholic kids dvds, Children Movies

Brother Francis: Let’s Pray! {Catholic Children’s DVDs}

October 25, 2011 RaisingAdmin 1 Comment

You know my love for seeking out solid Catholic kids DVDs right? I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot with this new one, it’s called Brother Francis and it’s created by Herald Kids. Who is Brother Francis and what is this Catholic series about? Here is the description from their website:

“Join Brother Francis and his friends as they inspire children in their Catholic faith. This entertaining and instructive series features stories, visual examples, music and practical application!”

Practice makes perfect! This is a true saying whether one is playing basketball, drawing a picture, reading or even praying! In this wonderfully fun inaugural episode the ever-joyful Brother Francis will help your children establish a personal relationship with God!

This episode features:

“The Sign of the Cross” — a catchy tune about an important prayer gesture.

“Let’s Pray!” — a captivating song showing us how we can pray anywhere!

“The Our Father” — the traditional prayer sung to a moving melody.

“With God’s Love!” — a song that encourages us to serve others.

“The Little Way of Saint Therese” — a visualized story . . . and lots of fun!

Faith Formation Features
The DVD we watched today is called Let’s Pray! and it features two basic but important prayers, The Sign of the Cross and The Our Father
and presented Saint Therese and her Little Way of doing things with big love. It also includes two other authentic songs, “With God’s Love!” and “Let’s Pray!”.

I love how this DVD starts and how Brother Francis compares prayer to sports (something kids can relate to) and basically to anything you want to do right, you have to practice it. My kids laughed so much when Brother Francis explained the importance of attitude during prayer, if you want to make prayer boring, you pray in an uninterested way. (Brother Francis goes on to pretend to fall asleep, my kids couldn’t contain their laughter -wonder if they were relating to him? LOL) You don’t want to have a conversation with anyone when you aren’t interested in them do you? Well why would you with God?

Animation
The animation is fantastic! There are different kinds throughout but I just love how the main scenes of the video, although cartoons, the sky is always a real sky…which gives it a beautiful feel and a real one at that. When the video went to talk about St. Therese the animation changed a little and made it look like it was older, which was neat because we were going back in time to learn about the little Saint!

Multiple Learning Styles
I also like that the video includes music and sets the prayers to music. This helps all of our different kinds of learners, visual and auditory. 🙂 I like that you can print activities out afterwards for the more tactile learners. Each DVD has a set of print out pages with activities associated with the theme of the video and coloring pages as well. There are a couple of pages recapping the main lessons of the video with some of the same illustrations from the DVD; I thought this was a neat feature. My favorite page is the one called, “Lord, Help to be Holy”, because it makes the kids really think about what they just learned in the DVD and almost make a little “pledge” or “promise” to God asking Him to make them Holy. This page looks like this:

Languages
Since one of my goals this year is to expose the kids to more Spanish (my first language), I really love the fact that you can play the videos in English or in Spanish, El Hermano Zeferino. We actually watched it in Spanish after watching it in English, it was great! The Spanish was neutral Spanish (if you teach Spanish or a speaker, you know what I mean). It was easy to listen and understand and follow. This will definitely one of my go to resources to teach my kids prayers in Spanish!

Evaluation

Overall, I give this Brother Francis DVD entitled Let’s Pray! an A+ for awesome illustrations, music, story line, and message! This would make a great resource for every Catholic homeschool and also fantastic to have in our parishes as part of their Faith Formation programs. Interested in ordering your own copy of this or any of the other Brother Francis DVDs? Please visit Brother Francis at his website.