The head of household or leader says the following prayer.
Lord, hurry and come to us. May your light shine in our lives, so that we may be freed from sin. Protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for your coming as our savior: For the kingdom, the power and glory are yours now and forever. Amen.
The father (or grandfather or head of household) lights all four candles; they remain lit during the meal.
Suggested reading: Luke 1: 39-45
Mary Visits Elizabeth
LUKE 1: 39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
Thanks be to God.
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!
The head of household or leader says the following prayer.
Lord, we ask you to penetrate the darkness of our minds so that, filled with your brightness, we may rejoice in your coming as we say: Blessed be God for ever. Amen.
The mother (or grandmother) lights the previous candles and the rose candle; they remain lit during the meal. The same candles are burned each day of the 3rd week.
Suggested reading: Luke 3: 10-18
LUKE 3: 10 And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11 In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” 15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
Thanks be to God.
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!
I am posting this a couple of days early of both feast days because St. Juan Diego is the 9th of December and Our Lady of Guadalupe is the 12th.
To honor Our Lady on her Feast day, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patroness of the Americas, we did a couple of simple yet, beautiful activities to honor our Blessed Mother.
This day was a special day with our six year old son. As the second of five children, I got some rare special one-on-one time with him for this activity. We started by reading Father Lovasik’s book on Our Lady of Guadalupe. I read and pause between pages with this little man because he LOVES to ask questions or just give his input. He is an excellent auditory learner (I wish I was like him) so he captures things by just listening to them once – amazing!
Then we started a couple of fun activities I found around the web (see the list at the bottom of this post):
Don’t you just love the tongue out in concentration mode?
He was very cautious and meticulous about coloring his picture of our lady.
These were all of the supplies we used for this lesson. The only one missing from this picture is the little Father Lovasik book.
More coloring and a picture of the cutest little candle I got for $.99 at the local “hispanic supermarket”.
The wonderful DVD that we used to wrap up the lesson.
With supervision, Jojo was allowed to light his little candle. On his own, he then proceded to say a Hail Mary and a special prayer for the Protection of our Blessed Mother of unborn babies (it was so adorable!).
Explaining his color choices (he used the candle as a model).
Here he was coloring St. Juan Diego.
I got this prayer for St. Juan Diego’s intercession from another blog; I just loved that it was in Spanish.
He colored the Tilma and wanted the picture of our Lady to match, just right!
These little candles are about half the size of the regular Saint ones..
If you have been following Raising {& Teaching}Little Saints, you know how much I totally love all the DVDs that we got from CCC of America for children last year. One of the ones we received from them for our review was Juan Diego: Messenger of Guadalupe. We finished our activities by watching this wonderful little movie on Our Lady and St. Juan Diego.
CCC of America is passing along 3 DAYS OF SAVINGSto you, our Friends & Family. This will be our only special this season, so here’s your chance to SAVE 25% OFF YOUR ENTIRE PURCHASE!
Promo code: MERRY4ALL Valid December 7th through the 9th, 2011 Promo code can be used online or with orders placed at 800.935.2222
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!
We have decided to change the “look” of the blog to go with the Liturgical Season! So we are dressed in purple and rose for Advent as our family prepares for the birth of our Savior.
Blessings to you all, Mama Erika (and DH who did all the technical work)
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!
I love that our new Liturgical Year is only days away. My family is very excited to start using the new Missal. We love collecting old Catholic books and have tons of Missals from the past, the new one closely resembles the 1965 one we own (which is post-Vatican II, btw). We love the new and rich language and since we love Latin as well, the new translation is going to bring so much to the beautiful Mass! As we prepare to use the new Missal, lets not loose focus on the newness of it and continue to focus on what counts, being prepared for the birth of our Savior, or Baby Jesus as my children love to refer to Him during this time of preparation.
I’ve created another set of activities for my kids and making them available to you for FREE, of course. These are fun activities the teach our children what the true meaning of Advent and Christmas really is. By observing Advent you are preparing your children for the birth of Jesus Christ. We will be using these activities throughout Advent in addition to making ornaments for our Jesse tree and making a new Advent wreath. I’ve attached a link to the two wreaths I’m favoring this year.
Feel free to share a link to this blog post with your friends.
My new friend, Mama Lindsey over at Happier Than a Bird Quilts, made this beautiful Advent Wreath out of felt, she created an easy tutorial. Hope on over to her lovely blog and tell her how clever she is! 🙂
REMINDER: Since the New Missal this year will coincide with Advent, don’t forget to visit Mama Lacy over at Catholic Icing and grab her new Mass Response book for kids!
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:
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.
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}
Glue/tape the days of the week down first at the top of your path/road.
As each day passes, read the Readings for that day and talk about these stories by using the events cards.
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 friend of mine e-mailed me this little remembrance of this wonderful saint:
We thank you, gracious Father,
For St. Patrick, our dear friend
Who brought the Catholic faith
To the folks of Ireland!
If not for dear St. Patrick,
Heathens we’d still be-
Prayin’ to false gods
Instead of the Blessed Trinity!!
Happy St. Paddy’s Day!!
It’s March 17th already, can you believe it? St. Patrick’s day is here! This is a special day at our home because our little two year old’s middle name is Patrick and we like to celebrate the feast of the saint they were named after in a simple, yet special way. In what ways? Well we try to incorporate it to our entire school day by learning across the curriculum. Here’s what we plan on doing tomorrow:
After reading this book, we (of course) will eat apples as our snack to explain the book and how there is one apple but three parts, just like the Holy Trinity!
Next, we take out the St. Patrick’s Day costume that I made for my 13 year old when he was almost six years olf and participated in a Saints Day Parade in the first grade (our Catholic School days) and the boys get a turn trying it on (miter and all). Here is a picture of him all dressed up (he was so little!):
Third, we plan on showing the kids this adorable video by Brown Bag Films:
Of course, the day would not be complete without watching the Veggie Tales’s version of St. Patrick (4th):
Our fifth activity will be in Science (and art) we plan on doing this carnation experiment but plan on splitting the carnation at the bottom and using yellow and blue food coloring to create the green as well as using the green coloring straight up. Here’s a video to help you conduct your experiment:
Our Social Studies (6th) activity will including mapping Ireland and coloring their flag. =)
Then we usually do a simple craft but this year we have been invited over our friends’ house for a St. Patrick’s day party! Whoo hoo! 😉 That lovely friend would be our very own RLS contributor, Kristy, so you know we are going to have yummy food (which reminds me we had a Mardi Gras – Catholic style with them as well and need to share it with you). We can’t wait to see what Kristy has in store for us tomorrow. I will take pictures of tomorrow’s festivities (no idea what Mama Kristy has planned for us).
Our culminating activity in celebrating this feast day will be to watch a program on EWTN on the saint. I have set our DVR to record Lives of the Saints: St. Patrick at 3AM (no worries, EWTN will also show it at 6:30 PM ET) to watch with Dada in the evening. “This program discusses the life and times of one of the most beloved saints: Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland.” At the end of the day we also will pray the Litany to the Holy Trinity found on the EWTN website (thank you Mother Angelica).
Pray for me as we have a very exciting (but active) day planned ahead!
It’s hard to believe that Lent is basically at our door! Just like Advent, it’s time to get our ducks in a row and plan the 40 days out for our family and homeschools. Seems like everyone has been busy looking for Lent activities these past few weeks as it has become the most popular post here on Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! If you missed it, here is last year’s post on Lent Activities for Children.
In addition, I found some new ideas from other Catholic Blogging Mamas that you might be interested in:
Of course, DO NOT pass up joining Holy Heroes and their Lenten Adventure!
If you have a post on your blog and would like to share it, please leave a message here! I’d love to do an updated post with more ideas from our readers.
Blessings to you all,
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!
I so totally love this new website and can see it as a major part of our research for our school, Cor Iesu Academy! I love the little slide presentation, how it has the text at the bottom that is being read aloud….so not only can my 7th grader look up information for things he is studying but my emergent readers, my four and five year olds can also benefit from this cool site! They even have information on saints and the Church (hopefully accurate) 😉 Here is the one for today’s Feast Day: Saint Francis de Sales, Enjoy!
Thank you for following Raising (& Teaching) Little Saints! Visit us again soon!
Lord, hurry and come to us. May your light shine in our lives, so that we may be freed from sin. Protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for your coming as our savior: For the kingdom, the power and glory are yours now and forever. Amen.
