saint patrick | Raising {&Teaching} Little Saints

When I think of St. Patrick I think of three things:

shamrocks

this painting is by artist Nancy Mueller

the Holy Trinity

and Ireland

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:

First we read the following book together:

by Joanne Marxhausen

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!