Hiking Without a Map - We Find More Role Models

Sunday October 28th was our eigth session together. This week were planning to cover Unit 2, Chapter 6 "We Celebrate God's Forgiveness"; however, after preparing for the session, I remembered we were going to be having a Saints dress-up and procession with the other classes. Feeling rather like I was suddenly driving without a road map, I gave it a bit of thought: we would only be together for just a short time at best, and if so - how to channel all that excitement and energy? Focusing on a new topic would not do, so I opted for a creative activity instead. I prepared a coloring book of saints by printing a series of the coloring pages from http://www.coloringsaints.com/ website. I captured some of the better-known saints from across the year so we could have a good variety.

Packing Light: The whole session was "light" - so just enjoy talking about the Saints - our role models!

The Saints procession was a lot of fun. We had all kinds of Saints represented. From our class we had Saints Elizabeth Ann Seton, Agnes, Helen, George, Benedict, Francis of Assisi, and Mary Magdalene. Along with all the children of the other classes, we all paraded through the campus and through the auditorium (where the Family Breakfast was taking place so we had a big audience!). Several of the parents followed along, and I especially liked their spontaneous rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In".

When we finished the parade, we decided we would go to the classrooms for just a bit. We were joined by the 3rd and 4th graders today. Coloring for everyone! Did I mention that I deliberately left the cover of the coloring book blank so that the children could create their own design?

















While we were coloring, Rocking Horse played the role of scribe for the 2nd graders, and composed a "we're sorry" card for Mrs. P. and the 2nd grade school class. You see, it is their classroom we use each week, and last week we learned that we had left the classroom too messy and gotten into some desks and materials that we shouldn't have. We decided that we had made bad choices and needed to say we were sorry. So Rocking Horse did a great job of writing up the card, and all the children signed it.













Of course I also asked about what was going on at Mass:

"Alright you guys, you know I want to know about what Father was wearing today...?"

"Green!" (said everyone, including our visitors from 3rd and 4th grade!) "hey - and before you ask, I know for sure we sang everything - definitely sang everything today" (said Effusive Jaguar)

"We sure did! Our new priest definitely likes to sing!"

"I am FINALLY getting used to all of it!" (said Sweet Pea Elephant)

The 3rd and 4th graders had a few questions about what we were talking about, and we explained that we have been watching what color Father wears each week, and whether we sing or say the "Gloria" and the "Holy, Holy, Holy". They also had noticed that sometimes we are singing a lot more now.


Next week we will be covering Unit 2, Chapter 6 "We Celebrate God's Forgiveness".

Side Trips: if you want more information, activities, and games...

• If you just have a bit of time, find more coloring and short stories about Saints at http://www.coloringsaints.com/
• If you have two-bits of time, check out the numerous All Saints/Halloween activities and coloring at catholicmom.com
• For more in-depth activities, check out our lesson on choices.

Where The Wild Things Are - We Can Make Choices

Sunday October 21st was our seventh session together. This week we covered Unit 2, Chapter 5 "We Can Choose What Is Good". In preparing for the session, I established the focus as God gives us free choice and wants us to make good choices. The lesson plan for the session includes the topics discussion, the activities worksheet, and craft activity.

Packing Light: If you just want the activity sheet for this session, you can find it here. It has a coloring activity, maze, and word search activity.

When we met in the common area for the whole group activity, we learned that Courtly Polar Bear won "Religious Ed", our fancy jack-o-lantern! Congratulations!

We started off saying the opening prayer from the workbook pages, a paraphrase from Deuteronomy 30:20

"Love the Lord, your God, and obey His word."

"Do we have to obey God?"

"Yes!"

"Why? Who makes us?"

"God!" "Your Parents!"

"I don't know about that, is there someone standing and pushing you all day saying 'you have to be good' or 'you have to do that'?"

"No way, that would be crazy!"

"Right. God gave us free choice. We can make choices. We make choices every day. Now of course God would like us to always make good choices, but he doesn't make us make the choices"

And so we proceeded to review choices that were hard and choices that were easy. (There was some dispute as to whether choosing what clothes we are going to wear was an easy choice or a hard choice~)

"How do we know when we made a bad choice? How do we know how to make good choices?"

(MULTITUDES of answers!)

"Well, let's read a story together and talk about it. We're going to read 'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak."

"Yeah! I love that book!" (said most) "But that doesn't have anything to do with church or Sunday school" (said Rocking Horse)

"Read it with me and let's see."

And so with each child taking on a different role, we proceeded with the Reader's Theatre. I thought I might need to do a lot of prompting and helping the children figure out "where are we?" - but Rocking Horse, our Narrator, quickly took on that role and was terrific at it! We had a rollicking rendition, complete with plenty of rolling of terrible eyes, gnashing of terrible teeth, and showing of terrible claws!


"Why do you think Max's mother sent him to his room?"

"He was being really mean and nasty!"

"Did Max make some bad choices? What choices did he make?"

"He was being mean to his mother." "He ran away."

"Why did Max return home?"

"He was hungry!"

"Is that the only reason?"

"Well, he was lonely too." (said Effusive Jaguar)

"And beside being hungry, what did the smell of dinner remind him of?"

"His mother was at home!"

"Exactly. And how do we know that his mother forgave him and was happy for him to come home?"

"She made his dinner" "Even though he was not supposed to have dinner because he was mean" (said Sweet Pea Elephant) "And it was still warm!" (said Fair Cheetah)

"So she forgave him even before he asked her to?"

"Yes!" "Just like God!" (said Sweet Pea Elephant)

"Let's read another story together. Jesus told this one."

"Yeah!"

So we read through the BlestAreWe Prodigal Son story, with the children shouting out the words whenever we encountered a picture.

"What did you think of that? Another son who didn't make very good choices!"

"Hey, that father wanted him to come home just like Max's mom!" (said Courtly Polar Bear)

"He sure did, even though the son made some bad choices. What bad choices did the son make?"

"He took all the money" "He ran away from home" "He lost all the money"

"But still his father forgave him. Just like God will forgive us when we make a bad choice. Does anyone know what a 'conscience' is?"

"I do! It's like an invisible person that stays with you and tells you what your mom would want you to do" (said Rocking Horse)

"Very good! God gave all of us a conscience. And when we need to make a choice, we should listen to our conscience and it will tell us the right choice to make. This is hard! And Jesus knew it would be hard so he gave us something else. Does anyone know what else Jesus gave us to help us?"

"Jesus?" "er, ah" etc.

"Remember, from Baptism?"

"Holy Water!" (said Pragmatic Tiger)

"He gave us the Holy Spirit. When we need to make a choice, the Holy Spirit and our conscience will help us know what to do"

And so then we drew pictures of monsters, as a reminder that when we are making bad choices, it's like we are a monster just like Max.



















Then we cut out some pictures of Max and his monsters, and we stuck them all over a plastic sack that we can use for Halloween trick or treat!



While the children were coloring, I continued to pester:

"By the way, what color was Father wearing this week?"

"Green!"

"And did we sing the Gloria or just say it?"

"Sing it!" "And I was horrified because I don't know it" (said Sweet Pea Elephant)

"And how about Holy, Holy, Holy?"

"Definitely sang it!" "I am finally getting use to that" (said Effusive Jaguar)

"You guys are awesome!"

I sent home the Family Time pages for Unit 2, Chapter 6, which we will be discussing next session.

I am so glad the children seemed to enjoy today's session. I have been looking forward for WEEKS (like a kid at Christmas!) to using one of my favorite books!

Side Trips: if you want more information, activities, and games...

• If you just have a bit of time, definitely go for the online activity for this chapter at Blest Are We
• If you have two-bits of time, check out the coloring, crossword, and word search activities on the Prodigal Son at Catholicmom.
• For more in-depth activities, check out some of the links in the lesson plan there are many articles and activities on Prodigal Son and Good Shepherd.
  
  

Easy Day at the Camp Site

Sunday October 14th was our sixth session together. This week we covered the "We Care" mini-topic and the review of Unit 1 "We Gather as Believers". In preparing for the session, I wanted to focus on phrases and images we have already used in our sessions together. The lesson plan for the session includes the topics discussion and craft activity. There is no activities worksheet for this week.

Packing Light: (The whole session was "light" - so just check out the end-of-unit review sheets from the Blest Are We workbook!

When we met in the common area for the whole group activity, we recognized all the children who had perfect attendance in October. Almost every 2nd grader won! We learned that Pragmatic Tiger wouldn't join us today, we decided we would miss him.

Hmmm... so I don't know whether it was Religious Ed (our fancy jack-o-lantern who will be given away as a prize next week), but there was a lot of interest in Halloween this week. I don't like being the bearer of bad news. "Sorry, guys, we're not going to be reviewing Halloween this week! I understand you want some Halloween candy, but we just have to focus on a little something else for a little while today." Whew! This much excitement this early for Halloween, we're going to be in for it at Christmas!

By way of distraction I just started right in.

"OK, what are you guys going to teach me today?"

"No way!" "You have got to be kidding me!"

"No, really. Can you believe we have finished our first whole unit together?! So today we are going to review it. I can't remember anything, so you have to teach me what we've learned. Who will be the teacher today instead of me?"

(lots of volunteers)

"OK, Fair Cheetah is going to be the teacher today. Please give her respect and answer her questions."

So Fair Cheetah led us through what have we learned. We remembered that we wrote some stuff down in our journals, and we could look at it for some clues. Here is what we came up with:

1. We learned we are community.
2. We learned we belong with baptism.
3. We learned about reconciliation.
4. We learned about praying.
5. We learned about role models.

I was impressed.
"Who might be some role models for us? I forgot."

"Saints!" ("And your mom" added Rocking Horse).

"Remind me again about some symbols for Baptism?"

"Water!" "You have to wear white!" "That oil stuff!"

Awesome.

"And by the way, what color was the priest wearing today?"

"Green!"

"And did we sing the Gloria or just say it?"

"Sing!" "Say it!"

"Today we just said it. Let's keep an eye on that one. And how about Holy, Holy, Holy?"

"Sing!"

And so, on to the activity. I asked for help in completing some booklets on what we learned. The booklets had some coloring options and some stickers to apply. They were received with a resounding "these are so cool!". (Truth be told, the booklets were an almost overwhelming singular inspiration this week - usually I am blessed with multiple ideas to pick from - and they took much longer to prep than expected and so this response from the children really boosted my morale - not to mention my ego~).

Each child had their favorite page of the booklet:

Rocking Horse and Effusive Jaguar with Baptism and Belong

Earnest Eagle and Sweet Pea Elephant with Community




Courtly Polar Bear and Fair Cheetah with Thanks and Praise




Rocking Horse told me I was too crazy with my camera, but I was allowed to take a picture of some of their booklet cover designs anyway (who can resist such creative bling?):






In addition to the workbook pages for the Unit Review, I handed out the Family Time pages for Unit 2, Chapter 5, which we will be starting next session.

Side Trips: if you want more information, activities, and games...

• If you just have a bit of time, go for any of the online or printable activities for the chapter if you missed them the first time - they can be found at Blest Are We
• If you have two-bits of time, check out the check out the saints coloring activities at Coloring Saints
• For more in-depth activities, check out some of the links in the lesson plan from Unit 1, Chapter 4 there are many coloring pages of Psalms

Lions and Tigers and Bears - Make Noise!

Sunday October 7th was our fifth session together. This week we covered Unit 1, Chapter 4 "We Praise and Thank God". In preparing for the session, I established the focus as ways to talk and listen to God through prayer. The lesson plan for the session includes the topics discussion, the activities worksheet, and craft activity.

Packing Light: If you just want the activity sheet for this session, you can find it here. It has a matching activity, color-by-number, word shapes, and dot-to-dot activity.

When we met in the common area for the whole group activity, we recognized all the children who celebrated birthdays in September and October. We sang "Happy Birthday" to all of them! We learned that Fair Cheetah and Pragmatic Tiger wouldn't join us today, they were on a special vacation with family, we decided we would miss them.

I had done a little scouting ahead this week, so when we arrived in our room, "Holy, Holy, Holy!" was written on the white board for us and we read it together as our opening prayer... no, that's not right. We drummed ourselves up into cheerleading mode and read it WITH GREAT JOY together as our opening prayer!

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest!

Alright! Let's remember just a tiny bit from last week. What did we learn? Courtly Polar Bear read her Journal and reminded us we learned about role models. Yes!

And what was that sacrament with the long name that helps us get rid of sins after Baptism? It was on the tip of their tongues, they tried, so I helped them out: "RECONCILIATION". I handed out the little printout, and we talked about it a while. Rocking Horse read it to us and then we talked about what the people in the picture were doing. I told them we were going to learn lots more about it, and they are going to hear that word "RECONCILIATION" a lot! Effusive Jaguar said she bets they hear it one million times! I said she was probably right!


Drumming back the rowdiness, I started off:

What color was the priest wearing today?

Green!

And who was that guy up there anyway?

Our new pastor!

Right! And what did he do different than we're used to?

He talked different!

Oh-kay... and what else?

[ah, er, what?]

Hey, Effusive Jaguar, I saw you in church, and when we said the "Our Father", you had a BIG surprise on your face! What did we do different today?

Oh Yeah! We sang lots of stuff today!

(I haven't even met the new pastor, and yet he gave me a terrific lead in for our topic! Thank You Holy Spirit!)

So we talked about how when we are at mass we say lots of prayers and sing lots of songs together. We talked about how sometimes we pray alone, like when we say our prayers at night. And sometimes we pray together, like when we are at church. Sometimes we talk, and sometimes we sing.

I asked, "What kinds of things do we say when we are praying?" ... needing some prompting I suggested, "Sometimes we ask for things"... to which Effusive Jaguar said "that's the easy kind of prayer!". (I said I agree!)

"But if we are going to ask for things, then we better be nice and say a prayer for thanks when we get it!" I said. To which Rocking Horse said, "Hey, what do you mean? It's not like God hands you something and says 'here it is' or anything!" I agreed that we don't usually see any UPS packages from God delivered to our houses, but he does give us things. So we spent some time discussing all the good things God has given us and how we know they are from God even though he didn't address the labels! We also mused on the possibility of finding such a UPS package and how awesome that would be!! I said, "You can't send God a thank-you note, so that's how come we say prayers to say thank you." Rocking Horse said it would be cool if you could give Him a hug, and I agreed. Effusive Jaguar said "I just hug myself and I know it goes up!" Wow. "What a terrific idea, I like that!", I said. (Instinctively all of them gave themselves a hug and I gotta tell you, I got goosebumps!).

We didn't do the "what am I thankful for" activity that I had originally planned in the lesson, but this conversation was probably way more fruitful anyway! We'll have lots of opportunities for the "what am I thankful for" activity.


OK, so we sometimes ask for things when we pray. We sometimes give thanks when we pray. What else do we do when we pray? Remember when we sang "Happy Birthday" to everyone? How did that make them feel? We all agreed that we were sure those kids were very happy, just like we feel so happy when it is our turn to have a birthday. Sweet Pea Elephant made the connection for me: "So sometimes we should pray just to feel good!". Yeah!

So then this led us to King David. We remembered that we mentioned him a couple of weeks ago. Yes, the same King David. We entered into a lively rendition of the story of how David was just a kid whose job it was to watch the sheep. And while he was out there he wrote lots of prayers and songs of thanks and praise to God. And sometimes he had to fight lions and bears to save the sheep! That was pretty impressive, we couldn't believe he was so brave to grab them by their heads!

We were trying to figure out how big Goliath really was. We decided he would NOT fit through the door! There happened to be a picture of Goliath on the wall. "Do you want to know how big he was?" I said. "See his sword there? Well, that sword weighed more than 15 pounds! Do you know how much that is? Let me show you." They each eagerly came up to try to lift my tote bag (which was fully loaded and weighed around 15-20 pounds ~ what a coincidence!). Rocking Horse could swing it just a little, but it was WAY too heavy for anyone to swing!

When we heard how rotten he was being and what nasty things he was saying about God, they were cheering David on when he said he was going to fight him (even though they were scared because he was just a kid and Goliath was so huge!). But I assured them that David was fighting in the name of God and asked for God's help. Sweet Pea Elephant helped me finish the story. Yahoo! Everyone was jumping up and down when David won! Exactly! And that's how David felt and he wrote many many songs of thanks and praise to God to show how happy he was!

We talked about how David wasn't the king when he fought Goliath, that was King Saul. We talked about how King Saul became very jealous of David and chased him and fought him for a lot of years. We talked about how he did some bad things and he didn't care and he wasn't sorry, and that made God very sad. So much so that eventually God decided to make David king instead.

We wrapped up our David story by talking about how David was a great king and he did some really great things (like bringing the Ark of the Covenant and planning the Temple), but he did some really bad things too (like killing some people he shouldn't have and some other things that we agreed we wouldn't discuss). But whenever he saw that he did something bad, he told God he was sorry. Effusive Jaguar broke into a spontaneous rendition of David getting on his knees and saying he was sorry and would never do it again! And whenever he would say he was sorry, God forgave him every time. ("Just like here?" asked Courtly Polar Bear, pointing back to the Reconciliation worksheet. "Exactly!" I said, "that is why we have it!").

(many thanks to our DRE who took me to a catechist seminar yesterday where one of the work sessions was on storytelling, where I learned some techniques I was able to immediately apply in our session today!)

Then it was time for our activity. "Cool!" was the general reception of the idea of putting together the window clings. Some wanted to follow the example exactly, while Rocking Horse and Effusive Jaguar exchanged pieces and were a bit more creative.

When you see the rays, give thanks and praise!

Next week we will be having a unit 1 review, so there weren't any Family Time pages, although I did hand out the worksheets, as well as the pages from the chapter in Blest Are We, and also the Good News pages for the upcoming weeks. You can enjoy following the mass with them through the months of October and November.

Side Trips: if you want more information, activities, and games...

• If you just have a bit of time, definitely go for the online activity for this chapter at Blest Are We
• If you have two-bits of time, check out the reading and puzzle activities on King David activity
• For more in-depth activities, check out some of the links in the lesson plan there are many coloring pages of Psalms