Stories Around The Campfire - A Midyear Review

Happy New Year everyone! Hope there are still a few of you out there and that you feel fresh and renewed after a lovely break!

Sunday January 6th was our thirteenth session together. Can you believe we are half-way through already?! This week we used the session as a midyear review of what we have learned. In preparing for the session, I created an activity and coloring book where I re-used as many phrases and pictures as I could from our previous sessions, and created activities similar, but not identical to, activities we have completed in those sessions. I did this only partially to be lazy ~ really! The real goal was to provide reinforcers for the lessons we have already covered. In this way, each lesson's theme (pictures, phrases) will have been presented to the children 3 times (the original lesson, the unit review, and the midyear review).

Packing Light: You can find the activity book here. It has coloring, word searches, mazes, stickers, and other pencil puzzles. (It is a large file and may take a minute or two to open.)

When we met in the common area for the whole group activity, we learned that Pragmatic Tiger and Fair Cheetah would not be joining us this time. But we had some good news: Courtly Polar Bear, Effusive Jaguar, and Rocking Horse all received "perfect attendance" awards for December! Way to go!

Once we were in our room, we talked about whether we had fun over Christmas and what our favorite gifts were. We also discovered that some of us were able to stay up late on New Year's Eve and even made it to the new year! Wow!

The children settled in surprisingly quickly given the long break, and it wasn't long before they were clamoring for some coloring to do... what a coincidence since what I had with me was... coloring! But first, we talked about how we were half-way done with our learning already! And so, today we were going to review everything we have talked about so far.

I distributed the review books and sticker packs, and together we looked over each page and remembered what we talked about. We tried to find the right sticker to go with each page, and took turns reading from the stickers. The children did a great job with it, and really seemed to recall the key messages (or at least the activities we did) for each lesson:

From Unit 1, We Gather As Believers, we have

Our Church Welcomes Us - we remembered that we are a community and we come together to celebrate. Rocking Horse said she remembered making the church doors and the Welcome inside.

We Belong to The Church - we remembered that we have Baptism to show we are members. We talked about the 4 symbols used during Baptism: water, oil, white clothes, and candles. Sweet Pea Elephant remembered them all!

Our Church Shows Us How To Live - we remembered that we have holy people like priests and deacons to give us examples, and Saints as role models. The children definitely remembered tracing their footsteps!

We Praise And Thank God - we remembered how we can pray by saying our prayers or by singing. Earnest Eagle remembered the story about King David and how he was so strong and won lots of battles and sang lots of prayers.

From Unit 2, We Ask God's Forgiveness, we have

We Can Choose What Is Good - we remembered that we make choices, and that God wants us to make good choices. Effusive Jaguar remembered that this is when we talked about Max and we were all Wild Things!!

We Celebrate God's Forgiveness - we remembered the ways we can ask for and seek forgiveness. Everyone remembered the 4given card game!

We Think About Our Choices - we remembered the rules are called "commandments". We reviewed them together. Courtly Polar Bear remembered "that game" we played with them (fortune teller/cootie catcher).

We Say We Are Sorry - we remembered that Reconciliation is a way to say we are sorry. Rocking Horse remembered being in the puppet show!

Then, we had a review of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The children remembered the little room and we read through the prayers and activities that happen when we participate in the sacrament.


After we finished reviewing the lessons, the children each chose which lesson they liked the best (or all of them), and wrote about it in their journals.

Then at last, we had one more segment to review: I reminded them that there were other things we have been learning too, about Mass:

We learned to notice what color the priest is wearing, and know that something special happens when he wears a different color. (And there was great discussion over why the priest was wearing white with red today and not just all red or all white!)

We learned to participate in the Penitential Rite, and notice that sometimes it is short like an answer and sometimes it is like a long prayer. (And there was indecision about how we did it today, but I reminded them that today we said the 'long' version)

We learned to participate in saying the Gloria, and notice that sometimes it we say it and sometimes we sing it. (And we just said it today, and Effusive Jaguar noted that we always just say it when Fr. C says the Mass. She likes the version we sing at Christmas and she and the others started to sing it! Wonderful!).

We learned to participate with the Holy, Holy, Holy, and notice that sometimes we say it and sometimes we sing it (today we not only sang it, but we are still using 'that new way' that we started using).

We learned to participate in the Our Father, and notice that sometimes we say it and sometimes we sing it (again today, we apparently just said it because that's the way Fr. C likes it ~ I reminded them that it is not just what the priest likes but also whether the community likes it and what is happening in the Mass and so forth).

The children finished up the session coloring (finally!) and working the puzzles. It was wonderful to see the children today and they were all in such good spirits. Next week we will be starting Unit 3, which focuses on the Bible as the word of God, the Liturgy of the Word section of Mass, works of service, and Prayer of the Faithful section of Mass.

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

• follow any of the links above to find the activities and worksheets for the original lessons!