"Cloud of Saints" Craft

We made a "cloud" of the Saints this year for All Saint's Day. My kiddos just loved it -- yes, mostly because there were markers (!) and scissors (!) and glue (!) -- but also because they were fascinated with hearing about the Saints' lives and seeing a visual representation of them up in Heaven with Jesus.

Even I couldn't resist sitting down and coloring a few pictures myself. ;)

We (well, mommy) chose a blend of familiar, favorite Saints and some that are new-to-us.

I'm leaving it up for the month of November as we learn about these heroic men and women of the faith.

This activity is pretty self-explanatory and doesn't take any prep work or planning besides simply printing off the coloring pages and having basic art supplies at hand. (This mama's kind of craft!) I've included the links to the pictures we used if you wish to use them as well:

Jesus
Church building
Virgin Mary
St. Joseph
St. Kateri Tekakwitha
Blessed Mother Teresa
Blessed John Paul II
St. Elizabeth of Hungary
St. Charles Borromeo
St. Martin de Porres
St. Therese of Lisieux
St. Gianna Beretta Molla
St. Nicholas
St. Josephine Bakhita

Supplies needed:
- Large white paper (could also use parchment paper)
- Construction paper
- Scissors
- Crayons/markers/colored pencils/paint
- Glue
- Tape
- Cotton balls (if you have a paper plate handy, you may want to squeeze the glue out on to the plate so the kids can just dip the cotton ball into it)

Tip: if you use white school glue for the pictures, be sure to use sparingly and only around the edges. A few of our pictures got ruined because the glue made all the color bleed out!

Note: if you are looking for something more basic for the 2-4 year old crowd, we've done this simpler version in past years with great success.


Linking up to Equipping Catholic Families, Our Favorite Things

Feast of the Archangels 2012

Glimpses of our day...

Archangel "puppets." Printable here.

The kids thought they were the best thing ever...

And after hearing the legend of St. Michael hurling Satan and the other fallen angels from Heaven, decided it was only proper to have a Lucifer puppet for the angels to fight.

They had a point.

So Mom made them a dragon.

Defeat!

Happy kids with our chocolate-iced angel food cake (looking unintentionally kind of dragon-ish).

The traditional berry for this day is blackberry, but all we had on hand was raspberry. It was still heavenly. :)

Lenten craft for children

This is the first Lent in which my children, ages 3.5 and 2, will really be participating, and I wanted to keep it simple and fun for them. I think there's probably only one thing worse than doing nothing to expose your children to the faith, and that is overdoing it! (This is a big fault of mine -- I have a tendency to plan out 12 different things and then feel stressed and guilty when only 2 or 3 of them get done.) After perusing some of my favorite domestic Catholic blogs I decided on two activities: coloring a Lenten calendar and "sacrifice beans."

I modeled our Lenten calendar after the wonderful printable found over at Catholic Icing, with only a few minor artistic changes:

 

As simple as it is to color in one square per day, my 3.5 daughter absolutely loves it. It is one of the first things she wants to do each day!

The Lenten tradition of having a "sacrifices and good deeds" activity can be found all over the internet in various forms. This is what I decided to try this year:

Every time the children do something thoughtful, kind, or without complaining/whining, I add beans to the jar. (I have been generous with the beans -- my children are very little, after all!) On Easter I plan on replacing all the beans with a very special candy of some sort: a tangible representation of how Jesus takes all our measly efforts, which are literally "worth beans," and with His grace and merits transforms them into something very sweet and lovely indeed!

All Saints Day activities

(Repost from my previous WordPress blog.)


Some snapshots of our day today:



I helped the kids do this fun and easy craft. We colored a few of our favorite saints and adorned them with cotton ball "clouds." My 3 ½ year old little girl loved this! We talked briefly about each of the saints as we colored, and she developed a particularly fond affinity towards St. Elizabeth of Hungary.

I found the coloring pages for free at places around the web such as Paper Dali, Waltzing Matilda, and Catholic Mom. A simple Google Image search yields great results as well!

After lunch we settled down to watch "St. Peter." It is LONG (197 minutes)! There were several moving and beautiful moments in the movie, particularly when Jesus forgave Peter for his betrayal and entrusted him to shepherd the flock of Christians. But I found that overall the movie was lacking, for a variety of reasons. It is not one I would necessarily recommend to anyone to watch. I wonder if there is a better movie out there about St. Peter and the early Church, made from a Catholic perspective?

Later in the day we made All Saints Cupcakes. The white frosting represents the saints that we honor for the holiness of their lives, while the red represents those who have shed blood for the love of Jesus Christ.

Do not be afraid to be saints. Follow Jesus Christ who is the source of freedom and light. Be open to the Lord so that He may lighten all your ways.

- Pope John Paul II

I hope your day was a blessed one!

Follow the All Saints Day Link-up to view more related posts around the blog-o-sphere. :)