Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Scripture Coloring Page- Praise the Lord

I used this pattern for another project, and decided to take it and turn it into a coloring page.

"Praise the Lord, for each day he carries it in his arms." ~Psalm 68:19

Click here for the printable:


The Footsteps of Fulton Sheen Prezi

Later this week, I have the opportunity to share my experience teaching about Fulton Sheen at the Diocese of Peoria's Summer Catechetical Conference.  This is a screen shot of the Prezi that I will be using for the presentation.  You can view the presentation here - however, it is mostly pictures so without my commentary, it might not make much sense :).  The reason that I posted it is so that you can see what Prezi can do.  It is so much more interesting than a PowerPoint- I will never look back!

Monday, July 29, 2013

Reviewing the Sacraments- Anointing of the Sick


In continuing the series of how my class reviewed the Sacraments while we studied the life of Fulton Sheen, this was our notebooking activity for the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.

We connected Anointing of the Sick to the idea that Jesus is our Divine Physician, so I used a doctor's bag as the basis for the notes.
Inside the doctor's bag we drew and labeled the items that a priest would typically use or take with him to an anointing, including a stole, oil oleum, Book of Prayers, aspergillum, crucifix, and a pyx.

Using our textbook as a resource, we took notes on an index card about the basic steps involved in the Sacrament, and we also wrote out the text of James 5:14-15 on another index card.
Click below for a printable of our Anointing of the Sick notes.  You could just give the kids the outline of the doctor's bag and have them draw the items inside like we did, or you can print the document two sided so the items are already in the bag.  I also included the steps of the Sacrament notes and the verse from James in the printable.


Sunday, July 28, 2013

Mini Smash Prayer Journals

Back in this post, I shared about the super fun Smash Prayer Journals that I created with my Youth Group girls.  I think that these are a great project, but they are time consuming, and need to be made by someone with a longer attention span than your typical grade schooler.
Here is an adapted form of the project more suitable for a 2nd-6th grader.

Start with a smaller notebook- less pages, less space to fill.  I picked up one of the small (4"x6") memo books that are super cheap this time of year.

 Decorate the cover...
 Make a title page...
 ...and just like in the original post, smash in prayer cards, notes, photos, etc.

I created some journaling topics for Smash Journals- you can get the printable here.  To make the topics fit better in the mini journal, I printed the sheets at half scale- you can do that in the print menu in Adobe.  Under the Page Handling section, select Page Scaling-Multiple pages per sheet, and then change the pages per sheet to 2.  Now both pages will print on the same sheet of paper at half the size.

I also wanted to use this book as a place to record the prayers that my students need to memorize.  The Catholic Diocese of Peoria has a great set of curriculum guidelines which help teachers and catechist know the most important aspects of the faith that need to be covered at each grade level.  They also include vocabulary and prayers.  You can find the short curriculum guidelines by grade level here or the full set including the appendix of prayers and vocab here.
I printed out the appendix of prayers and cut out the ones that my 5th graders should already know and the ones that we will be learning this year...plus a couple others for good measure.  I stuck those in the front of the Smash Journal...

...and added a little decoration.  Now the text of those prayers will be handy.


While making this prayer journal wasn't quite as much fun as the first one, it still turned out well, and I think that my students this fall will love them!


Saturday, July 27, 2013

Family Time Puzzle Prayer


 Here is an idea for fostering petitionary prayer in your home or classroom.  I wanted to create something that gave a general petition, one each day for a week, for a family or class to pray for.

I happened to have a pile of these color your own puzzles, but they were without the packaging, so unfortunately I can't tell you where to order them from.  You could easily create your own with a sheet of cardstock, using this as an idea for a shape, or creating your own.

My puzzle has seven pieces, which played in perfectly with my plan for family prayer.  On each of the seven pieces, I wrote a petition, and if one were used each day, the puzzle would be put together in a week.

You could definitely just color your puzzle with crayons or markers, but I decided to make this project a little different by doing some color resist.

It is really easy:
Step One: Get out that never-used white crayon and firmly write your petition on one puzzle piece.
Step Two: Color over the crayon with marker or watercolor paint.  Ta-da!  Anywhere you write with the crayon, the color won't stick.
 My pieces just have general petitions, like friends, grandma & grandpa, cousins, aunts & uncles, our country, our priests, and our family.  When these are made by students, they could have specific names or different petitions.
 I then attached magnets to the back of the pieces.  You could purchase magnet strips, but being frugal, I just cut up an old one I had on my fridge.


 The pieces could then be kept in a bag or basket near the family dinner table or place of prayer.  Each day, a child pulls out a piece, the family prays for that petition, and then sticks the piece on the fridge.
 As the week goes on, the puzzle grows...
...until at the end of the week, you have a complete puzzle of all of the things that you have prayed for!  Then the magnets can be taken down and you can start over for another week!

Friday, July 26, 2013

Reviewing the Sacraments- Baptism

In continuing the series of how my class reviewed the Sacraments while we studied the life of Fulton Sheen, this was our notebooking activity for the Sacrament of Baptism.

We had studied Baptism at the very beginning of the school year, so this review was pretty easy, and I wanted to bump their understanding of the Sacrament up a little.

We talked about how even though we are only baptized once and might not even remember it, we should renew our Baptismal promises all the time.  We can remind ourselves that we have been washed clean of sin and united to God's family every time we dip our hand in holy water as we enter the church.  We also can say our Baptismal Promises for ourselves.  I got the text from Catholic Online, and put each question into a drop of water. 

We read them as a class, and I asked each child to decide if they believed in what they were reading.  If so, they wrote "I do!" under the question in the water drop.  We then colored them blue (before cutting out-much easier!).
Here they are cut into two strips, with the drops that touch still attached to each other.

We then used scotch tape to attach the two strips together...
...and then accordion folded them to created a pop out for our notebooks.
Click here for the printable of the Baptismal Promises:

Next we added something that we had created earlier in the year.  We had filled out and colored this Baptism Certificate as part of our textbook study.  We use Sadlier's We Believe series.  After taking these home to get help recording the date and location of their baptism and the names of their godparents, we hung up all 30 of them around our classroom door on the inside.  We called it our Door of Faith (which went with the Catholic Schools' Week Theme and the Year of Faith called by Pope Benedict) and used it as a reminder that as Baptized Christians, it was our job to evangelize every time  we walked out the door.  Fast forward to May, and when I took down the Baptism certificates so they could keep them in their notebooks, the kids got all sentimental... :)  These really had an impact on some of them it seemed.

Click here to see another display with our Baptism certificates.


Lucky for us, Sadlier has made some of their reproducibles available on the web.  If you would like to use this Baptism Certificate, go here download the pdf.

So here is the notebook up to this point, with the Baptism certificate and renewal of Baptismal Promises.
Next, I wanted them to make connections to the importance of water in the Bible and how God is always pointing towards the Sacraments, especially in the Old Testament.  We made Scripture Stained Glass Windows that had to illustrate a story about water.

We started with a basic stained glass window shape.  Some kids made the top more angled, some made it an arch, but this was the basic idea.
Next, they drew a simple version of the Bible story in pencil.  The story I have here is Noah's Ark.  You can see that there is still a lot of white space and not a lot of detail.
Next, we outlined our pencil drawing with thick black marker.  It is starting to look a little more like stained glass...
...and then the next step is to take a thinner black marker and "fragment" up the larger white spaces.  You can see that I filled the back of the sky with triangles and split the waves up a little. You don't have to go crazy, but just split up the spaces a little.
Next we colored in the spaces with similar shades of crayons in different areas.  For example, I made the sky look cohesive by using all shades of gray and black, and the ocean is all blues and purples.  You get the idea.
Remember that the kids could pick any Bible story that had to do with water...29 kids, and we had a lot of different stained glass windows-

Jesus was a popular choice: (water from his side, walking on water...)
 As was Moses: (Nile to blood, parting the Red Sea, Baby Moses in basket...)
 And Noah's Ark was the most depicted scene:
Isn't it neat how unique their artwork is?  They really liked this project.

After they attached the stained glass into their notebook, there was a little quarter of a page left open, and there they had to write a couple of sentences about how their Scripture story connected to the Sacrament of Baptism.  For example, "The story of Noah's Ark connects to the Sacrament of Baptism because both wash away using water.  The world had a new start after the Great Flood, and we have a new start after our Baptism when our souls are washed free of sin."

Here's the notebook with the pop out folded up...
...and with it pulled out:

 I hope this activity helps the kids in your life deepen their understanding of Baptism!

***Update: Here are some more examples of the Baptism + Bible Art!