The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane

 

This week with our Memoria Press Enrichment activities we read The Ink Garden of Brother Theophane. The story is all about monks in Ireland who are trying to copy the Bible in brown ink and Brother Theophane who figures out that he could use other plants and berries to make ink other colors.  The illustrations in this book are simply beautiful and we had SO much fun expanding our learning based off of this book.

 

Although Memoria Press's Enrichment Guide gives us lots of ideas of what to do I love when our children find their own activities that they want to do based off of stories that we read.  In one part of the book Brother Theophane was getting distracted while doing his work and was throwing bread crumbs to the birds.  Our two oldest boys immediately thought it would be fun to throw and leave out bread crumbs for the birds (I think they ended up actually being eaten by our dogs though!)

 

One activity that the book suggested was going to visit a Monastery.  I sadly did not even know if we had a Monastery in Omaha, but after a quick Google search I found the Poor Clare Sisters of Omaha.  I gave them a call, told them that we were a homeschooling family in town and we were wondering if we could come get a tour!  They gladly told us to come by whenever and were incredibly welcoming and kind. 

 

We had just studied St. Clare on her feast day which was August 11th, and also often talk about St. Clare when we learn about one of our favorite saints St. Francis who also lived in Assisi and was a teacher to St. Clare.  In their chapel they have a beautiful mural of St. Francis blessing St. Clare.  We also took the time to look around and find all of the important objects around the chapel, just like when we toured the Cathedral a few weeks ago.  This really helps our children understand the universality of the Catholic Church!

 

 

They also told us the AMAZING story of when Mother Teresa came to Omaha in 1976 to receive the Father Flanagan Award for Service to Youth at Boys Town.  When she was in Omaha to receive the award she visited and stayed overnight with the Sisters of St. Clare.  One of the nuns who was a part of their community during that time is still living and is still a part of the monastery today!  With the canonization of Mother Teresa coming up on Sunday September 4th, 2016 this was really wonderful to hear about and see pictures of.  The wonderful Sisters gave each of us handmade rosaries as we left.  We had a wonderful afternoon learning more about their mission and work.

 

Mother Teresa with the Sisters of St. Clare

Mother Teresa at Boys Town

 

Next, we knew that we wanted to make our own ink like Brother Theophane in the story with bright colors so we decided to go pick some of our own berries!  After morning mass we headed down to a local berry farm to pick raspberries and we had so much fun. 

The recipe is also in this awesome activity guide for the story!

After picking raspberries together we spent the rest of the morning exploring and playing together at the berry farm.  It was one of those rare days when everyone was getting along, in good moods and was a great morning to hang out together.  I watched all of our boys laughing and playing together and had to hold back tears as I realized that we would miss these moments of all being together and learning together if we did not have the ability to homeschool.  I am so thankful to God for giving me grace and patience to homeschool our children during this phase of our life.  I know that our moments and days are far from perfect, but I feel so honored to not miss these moments.  I treasure being able to watch them explore, learn and laugh together and am so humbled and honored to have these years with them.

After we had all of our raspberries the next day we made the ink and painted, just like Brother Theophane!  This was such a simple and such a fun activity.  All you need is berries, vinegar and salt! (Here is the recipe!)

After painting we read our poetry for the week which was Fireflies in the book Animals, Animals by Eric Carle.  We had never really exposed our children to poetry before and so these fun little poems provide a great introduction.

 

We finished up our week studying the song Sheep May Safely Graze by Bach and also the painting Titus as a Monk by Rembrant.  We had such a fun week and are really loving these enrichment activities to go along with such wonderful literature!