Celebrating the Feast of St. Matthew

On September 21st we celebrate the feast day of St. Matthew, which is also the feast name day for our oldest son (his middle name).  Matthew was a tax collector in Capharnaum where Jesus was living and was very disliked.  Jesus did not feel that way about Matthew and asked him to follow Him, which Matthew did!  Matthew gave up his money and his job and followed Jesus becoming one of the 12 apostles. 

 

To celebrate today we made silver dollar pancakes for breakfast (to represent money) and our oldest son was able to eat them on our You Are Special Today plate that we use on Birthdays, Baptism Anniversaries and Feast Name Days.  We also usually get our children a little gift and this year our son got a very special one with the Father Leopold Celebrates Mass Lego Set!  For our Lego loving son this is such a perfect gift for him to be able to play and also learn about the Faith!

 

 

We also read The Apostles of Jesus book during our school time and discussed the importance of all of Jesus's apostles including St. Matthew.  Finally, we started learning a new prayer for the night time about the authors of the Gospels in the Bible.

 

A CHILD'S GOSPEL NIGHT PRAYER 

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, 

 Bless the bed that I lie on. 

 Before I lay me down to sleep, 

 I give my soul to Christ to keep. 

 Four corners to my bed, 

 Four angels there aspread, 

 Two to foot and two to head, 

 And four to carry me when I'm dead. 

 I go by sea, I go by land; 

 The Lord made me with His right hand.

 

 

Happy Feast Day St. Matthew! 

St. Matthew the Apostle, pray for us!

Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows

Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows

 

 

On September 15th,we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, which is a feast day when we learn about the great suffering that Mary experienced as the Mother of God.  The Seven Sorrows are the following:

1. The Prophecy of Simeon:  Luke 2:33-35
2. The Flight into Egypt: Matthew 2:13-15
3. The Loss of the Child Jesus in Jerusalem:  Luke 2:41-52
4. The Meeting of Our Lord in the way to Calvary:  Luke 23:27
5. The Standing at the Foot of the Cross: John 19:25
6. The Taking Down of Our Lord from the Cross:  Matthew 27:57-59
7. The Burial of Our Lord:  John 19:40-42

 

Today we read each of these Bible stories and talked about how Mary must have felt during each moment.  As we were reading the stories we made a Ribbon of Sorrows from the Seton 1 Art book, which display these stories with a picture of Mary crying.  We have always talked a lot about the story of Jesus's crucifixion and how Mary must have felt, but it was good to talk about other stories as well like the story of the Flight into Egypt and also Jesus being lost in Jerusalem. 

 

Talking about Jesus being lost in Jerusalem was a great opportunity for us to also talk about what to do if one of our children get lost.  Where they should go and what information they need to know like their full name, their parents name, phone number and address.  We also talked about listening to parents to try to not make them sad and also praying to Mary. 

 

 

 

"And you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed."

-Luke 2:35

Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

Today, September 14th we celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.  On this special day we celebrate that when Jesus was crucified that the cross became a symbol of love and holiness.  It was upon the cross that Jesus offered himself for our sins so that we might join Him in Heaven.  What a gift!  It is important today to learn about the sacrifice of the cross and to thank Jesus for His sacrifice.

 

Today to learn more and celebrate this feast day we read The Tale of Three Trees and did the activities listed with Catholic Mosaic.  We love this book and how each of the three trees have great wishes of what they want to be when the "grow up"; to hold treasure, to carry powerful kings and to be the tallest tree so that people raise their eyes toward Heaven.  The first tree became the manger for baby Jesus, the second tree became the fishing boat when Jesus calmed the sea and the third tree became the cross which Jesus died on.  It is a wonderful story to talk about the importance of the cross.

 

 

We also did the art activity from Seton Art 1 to celebrate this feast day!  With this activity we made a Cross with the corpus of Jesus and talked about the difference of a cross and a crucifix.  We also talked about the gift of the cross and why we hang crosses in our churches and in our homes.

 

 

Finally today, since we are on vacation we visited a new chapel to us at St. Catherine University which is just down the street from where we are staying.  It was a beautiful place to say a prayer and to be able to look at all of the different crosses and crucifixes around the church.  I also love how after learning about the tabernacle and the Real presence of Jesus in Seton's Pre-K religion program that all of our children love to go into any church, find the lit red candle and pray to Jesus in the tabernacle!

 

Thank you Jesus for dying on the cross for us and for giving us the gift of everlasting life!  Happy Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross!

 

40 Years Celebration of St Elizabeth Ann Seton

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton holds a special place for our country being the first American born saint, in the lives of our family and also to this blog, and so we are excited to celebrate 40 years of her canonization on September 14th, 2015!  "Be Children of the Church" St Elizabeth Ann Seton said, and it is such a perfect message to bring to our lives each and every day!

There are a lot of fun events going on to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Maryland this weekend, but even if you are not there (like me) you can still watch the Anniversary Mass on Sunday September 13th where Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore will be presiding and it will be televised internationally on EWTN!

Each year we as a family choose a Saint of the Year to learn about and study as a family and this year we chose St. Elizabeth Ann Seton to grow closer to as we started our journey with homeschooling!  I have truly learned so much about this remarkable women this year and loved the book The Soul of Elizabeth Seton.  We enjoyed celebrating her feast day on January 4th this year and we were also thrilled to hear that Holy Heroes made a Glory Stories CD all about the life of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton to help our children learn about her life as well!

 

My husband and I had the opportunity to visit where the Seton Home was originally located in New York City where they now have a church built in St Elizabeth Seton's honor.  It was such a beautiful and special place to visit.

 

 

 

Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, pray for us!

Our Adventures with Before Five in a Row - Play with Me

 

We have been busy lately, a fun busy, but busy!  This week especially with one of our bathrooms being gutted and remodeled and getting ready for a 10 day vacation away from home it had been kind of crazy.  All of this with 3 child 5 years and under while in my third trimester is enough to exhaust me, exhaust all of us!  So, I decided to purposely try to pick a "simple" book to row this week.  I had no idea though how perfect this book really would be for all of us this week!

We rowed the story Play With Me by Marie Hall Ets.  This is a simple story of a young girl exploring things and playing in nature.  We read this book a few times and learned a lot by exploring the beautiful illustrations.  We talked about the Creation story this week in Genesis and about how God made everything on Earth out of love and the beauty that our Earth has. 

Most importantly though, at the end of a very busy week we arrived to our vacation location and we learned our most important lesson.  In the book when the little girl is running around outside after all of the animals she scares them away, but when she is quiet and patient, all of the animals come to HER to play!  We all learned that sometimes slowing down and being patient brings us the true gifts of God. 

It was so nice to slow down, enjoy nature and the beauty that God has created and most importantly see the smiles and laughter from our family choosing to slow down together!  It was truly a perfect end to a busy week and a fantastic reminder to all of us to take the time to slow down, be patient and enjoy God's creations and each other.

 

 

See more books that we have "Rowed" on our Homeschool Page!

Happy Birthday Mary!

On September 8th, we celebrate the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, also known as Mary's birthday!  To celebrate today we lit the candle that we made for the Queenship of Mary in August and prayed a decade of the Rosary together. 

We also made a fun birthday cake to sing "Happy Birthday" to Mary, because what is a birthday without cake!

Seton's Art 1 book's craft for today was making Birthday Cards for Mary and spoke about how we could give a gift to Mary by saying something good that we would do (pray the rosary, being nice, doing something special for someone, etc).  Our 3 year old thought that Mary probably really wants a train for her birthday (or maybe that is just what HE wants!)

In our Explore the Continents book we are learning this week about how different cultures celebrate Mary and we read Our Lady of Guadalupe by Tomie dePaula.  This is such a wonderful book to learn more about the amazing story of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Juan Diego! 

To continue exploring how different cultures learn about and pray to Mary we also brought out our new special Shining Light Mary dolls!  We have Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Knock, Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Our Lady of Fatima.  They also now have this adorable book about The Virgin Mary Around the World!! 

The Virgin Mary Around the World

We had a great time celebrating the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin! 

Feast Day of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

 

"Not all of us can do great things.  But we can do small things with great love"
- Mother Teresa

 

We love learning about all Saints, but there is something special learning about modern day Saints and religious people!  Because of this, we were so excited to learn about Blessed Mother Teresa this week for her feast day on September 5th.

"Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow has not yet come.  We have only today.  Let us begin"

 - Mother Teresa

To learn about Mother Teresa we used our wonderful resource of Catholic Mosaic which includes activities with the book Mother Teresa by Demi.  The illustrations in this book are simply beautiful and it tells such a nice story of Mother Teresa's life. 

"Love begins at home, and is not how much we do, but how much love we put in that action."

-Mother Teresa

 

"Never let anyone come to you without coming away better and happier.  Everyone should see goodness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile" - Mother Teresa

We then were able to have a wonderful talk about Geography, where Mother Teresa worked and lived and about helping those in needs.  We have started learning about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and this was a wonderful opportunity to tie these into the works of Mother Teresa.  We ended up talking about God is calling each of us to be Saints and how we can listen to his calling of what He wants to use each of our individual love and talents for. 

 

People are often unreasonable and self centered.

Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat on you.

Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous.

Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.

Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

-Mother Teresa