My Lenten Reading - 2016

Reading continues to be a big part of my daily life and a true way for me to "escape" and relax!  I am so excited about what I have planned for my prayer, reflection and reading time during Lent this year.

1.  Blessed is She Lent Devotional Workbook and Stations of the Cross:

I have used the Blessed is She resources for a few years now to enhance my prayer time and reflection and they are simply wonderful!  This year's Lent Devotional includes goal setting each week of Lent, reflections to help pray through the week, information about Saints, the daily readings and journal space for reflection and tracking Lenten sacrifices and goals.

Plus, after loving the Blessed is She Jesse Tree Devotional Cards this Advent I am so excited for their Stations of the Cross Cards this Lent!

 

2.  Eucharistic Adoration and Relics from the Crucifixion

Since my Lenten Prayer Goal this year is to spend an hour a week in Eucharistic Adoration I am really excited to start reading Eucharistic Adoration:  Holy Hour Meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ by Charles Murphy.  This book profiles seven Catholics who are models of Eucharistic devotion and also guides you in creative prayer!  I cannot wait to dive in deeper!

Relics from the Crucifixion by J. Charles Wall is a new book that discussed where the Relics from the Crucifixion of Jesus went and how they got there!  I think it is the perfect book to read as I meditate on the Crucifixion of Christ and how it has changed our world and my life.

 

3.  Hail, Holy Queen

I am participating in the online study for The Bible and the Virgin Mary this Lent offered by the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.  Along with this study they recommend reading Hail, Holy Queen the Mother of God in the Word of God by Scott Hahn.

 

 

If you want more ideas for Lenten Readings check out My Lenten Reading List 2015

Celebrating St. Apollonia

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Today, February 9th, we celebrate the feast day of St. Apollonia.  St. Apollonia died in the year 249 and was martyred for not renouncing her faith.  A famous story about St. Apollonia is that she had all of her teeth knocked out after being hit in the face by a Christian persecutor.  Because of this experience St. Apollonia is now the patron Saint of all things "teeth" and art often depicts St. Apollonia with pincers holding a tooth!

 

We are excited to celebrate St. Apollonia a big way in our home this year since our oldest son just lost his very first tooth this last week!  As parents we have decided that we do not celebrate Santa Clause (outside of St. Nicholas), or the Easter Bunny so we also thought it was a little silly to start celebrating the Tooth Fairy.  But, we still wanted to do something fun to celebrate the big step of losing baby teeth!  The hero of the day was St. Apollonia, and just as we celebrate St. Nicholas's feast day and give gifts we are introducing our family to St. Apollonia as they lose their teeth!  We got this great idea from Joel and Lisa Schmidt at The Practicing Catholic!

 

Once our little guy's tooth fell out he put it in his new St. Apollonia pillow and in the morning received a little coin in the morning! 

 

 

 

He also really wanted a way to keep his teeth and so he helped us find this fun Tooth Box as a keepsake.  We like that there is a place to record when he lost of all his different teeth as well!



St Apollonia, Pray for Us!

Our Lenten Plans

I love the flow of the liturgical year in the Catholic Church and might even say that I LOVE Lent.  I really enjoy having a time of the year where we are asked to reflect, reboot and restart.  Really, when you think about it we are calling to meet Jesus at the Cross and try to be a little bit more like Him.  He suffered for us, he loves us, he loves others.  This is the time for us to do a little bit of suffering to build a more perfect relationship with Him, create the best version of ourselves and love those around us!

This is where the acts of Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving comes into play during Lent.  We are asked to spend time in prayer to deepen our relationship with God and love Him more.  We are asked to fast, and meet Jesus at the Cross with our own little sufferings.  We are called to Give Alms and look outside of ourselves to give to others. 

After some prayer and discernment we have decided what our lesson plans are for this year!

1.  Prayer:

Individual: 

I love Eucharistic Adoration but I have never made an hour of Adoration a regular part of my life.  We very commonly go to the Adoration Chapel at our Church, but I am usually with all of the children and we spend 10-15 minutes there together in prayer.  While I adore that our children ASK to go to Adoration and I love having this experience with them I know that God is asking me for more. 

I plan on starting to have one hour of Eucharistic Adoration a week during Lent.  Because of my husband's variable schedule as a ER Physician (his shifts constantly change days and hours of the day) it is difficult to find a regular time each week where I can sneak away from our children.  Thankfully, we have worked together to find time for all of the weeks of Lent to start this goal of mine.

Couple:

I have gotten pretty good at praying FOR my husband, but I am not always very successful at praying WITH my husband.  Again, I use that variable work schedule of his as an excuse of why it is "too hard" to find the time each day, but how silly does that sound!  It is "too hard" to find 10 minutes to pray with my spouse?  No more, even if it is 2 minutes a day, our goal is to pray WITH each other.

Family:

Last year we started praying the Stations of the Cross as a family during Lent.  It was a beautiful experience and we all learned a lot and gained many graces!  We would pray in Our Little Oratory, at our Parish or other places around the community.  We plan on continuing this practice this year on Fridays.

In addition we are going to pray the Rosary together daily.  We get in good patterns where we pray the Rosary together and then life "gets in the way" and we stop.  Or, commonly we will pray a decade a day and call it good!  This Lent we are going to try to pray the full Rosary together daily.  We can use the Holy Hero CD's or just pray it on our own!

 

See what we did for Prayer Last Year HERE!

2.  Fasting:

Deciding on something to "give up" for Lent and to fast from beyond Meat on Fridays, etc is always the most difficult part of Lent for me.  I loved listening to the Carrots for Michaelmas Podcast with Meg Hunter-Kilmer about Getting Inspired for Lent.  She spoke about how Jesus fell three times, and it is ok for us to fall as well, as long as we get back up!  She also spoke of asking your community to help decide what to give up for Lent, so that is what I did!  I did the scary thing of asking my husband and children what to give up and got the response I needed.  It was hard to hear, but made it obvious what God and my family were asking me to do.

I am giving up my phone!  Now, obviously I am going to continue to use my phone to communicate with people when needed, but other than using it to answer or make a phone call or the occasional needed text message I am going to keep my phone in it's charger in our kitchen.  No more browsing Facebook, or Amazon, reading blog posts, listening to Podcasts, etc.  When I am with my husband, children, family and friends I want to be truly present with them.  I am going to let myself check my e-mail/Facebook once or twice a day on my computer, but simply going to be significantly more mindful of my time and get off my phone!

 

See what we did for Fasting Last Year HERE!

3. Almsgiving:

This year we are making an Almsgiving Box for our home where we will place an item of food, money or a household item (clothing ,toys, etc) each day.  Then at the end of Lent we will donate everything in our box to those in need!

We just took an old diaper box, decorated it in pretty wrapping paper and used quotes about giving alms from Catholic Icing!

See what we did for Almsgiving Last Year HERE!

Celebrating The Presentation of the Lord and Candlemas

 

Today, February 2nd we celebrate the Presentation of the Lord and Candlemas.  We celebrate the purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the presentation of Jesus in the temple, which occurs 40 days after his birth.  At the temple Jesus was purified by the prayer of Simeon and he also told Mary (as in today's Gospel Luke 2:22-40)

 

 “Behold, this child is destined
for the fall and rise of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be contradicted
Band you yourself a sword will pierce
so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

 

 

To learn about and celebrate this feast day we did a few different fun things!  First, our oldest son LOVES candles and we have acquired and made a handful of religious candles that we either use in Our Little Oratory, on Saints Feast Days or just around our home.  We collected all of our candles, lit them and said a special prayer.  We wanted to go to mass this morning, but we ended up having a mini blizzard, so a prayer at home worked well!

Next, we did the activity in Seton's 1st grade Art book for the Presentation of Jesus.  We colored pictures of Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus, Simeon and Anna and put them in a shadow box.  We then lit a candle in the box to illuminate each character as the children retold the story of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple.

For our morning snack we made cookie candles with little cookie drip plates!  Our kids thought these fun little snacks were lots of fun to make and even better to eat! 

During snack time we read and played with one of the boys favorite books Can You Find the Saints?  It is like Where's Waldo with Catholic Saints and Events; one of them being the Presentation! 

Finally, after a fun morning of Liturgical Living the boys went outside to play in the snow and "help" their dad shovel!  Now according to history Candlemas Day was also the day when some cultures predicted weather patterns.  People believed that the remainder of winter would be opposite of whatever the weather was on Candlemas Day!  The old English song went:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,

Come winter, have another fight;

If Candlemas bring clouds and rain,

Go winter, and come not again.

So if this is true, winter might be on it's way out this year!!

 

Happy Feast of The Presentation of the Lord and Candlemas!

 

See what we did last year to celebrate this feast HERE!

Celebrating St Brigid's Feast Day

 

We love adding new Saints each year to our celebrations in our home and this year a new Saint to our family that we are learning about is St. Brigid!  St. Brigid's feast day is February 1st.  We first read about St. Brigid in our Saints for the Young Readers for Every Day.  St Brigid is an Irish saint born around 450.  Her parents were baptized by St. Patrick and she grew up wanting to devote her life to Jesus.  Brigid formed a religious community and also a school of art.  Her love of Jesus and compassion was known and appreciated by many in Ireland. 

 

We then read the story Brigid's Cloak and talk about the corresponding discussion questions included in Catholic Mosaic.  We next did a craft of making a St. Brigid's Cross!  This was a fun activity that even our little ones could participate in and they also had fun picking out their different colors to use.

Finally, we made some homemade Irish Soda Bread!  It was a perfect morning activity and snack to celebrate this great Irish Saint!

 

Happy Feast Day, St. Brigid! 

May we each remember that every person is special to God, just as you did!

What We've Been Reading - January 2016

"What We've Been Reading" is a series here at Children of the Church to both keep track of what we are reading and to share with others what we have been reading in our home.  Reading is such an important part of our daily lives and also our homeschooling journey.  Thank you for following along and please feel free to share what you have been reading as well so we can all learn together!

January 2016

Children's Book List (Our children are 6 years, 4 years, 2 years old, newborn):

• Chapter Books
  • The Boxcar Children Books 2 & 3
  • The Cricket in Time Square by George Selden
• Children's Stories
  • An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni
  • Fish is Fish by Leo Lionni
  • Alexander and the Wind Up Mouse by Leo Lionni
  • Frederick by Leo Lionni
  • Pete the Cat and the New Guy by Kimberly and James Dean
  • Strega Nona Does it Again by Tomie dePaola
  • Llama Llama Gram and Grandpa by Anna Dewdney
  • Captain Cat by Syd Hoff
  • Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire
  • The Big Snow by Berta Hader
  • The Little Fir Tree by Margaret Wise Brown
  • The Twelve Days of Christmas illustrated by Jan Brett
  • Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree by Robert Barry
  • Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
  • Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
  • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening illustrated by Susan Jeffers
  • Gregory's Shadow by Don Freeman
  • Walter the Baker by Eric Carle
  • Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton
  • The Frogs and Toads All Sang by Arnold Lobel
  • Usborne Illustrated Stories for Boys
  • Usborne Illustrated Adventure Stories 
• Catholic Mosaic Books
  • Mary, Mother of Jesus by Mary Joslin
  • The Last Straw by Fredrick H. Thury
  • The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
  • Visiting the Visitors by Patrick Mader
• Explore the Continents Booklist + Extras (Australia)
  • Katy No Pocket by Emmy Payne
    Possum Magic by Mem Fox
    Koala Lou by Mem Fox
    The Old Woman Who Loved to Read by John Winch
    Introducing Australia by Anita Ganeri
• Homeschooling Books
• The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle (Lesson Included!)
• What Can You Do...Catholic Reader (CHC)
• Bigger Stories for Bigger Folks (CHC)

My Book List:

• A Year with Mary: Daily Meditations on the Mother of God
• My Badass Book of Saints by Maria Morera Johnson
• The World's First Love; Mary Mother of God by Venerable Fulton Sheen
• Hail, Holy Queen; The Mother of God in the World by Scott Hahn
• Yell Less, Love More by Sheila McCraith
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

The Conversion of St. Paul

There are many things that I love about homeschooling, but one of my favorites is learning about and living our faith together as a family.  We are so blessed that there are so many curriculum choices that incorporate the Catholic Faith beautifully.  As we were reading about our Saint of the Day this morning in Saints for Young Readers for Every Day we read about how we are celebrating the Conversion of St. Paul. 

Our oldest son quickly remembered the story that he read about St. Paul when he was doing the Little Stories for Little Folks program through Catholic Heritage Curricula!  Our 4 year old has since started the program but had not yet gotten to this particular book.  We figured it was the perfect day to bring the little book back out to read it and remember the story of St. Paul!

 

As it states in Saints for Young Readers for Every Day "St. Paul's conversion was very important for the life of the Church.  But Jesus calls us just as he called Paul on the road to Damascus.  He invites us to give up doing whatever keeps us from coming closer to him."