Lenten Learning 2016

We have been taking the time during Lent this year come together as a family and focus on prayer, fasting and almsgiving (as well with some fun learning)!  Here are a few things that we have been doing.

 

Our Lenten Plans - 2016

 

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The Giving Tree

 

We LOVE Catholic Mosaic and The Giving Tree was such a great book to read during Lent.  Although the book is not a Catholic book the lesson plan with Catholic Mosaic brought about a fantastic conversation about Giving and our own relationships with God.

 

 

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Lenten Lunch

 

 I was so excited to finally take the time to do a Lenten Lunch this year!  We are going to be out of town during Holy Week, but we decided we could do this at any time during Lent to increase our learning and fun.  Thank you to Lacy at Catholic Icing for doing the tough part of putting it all together and making it easy to execute! 

 

It was really great to read the Bible Stories together and to have foods that related to each part of the story.  Our boys especially loved having chocolate with lunch with the Hershey's Kisses and Peppermint Patties since that is not typical for our family.  It was a real treat!

 

 

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The Tale of Three Trees

 

The Tale of Three Trees is another great book that is included in Catholic Mosaic!  We also read this book when we celebrated the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in September, but the story also goes along great with the Passion story as well! We just love our read aloud time during our days and finding great books to add to our collection.

 

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Lenten Rosary

 

One of the things that we wanted to focus on this Lent was praying a daily rosary.  It has not been "perfect", but overall we are doing pretty well!  Sometimes we listen to the Holy Heroes CD in the car, sometimes get to daily mass early to pray with our church community, sometimes we pray together at the lunch table, sometimes we pray the rosary before bedtime; we definitely have learned that we need to be flexible to fit it in!  There are moments of wiggling, but we are all definitely learning and growing as a family!

 

Also, if you are looking for a beautiful Easter gift or something special for yourself or loved ones definitely check out Butterfly Blue Rosaries!  A fellow homeschooling mother creates beautiful custom rosaries and sells them on Etsy!  She made me a rosary with the beads of the 5 decades as the birthstones of our 4 children here on Earth and 1 in Heaven!  It is beautiful and something that I will always treasure.

 

 

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Little Rose of Sharon

 

Another great Catholic Mosaic selection for Lent is the Little Rose of Sharon.  It is all about Self Sacrifice and the most beautiful little story to teach our children about what is really important to God, and that is for us to give of ourselves to others.  It is a very important topic to discuss at all times, but especially during this liturgical season where we remember Jesus giving His life for us.

 

 

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Starting St. Joseph Novena

We started the St. Joseph Novena March 10th, and love using Catholic Icing's  St. Joseph Novena printable!  Check out what we did last year to celebrate St. Joseph's Feast Day HERE!!

Also, this year we got the new St. Joseph Shining Light Doll!  We LOVE Shining Light Dolls so our kids were really excited to add St. Joseph to our collection!
 

 

 

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Stations of the Cross

 

We are continuing each week to pray and meditate on the Stations of the Cross each Friday.  We have used the Holy Heroes CD's in our Little Oratory within our home, prayed at the Holy Family Shrine near our home, at our local parish and this week we are going to go to our local cemetery.  Our boys also love to use their Passion Week Peg Dolls to tell the story that they are learning to know so well. 

 

 

That's what we have been up to the past few weeks of Lent!  We are linking up with This Ain't The Lyceum this week as well!

The Holy Family Shrine

 

 

We love this place.  It sits up on top of the hill, in the middle of Nebraska, along side of the highway and we cannot help but take the time to stop by as we drive by.  It is stunning, simply beautify and we love to go there to pray, reflect and explore!

When we arrived the first thing that the boys wanted to do was light a candle for their brother Samuel.  They always want to stop, pray and light a candle whenever they can!

Since it is hard to go to our Parish Stations of the Cross during Lent because of nap time and dinner/bedtime we like to take the time during Lent to either pray the Stations of the Cross at home or somewhere in the community.  We loved taking time to pray the Stations of the Cross together at the Holy Family Shrine and our 6 year old led us through all of the stations all by himself!

Next we went to visit the Marian shrine.  Even though the flowers are not in bloom the boys still love to go say "hi" to Mary!

 

Thank you God, for this beautiful place to worship you!

 

 

Children of the Church's Homeschool Day with a 6 yr, 4yr, 2yr and 4 month old

I have written about our "typical" homeschool schedule before but never a "day in the life" post before.  I decided it would be fun to document a whole day and share it with Simple Homeschool's Day in the Life link up!  The interesting thing with homeschooling is although our children do really good with structure, no two days look exactly alike!  Here is what our Friday looked like this week!

 

4am:  Baby is up to eat.  He is going through a growth spurt and loves to cluster feed early in the morning now!  Yikes!

 

4:55am:  The 2 year old is awake!  Little Einstein's is on television, which is a life saver when it is that early and the day is already starting! 

 

 

5:15am:  Coffee is made and I take some time for my morning prayer and reading time.

 

6:30am:  The 4 and 6 year olds wake up.  Some kind of play air force bombing begins in the living room (the life of 4 boys!)

 

7am:  Morning Offering Prayer together, Breakfast, Morning Chores, Showers, Starting Laundry and Calendar Time all occurs.

 

 

8am:  Out to door to morning Mass

 

8:30am:  Daily Mass followed by our own little version of Stations of the Cross.



 

10am:  Leisure reading time.  Our 6 year old has been loving the Magic Tree House Series lately.  I was reading Mouse Paint with our 4 and 2 year old.  The baby was having fun in his jumperoo!

 

11am:  Daily rosary (we've finally been doing great adding this into our day this Lent!!)

 

11:30am:  Making lunch and sending my husband off to work (he works rotating shifts at the ER and is working noon-9pm today).

 

12:15pm:  Nap time stories and kisses for 2 year old and 4 month old.  4 year old goes to his room for quiet time looking at books (some days he takes a nap).

 

12:30pm:  Clean up lunch dishes, switch out laundry, set up school books for our 6 year old.

 

1pm:  Formal school time starts with the 6 year old.  Math, English, Handwriting, Spelling Test, Religion and Reading Time today.

 

 

1:45pm:  Call from a best friend that she is going to deliver her twins today!  Usually I ignore my phone during school time, but this was a special reason to respond!  Took time to say a prayer for their family.

 

2:20pm:  The baby is awake and the 4 year comes down and wants to do History/Geography with us.  We are starting to learn about Africa with our Explore the Continents Curriculum. 

 

 

2:50pm:  Baby needs to eat and our 2 year old is waking up from his nap.

 

3pm: We made it to 3pm!  Time for the second run of the day; I say a prayer for some needed grace! 

3:15pm:  The mail comes!  The My Book House series arrives that I have been eying for a few years and finally had found a good deal on!  I am super excited and start reading a bit with the kids.

 

4:00pm:  It is 60 degrees and the sun is shining so I send the kids outside to play while I tidy up and make dinner.

 

5pm:  My husband is working and it is a Friday in Lent with the kids, so an easy frozen cheese pizza with fruit works for dinner tonight!

 

 

5:40pm:  Dinner is done and I send the kids back outside to bike and play while I clean up the dishes and tidy the house. (I'm also noticing that my kids all seem to be in different clothes, which might explain my massive amounts of laundry!  Does anyone else have kids who go through multiple outfits per day?)

6pm:  The baby and I go outside on the porch swing to watch the big boys!  I love watching our 4 year old who just learned to ride his bike without training wheels confidently ride up and down the sidewalk!

 

6:20pm:  It's getting cold!  The kids put their bikes away and come inside to play for a little while.

 

7pm:  Bath time, stories, prayers and all 4 kids are off to bed!

 

 

7:30pm:  Kids are in bed and I reflect on the day as I write this post.

 

7:45pm:  Time to do a few nightly chores, relax and wait for my husband to come home from work!  Then time to do it all again tomorrow!  Goodnight!

 

Big Boy Biking Fun

As parents of four boys we love watching each and every one of their individual personalities unfold.  Each of them are different in so many unique ways and it is so much fun and challenges us each day as parents.  Our second son, Connor is our adventurous one!  At 1 1/2 years old he would scoot around EVERYWHERE on his Radio Flyer scooter.  The summer when he was 2 1/2 years old he asked for a bike, and so we found him a tiny little bike off of Craigslist for $10 thinking that a 2 year old would not really be able to ride!  Well, he proved us wrong! He loved it, immediately jumped on and with little to no instruction was off, and NEVER stopped!



Fast forward to the present time and our now 4 year old has been practically dying for the weather to get nice so that he could learn how to ride his bike without training wheels!  We had a beautiful day this weekend and all it took was about 10 minutes of instruction by his Dad and off he went!  There are so many "firsts" in little ones lives but learning to ride a bike is always one of my favorites.  There is so much pride and it really puts them in the "big kid" category! 

 

 

His brothers enjoyed the beautiful weather as well and had fun cheering Connor on with his new found skill!  And yes, they were in shorts and tank tops in February, because when it gets to 70 degrees after a long winter kids go crazy with excitement!