In 1950, Sheen was named the Director for the Society of the Propagation of the Faith (now called the Pontifical Missions Society) and in 1951 he designed and taught about the World Mission Rosary, asking all to pray not only for themselves, but for the World.
Each decade of the Rosary is a different color, reminding us to pray for the needs of people around the world.
Green= the grasslands of Africa
Blue= the islands of the Pacific
White= Europe, the home of the Holy Father
Red= the Missionary zeal of those sent to the Americas
Yellow= the sunrise over the East
The Archdiocese of Chicago has a nice handout about how to pray the World Mission Rosary.
I made this sheet for the kids to color and put in their Sheen notebooks. The text is from the Archbishop Sheen Cause website.
Click on the image below for a printable.
We first made a large classroom Rosary using paper strips to make a chain. One group of kids made the "beads" for Africa, another group for Europe, etc. Then we connected them all together and added the additional beads. As we put it together, we didn't pray a Rosary this time, but we reviewed what prayers were said on each bead.
Here is the finished Rosary hanging above our Sheen Corner in our classroom.
Info from Pontifical Mission Societies in the US on the World Mission Rosary.
Text on my handout from here.
Info from the Vatican with an interactive missions Rosary.
"Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded from service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for Divine Love?" ~Fulton Sheen
The natural summary of a person's life?
A timeline, of course.
So after watching the film about Fulton Sheen's life, I challenged my students to take a stack of post-it notes (one of my favorite educational resources, btw) and create a timeline of FJS's life. Important items only. Had to be events, not just facts. And had to be placed in chronological order (with a little help from me supplying dates they did not know off the top of their heads.)
The result:
I was pretty impressed, considering that I only gave them five minutes. And I know that you can't read them, but they were very accurate and specific with their events.
As a reward, I told them that I had something to add to our Sheen corner, which has been gradually growing in one spot of our classroom. So far it has newspaper articles, photos, prayers, student artwork about Sheen, and even a copy of a letter that one kid wrote (her own idea!) to Sheen's niece who lives in New York. The big pockets have more items to read or view, ranging from articles to a couple of his books to the documentary that we watched as a group.
I pulled out the timeline that I created and drew illustrations for and hung it at the top. (it is that lame looking white strip above everything.)
And they oohed and aahed, and then I showed them the one in my awesome notebook:
And they flipped out a bit.
Because then they got their own.
It is impossible to get a close up picture of the whole thing, but the timeline has 16 events in the life of Sheen from his birth to him being declared Venerable last summer.
When printed back to front from the file available below and then cut into strips horizontally, it can be taped into a two sided strip that is in order. (Chronological order being the challenge for the kids). We then accordion folded it so that it would neatly fit into our notebooks, but could still be pulled out and seen from both sides.
You also could copy it back to front and cut it into 8 individual panels and then staple it together like a mini book, or print single sided to make a timeline for a wall like I had above.
However you use it, here is the link for the printable:
I originally blogged about Spiritual Adoption here and here.
The prayer written by Venerable Fulton Sheen was the center of those activities, so I had to include it with our Sheen study.
I loved the kids' reaction when I told them that the prayer that they pray everyday as a school for our spiritually adopted baby (dubbed Max in our classroom) was written by Sheen. They got one of the bookmarks with the prayer they already know to add to their notebook, and someday soon we will do some journal writing about it.
Click on the image above for a printable of the bookmarks, and follow the links above for other items on teaching about spiritual adoption, including monthly update postcards.
I love notebooking as a classroom tool, and I think that it can be fabulous in Religious Education Programs also. Click here for a brief example that I made for another topic.
This Fulton Sheen Project demanded an awesome record keeping device as well as a keepsake for the kids, so a notebook is where we got started.
Here is mine:
We added tabs, because we be working on three main topics within this study, including research on the life of Fulton Sheen, Living the Sacraments, and the Path to Sainthood.
I didn't take a picture of this, but the tabs are simply half of a 3x5 index card folded in half and then stapled onto a sheet of paper in the notebook where I wanted the section to start.
You can see the first one a little better on this title page.
We made this title page on the day I told them about the project. The "quick facts about FJS" is just a 4x6 index card taped only on the top like a hinge. It flips up and reveals about five quick facts about Sheen's life that introduced the kids to him and why we were going to study him.
Then they received a holy card with him on it (a huge hit), which is taped with a hinge on the left so that it can be flipped to read the prayer on back. We ended this intro activity talking about intercessory prayer and added a space for prayer intentions under half of a 3x5 index card for privacy.
(A note- I always prefer tape and especially staples when
notebooking, because they allow for correction of mistakes, unlike
glue. Gluesticks are not as permanent and can fall out as a notebook is
used and also don't go very far compared to their price. Liquid glue
is very permanent, but creates big problems for kids who can't use "just
a little." Notebook pages stuck together containing prized work is not
a crisis I enjoy fixing. That being said, I use staples, tape, glue
sticks, and liquid glue for different things in a notebook, I just have
my preferences.)
Here is what the Notebook cover looks like, and you can access three different versions as printables below. Stay tuned for more activities!
The movie is broken up into five 10ish minute segments about his life, so we watched one section each day over a five day week. (OK, to be honest, they begged to watch the rest of the movie (part 5) on Thursday. I caved, and as soon as we finished both sections and the credits were rolling, we got the announcement that there was white smoke in Rome. Providential? I think not. Hopefully, Pope Francis will be the one that recognizes Sheen as Blessed and then Saint!)
Because there are no free rides in my classroom, even when we are watching a movie, the kids got this booklet to record info from each section of the movie in, as well as some overall thoughts. I also included some of my favorite Sheen quotes and photographs. Click on the image below to get the 8 page mini book for yourself.
They got to add the booklet to their Fulton Sheen Notebook, which is quite possibly the "favorite" project we have done in our room so far this year, and we are not even close to being done with it.
Archbishop?
1950's TV personality with 30 million weekly viewers?
Author of 66 books?
Winner of an Emmy?
Director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith?
Oh, and the guy that has a cause up for his canonization?
Yup, that Fulton.
I've been getting to know Fulton Sheen since my days at the Newman Center in college. It was recommended that I read The World's First Love, which helped me understand the Blessed Mother more as well as a lot about what it means to be a woman. I mean, who can't love a guy who says this: "To a great extent the level of any civilization is the level of its
womanhood. When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The
higher her virtue, the more her character, the more devoted she is to
truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of
her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of
the level of its women."
But I have to say that I did not know that much else about Sheen (except that he was from the Peoria area) until my good friends named their son after him, and then asked for his intercession in healing baby James Fulton after he was stillborn and without a pulse for 61 minutes.
Needless to say, that started a little more research, reading, and YouTube watching on my part. And I got hooked on this man who unabashedly taught and lived his faith. He was dynamic, he was an extraordinary teacher, and his messages are still relevant today.
As Blessed John Paul II said to him just a few months before FJS's death, "You have written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are a loyal son of the Church."
Fast forward a bit to my current teaching assignment of some very inquisitive, busy, and hands-on Catholic 5th graders. Add in a long drive every day, which inevitably gives me too much time to think. And I felt a personal challenge to introduce my kids to this inspiring man in this exciting time of his hopefully-soon-to-be-beatification. I asked my principal what she thought of my ideas, and before I was even sure where this was going, she was on the phone with the Superintendent of Catholic Schools and the Bishop's Office. So with no looking back, I am planning some (hopefully) awesome opportunities and activities surrounding Fulton Sheen. There are many items in my religion curriculum that can be covered through the lens of his life. I also needed a topic to teach research and expository writing, so this fits in there, too.
So, here we go. I'll be posting activities and stories about how this journey goes.
Maybe working on a post a week (or so) kind of back.
My life has been lending itself to more structure this Lent, which I can only attribute to God's grace, and I have been feeling the tug to get back online and posting in the blogging world. I have lots to share (or I think that I do), but to bring you up to date on the personal aspects of things, I'll summarize the past few months by saying that I'm well.
Job is good, family is good, I am good.
Good things are happening. I feel equally blessed and challenged, which is a good place to be.
So check back this week for more news. Here's a hint on the next post:
