Reviewing the Sacraments- Confession

Back here I showed the pop out Divine Mercy beads that I made with my students.

However, we didn't finish the study there, I just haven't taken the time to blog the rest.  We used Divine Mercy Sunday as a spring board to review the Sacrament of Confession.

God's mercy is what enables us to be forgiven.  How important it is to teach kids about the connection between sorrow for sin, repentance, God's mercy, and the Sacrament of Confession!

Here is a great coloring page of the image of Divine Mercy:

 We colored it and then attached it in our Sheen Notebooks with a "hinge."  This is one of my favorite ways to add things in a notebook.  It isn't messy, pages don't stick together, you can see the back and front of the page, and you can add something underneath it.  All we did was trim the coloring page a little smaller than the notebook page and then taped it on with two small pieces of scotch tape on the right hand side of the picture.  It then opens like on a hinge, as you can see here:

 There you can see the Divine Mercy Beads from an earlier post, neatly hidden (and therefor not spilling out of the notebook).    On the back of the coloring page, we took notes after talking about St. Faustina and the image of Divine Mercy:

 When you open up the hinge all of the way, you can see that the next thing that we added was a children's guide to Confession.  I am using the one provided by our Diocese, which you can find here.

  It is taped like a hinge on the left side, and therefore can open up like this (where there is an examination of conscience) and also can be flipped over to the back where there are steps for going to confession.

 Underneath the guide to Confession is a little review worksheet from this great site, which has tons of printables about Divine Mercy.  We used this one that compares the Confession to detox for the soul.

Lots of layers, lots of info, and definitely something that I plan to use in the future to prepare kids for receiving the Sacrament!

Sheen and the Sacraments

In celebration of Sheen's birthday, we made these mini books with my kids for their Sheen Notebooks, remembering that as a priest, Sheen played an integral role as a minster of the sacraments for thousands of people.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I found a photo of Sheen that either demonstrated or personified each sacrament, as well as one of his quotes (we do love Sheen's quotes) that could help us understand each.  Here is what we found:

“I don’t want my life to be mine, I want it to be Christ’s.”

 

 “As a man must be born before he can begin to lead his physical life, so he must be born to lead a Divine Life. That birth occurs in the Sacrament of Baptism. To survive, he must be nourished by Divine Life; that is done in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist."

 "It does not take much time to make us saints. 

It only requires much love.”

 “Sometimes the only way the good Lord can get into some hearts is to break them.” 

 

“Unless there is a cross in our lives, there will never be an empty tomb; unless there is a crown of thorns, there will never be the halo of light; unless there is a Good Friday, there will never be an Easter Sunday.”

 "In every friendship hearts grow and entwine themselves together, so that the two hearts seem to make only one heart with only a common thought. That is why separation is so painful; it is not so much two hearts separating, but one being torn asunder.”

“Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving?

Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? 

Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?”

Click here for a printable of the mini book complete with pictures and quotes:

Happy Birthday Fulton Sheen!

Happy Birthday Fulton Sheen!

The kids in my classroom were excited to celebrate one of their new best friends (Fulton Sheen).  Our quest into his life and how we can strive for holiness has been continuing over the past couple of months, and we are getting ready to culminate it with a field trip to some special spots about him, including the sites where he received the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Orders.

Today, we played a trivia game just for fun, but also for me to see how much they remembered.  Some of the biographical stuff we haven't talked about for quite a while, and I made the trivia game on the challenging side (because a trivia game where everyone knows every answer isn't all that much fun).  They actually shocked me with how much they have retained!  They only one that they really struggled with was the name of FJS's parents, which was a tough one:).

The trivia game is set up in powerpoint and is like Jeopardy.  It isn't fancy, but the kids enjoyed it. The content goes through Sheen's life, what Sheen taught, and the canonization process.

Click here for the link to the game:

 Tomorrow, I will post the quick mini book that we made with quotes and pictures of Sheen related to the seven Sacraments.  Come back!

Miracles

There is no doubt that part of my inspiration to start this Fulton Sheen ongoing project was my connection through my good friends' story of Sheen allegedly interceding on behalf of their stillborn son James Fulton.  You can read about my decision to teach about Fulton Sheen here.

Needless to say, with such a connection, I would be remiss not to share the alleged miracle with my students.  So I decided to trade favors with James' mom (you come speak to my class and I'll make your daughter's birthday invitations...) just kidding!  Bonnie has been VERY supportive of this project, so I asked her to come and give a version of her talk "61 minutes" to my 5th graders.

We had a couple of students absent, so at the last minute we decided to film it so that they wouldn't miss out.  The video itself isn't anything special (as in a flipcam propped on a desk), but if you are looking for more about James Fulton, want Fulton Sheen to be canonized, or are just looking for an inspirational God centered story, it is worth a watch.

Here is the video of her talk:

And here is the shorter Q & A after the talk:

 Not to neglect the Fulton Sheen Notebook, the kids has this note-taking sheet ready to go.  We prepped questions that they might like to ask her during the Q & A(because you never know what will come out of a 5th grader's mouth) and there were five questions that they had to listen for during the talk.

 We had already cut these out and glued them into their notebooks.

 The questions were on a flap, and they could lift up and record the answer underneath.

Click here for the printable.

This was an incredible experience for the kids, and I hope that you enjoyed it too!

Non-fiction Reading Skills with Sheen

Continuing our study of Sheen and the canonization process, I decided to take a little time to review non-fiction text skills with some newspaper articles about Sheen.

Here are the links to two great articles about the alleged miraculous healing attributed to Sheen's intercession.

Sept. 18, 2011- Sheen intercession cited in area boy's alleged miraculous healing
Dec. 11, 2011- Evidence of alleged miracle with Sheen link heads to Rome

Copies of those articles along with the non-fiction notes below were given to the kids.  I actually had them set up as stations with another activity or two while I worked with small reading groups.  The students love this kind of set up because it gives them some freedom and they can work at their own pace.  I love it because it helps them develop independence and keeps them busy.  Peeking in the door, it looks like chaos, but it is all good.

Here are the two note taking sheets:

Kids and Katie Knit...

At my school, living out our faith is a very important practice that we try to instill in the students.  As a school family, we have numerous service projects, fundraisers, drives & collections all throughout the year to encourage the kids to think outside of themselves.

Each class also has a specific service project that they work on.  When I became a new staff member, the line next to my class said "KidKnits."  I do crochet, and you all know that I like crafts, but I don't knit, and I couldn't imagine teaching a class of 29 kids how to knit.  (eek!)  Little did I know the adventure that would be experienced through this new service project. 

Make sure to go to the KidKnits website and check them out.  The idea for KidKnits was created by a nine year old girl who coupled together her new skill of knitting on a round loom with yarn made by women living in extreme poverty in Rwanda.  Fast forward a couple of years, and there are hundreds of students learning how to knit, buying yarn from True Vineyard Ministries, and learning about generosity, poverty, and global citizenship.

KidKnits brings together the need of these women in Rwanda (and also Chile) to have a way to support their families and the need of American students to understand a world outside of their classroom walls.  An awesome curriculum is provided to open their eyes and allow them to think a little bigger.  While they go through the curriculum, they also learn how to knit a hat on a round loom, a skill that even the least coordinated (trust me on this) 5th grader can do. 

This is what the Rwanda yarn looks like:

Hand sheered, hand spun, hand dyed with natural materials... it is beautiful and one of a kind.  One ball of yarn supports a woman and her family for a day.

My students made one hat, and then gave it away as a Christmas gift to a child at a mission parish in South Dakota.  They were so excited, and it was incredibly touching to read the letters that they wrote to go along with the hat.  The letters explained what they had learned to the child that would get to wear the hat.  (You can read a little of what they wrote here.) They then got to make a second hat and not surprisingly, many of them gave that one away too.  Seems to be that if you teach a child to give, they give beyond what  you can even imagine.

We also had the chance to buy more yarn, and here are some of the hats that I used as Christmas gifts.
It was an awesome experience, and was a great example of something that went way better than expected, which does not always happen in a classroom :)

Storage in Style

I am blessed right now to have an extra bedroom in my apartment which has been dubbed "the craft room."  It really should be a second bedroom, or an office, but a craft room it is.  I am loving the way that it is set up and the work that I can do in there, and I am hoping soon that it will all be arranged/unpacked/sorted to my liking.  I have been in this apartment for...9 months...and I just still am not quite done.  I'll post pictures eventually.

Until then, check out the "new" furniture that I got:

 I found this at a new second hand store in my town this fall.  I jokingly told the owner that I loved it, and that if someone came in asking for "Katie's Christmas Gift," to send them in the right direction.  I told my mom about it, and then forgot about it.  Fast forward to Christmas, and my mom, dad, and brothers-in-law had to leave the room to carry/drag this into the room.  I was so excited!

This is one solid piece of furniture, and has the prettiest finish.  This picture didn't turn out well, but it has these neat carvings on the doors:

The inside was a traditional armoire, with a hanging rack on the left and drawers on the right.  My mom built shelves for the open side, which can easily be removed if I ever wanted to use it in its original state. She also used her woodworking skills to realign some of the tracks and fix up the finish.

Here you can see that I am not using it for clothes.  It has become the main storage in my craft room.  Top two shelves have folded fabric (in rainbow order, of course). 

The bottom currently has plastic shoe boxes with craft supplies, which I would like to replace eventually with something like this:

 I love the drawers, and wanted to add those metal label holders.  Since it was a gift, my mom took the challenge of finding them.

 

 Again, a poor picture, but these are exactly what I wanted.  I put brown craft paper labels inside, making it easy to remember where things are.

 Like the ribbon drawer, for example:

I love it, and everything is so organized!

Now I just need some more time to make some crafts!  Summer will be here soon :)