DIY Angel Gabriel

One of my favorite things about teaching Faith Formation, besides sharing my faith with the kids obviously, is coming up with fun and informative lessons. Sometimes it can be a real challenge to find things that aren't too babyish or labor intensive—I've been overwhelmed by Pinterest more often than not. BUT, as with the Thankful Turkeys we did before Thanksgiving, I came up with these simple Angel Gabriels and it worked really well for our class of 26 six and seven year-olds.

We made these after our first Advent lesson, when I felt like the kids had a good grasp of not only whom Gabriel was but also why he is so important to us. I love this craft because it is super easy and super cheap to create in bulk. A lot of times I find awesome crafts on Pinterest, but they require seven different specialty products and when you're trying to create 26 of them it gets expensive. The only downside to this craft is the toilet paper rolls that make the body. Usually I send out an email to parents and have everyone bring one in. Otherwise, everything else needed is basic. Relatively quick too!

Supplies
Toilet paper roll
White and yellow construction paper
Basket style coffee filter
Scissors
Glue stick
Stapler
Writing instrument

Directions
Take your white construction paper and fold it into thirds, ripping at the folds. This will serve as the covering for the toilet paper roll body. Wrap the white paper over the roll and glue in place. Using your writing instrument (some kids used crayons, some used pencils, I used a pen) make sure your Angel Gabriel has a face!! For the wings, take a flattened basket coffee filter and fold it in half. Using a stapler, attach the coffee filter to the prepared body to create wings. Make small cuts along the ridges of the filter to give your wings some depth! Taking the yellow paper cut a small circle for the halo, gluing it to one side.

Thankful Turkey Craft

This year in Faith Formation has been a challenge to say the least. Maybe it's all the full moons? Anyway, it seems like this class has forced me to look outside of the box more than ever before. One of the many reasons I love teaching first grade is that they are just old enough to sit through a lesson, but still love to do crafts!

The Sunday before Thanksgiving week is always hard. This year, most of the schools are out for the entire week, so we won't have a lot of kids that attend class. The ones that do have, for the most part, already checked out of learning. I felt daunted trying to come up with something for an hour and forty-five minutes! Then inspiration struck: I love these little turkeys, I think they turned out precious.

 They are so INCREDIBLY easy. Now how I got the large amount (and array) of paint samples from Walmart wasn't so easy, but as my momma always said, "Where there's a will, there is a way." I wasn't techincally doing anything wrong, but it felt like I was? Anyway, I "overgrabbed" what we ended up needing so at least I don't have to feel awkward again next year?

All you need for this craft is construction paper, a writing instrument, three paint samples, scisorrs and glue.

Cut a piece of brown construction paper in the shape of a circle; we used a roll of masking tape as our circle pattern. Cut four smaller circles out of white and blue or green construction paper for the eyes, for layering the eye color on top of the white; orange construction paper in the shape of a triangle works for the beak. Glue the eyes and the beak to your circle; all you have to draw is the mouth and you've got the turkey body!

My favorite part of this craft is the feathers. For our Faith Formation class we used a white board to list all the things we could think of that we were thankful for like the Holy Spirit, St. John the Baptist, Pope Francis, our families, schools and the military. From the list each child was responsibile for copying down one item to each of their three feathers. We used pencil and they were hard to photograph, for the example I used a Sharpie and it worked much better. But I wasn't about to pass out 26 sharpies, so the pencils worked just fine. In real life you can see them fine. Crayon does NOT work on the paint samples however.

To make the feathers, simply cut a rounded edge triangle from the paint strips. Most of the kids didn't do so hot at the rounded edge, but I think the sharp corners look just as cute! Once you have your feather shape, copy your thankful item to the top, then glue the feathers paint side forward to the turkey body.

Voila! You have a super sweet, super easy Thankful Turkey. My personal favorite is little Clara who wrote "St. Therese; Toys; Candy". 

St. Patrick's Day 2015

I love me a holiday. I mean, I am all about them. Normally I decorate my door, dining room table and mantle and use fun paper plates and napkins for the duration of the holiday season. However, this year, my St. Patrick's Day stuff stayed in a box until Sunday. #fail

We've made up for it though, using my cutesy shamrock napkins for every meal since, and I was still able to teach one of my absolute favorite lessons of the Faith Formation year, St. Patrick's Day! This past Sunday the third installment of Miss Jessica's class learned all about the life and times of St. Patrick, while having some fun along the way.

via

As with years past, we filled out a worksheet sharing a few facts about St. Patrick. New this year was a video clip I found on some Pinterest round up, I think. It's from "up North" so my kids giggled at the narrator's accent the entire time, but it was a nice, succinct video that introduced a little of St. Patrick's history.

We made spoon saints again this year, and I finally got a picture! Personal victory!

Love this St. Patrick made by sweet KTH

The kids did great, as per usual! I was able to get all the supplies for all 22 of my kids for about $25 using a coupon at Michael's. Just my luck the paper wasn't on sale this week... I got the 12X12 pieces of green and yellow paper, then using my paper trimmer cut them into four separate pieces to pass out for the vestments. Instead of glitter this year we used metallic puffy paint and that worked out really well. There was a ton less mess.

Since St. Patrick is known for using the shamrock in the Irish countryside to teach the Trinity, and the Trinity is a concept we work on all year, I incorporated it into the spoon saint project. Just as a shamrock has three leaves but is one plant, God is three persons in one. The kids really seemed to get it—I was so proud! We wrapped green pipecleaners around three fingers and twisted them into a shamrock shape. It's so simple!

All you do is loop the pipecleaner around your first three fingers, wiggle the fingers free and bend the circles into place. Some kids struggled with this, and I ended up doing a lot of them for them, but some kids got it quickly and were able to help their friends. I loved seeing the team work!  I used the same somewhat crappy word search as I did in the past because I just flat ran out of time to make my own. It's not terrible, it's just not exactly what I would like for the lesson. There's always next year.

Hope your St. Patrick's Day is filled with all the blessings of St. Patrick, and a little Irish luck.

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

No Green Beer This Year

St. Patrick's Day (or St. Practice Day for the revelers that celebrated Saturday) for most people involved green beer (more green beer) and crappy food and things I pretty much earmark as an average day in the life of college me. 

I worked out at 9am on Saturday. I wore a green bikini to the pool Saturday afternoon. I GOT ABSOLUTELY TORCHED IN SAID GREEN BIKINI. It still hurts and I'm still cranky. I darkened my hair using my new favorite thing in the world, eSalon, before I went on a theatre and dinner date.

On the actual Feast of Saint Patrick, I did a little party for the baby Catholics. I spent a good bit of time last week trolling the interwebs, mainly Google; Pinterest has been overwhelming me in a bad way lately, for activities and crafts that would help convey WHO St. Patrick was and WHAT St. Patrick's Day really means to us Catholics. (Hint, leprechauns have nothing to do with it.)

Anyway, we did a word search as warm up and enjoyed donuts before praying the Breastplate of St. Patrick! The word search was okay; honestly, I will probably make my own next year.

Then we learned some quick "life and times of Patrick" while filling out this mini book. I loved this activity because my classroom has a SmartBoard and we were able to fill in the worksheets right on the screen. It was great.

Our final activity, which clearly highlights that I am infreakingsane, was creating spoon saints. I got the idea from Catholic Icing, my new favorite place in the world, who got it from Cottage Blessings.

The kids did great! I was able to get all the supplies for all 23 of my kidlets for about $15 using a coupon at Michael's. I got the 12X12 pieces of green and yellow paper, then using my paper trimmer cut them into four separate pieces to pass out for the vestments.

The glitter was an absolute F'ing disaster, but it made them happy and y'know whatever. (I'm pretty sure I still have gold glitter in my ear.) 

But in the end everyone was proud of what they made. I'm still kicking myself for not getting a close up of an actual spoon saint, but you live and learn right? There's anyways next year, because this is one craft I will be doing again.