Celebrating St. Francis

This week the Catholic church celebrated the life, faith, and works of St. Francis during his feast day on October 4th. He is certainly one of the most widely known saints and a favorite of my children so we took a break from our Bible lessons about Moses and Exodus to focus on one of the great saints of the Church.

Making the saints come alive for my children is something that's very important to me and I try to get creative about it without going too over-the-top. My children already know and love St. Francis, but after Wednesday, I think they'll remember his feast day and the lessons they learned too.

If your kids aren't familiar with St. Francis, Francis Woke Up Early by Josephine Nobisso is a favorite picture book of my children about this special saint. The book is a retelling of the classic St. Francis and the Wolf story told with wonderful pictures from the point of view of a child. You can find it here.

We started our celebration by talking about St. Francis and his mission. Then we all went outside to make bird feeders with pine cones, peanut butter, and stale bread. We discussed how providing food for the birds is one way we can show love for God's creatures by helping to care for them.

Since we have pets, we also spent some time praying for our dogs and giving them a little extra love too. We planned to give them both a good bath, but my husband couldn't be home in time and, as he lovingly pointed out, bathing two 90 pound dogs with two young children was a foolish endeavor at 33 weeks pregnant.

Animal Blessing Prayer to use if you're interested in praying over your pets too:

The animals of God's creation inhabit the skies, the earth, and the sea. They share in the ways of human beings. They have a part in our lives. Francis of Assisi recognized this when he called the animals, wild and tame, his brothers and sisters. Remembering Francis' love for these brothers and sisters of ours, we invoke God's blessing on these animals, and we thank God for letting us share the earth with all the creatures.

Combining Curricula with Snow!

Moms that homeschool multiple children have lots of different ways of making it work. Some moms combine curriculum, some moms do different "levels" at different times of the day.... there are hundreds of ways to get it done without losing your mind.
As an added challenge this year, we havebeen figuring out which method works best for us.  My son, five, my niece who is two, and my daughter (also 2 but a sensitive child with a speech delay) all have lessons to squeeze into each day.

I've mentioned before that we joined the Mother Goose Time community and agreed to blog about our experiences in exchange for their complete preschool curriculum which is awesome! Every month, Mother Goose Time has a new theme. This month all the lessons are weather related.
It doesn't always work out that our Mother Goose Time curriculum matches up with my son's curriculum, but when it does... it's magical! Check out what happened  this week when Mother Goose Time's Snow Lesson met my son's science lesson on how snow and ice crystals are formed.

First, we read about how ice crystals form and learned that snowflakes are one-of-a-kind in Usborne's book, Weather by Catriona Clarke.
Then we started having fun Rolling Snowballs, a math activity from Mother Goose Time.

Little Goose, the infant & toddler companion for Mother Goose Time, suggested that children attempt to roll snowballs from play dough and stack them to form snowmen. The pocket cube (quickly becoming one of our favorite tools!) was used to determine how many "snowballs" each child needed to form.
I adapted the activity for my five year old by having him practice adding and subtracting "snowballs" in order to reach the number he rolled on the cube.
The little girls loved smashing their snowmen after counting "1,2,3!" It was such a fun way to practice number concepts together in a way that benefited all the children despite their varying ages and abilities.

Next, we had fun making our own one-of-a-kind snowflakes together. We used Mother Goose Time's Make & Play activity, Tie-Dye Snowflake to get creative and sneak in some scientific reasoning skills at the same time.
In this activity, the kids had fun sharing the markers (Everyone wanted the same colors!) and the best part: watching the coffee filters soak up the water in their cups. Ada Grace hugged her cup to her chest and stared into it for several minutes. That's a lot of focus for a two year old!

Finally, we made the suggested paper snowflakes from Noah's curriculum using paper & scissors. I remember making the same snowflakes as a child, so it was a lot of fun for me. However, the kids needed lots of help from me to manipulate the scissors safely and achieve the desired patterns. The Mother Goose Time snowflakes were much easier to create and more reflective of their individual skills and personalities.

At the end of the day, the kids chose to fold their snowflakes and put them in envelopes to mail to their great grandparents. They might not make it into the portfolio, but they made lasting memories and brought joy to their loved ones with their sweet handmade gifts. The best part? they won't forget all the things they learned about snow & ice after a day like that!