Orderliness/Organization - Wreath III

Feels like I haven't been to a Little Flowers meeting forever!!  My girls and I missed our December meeting due to travel and then we had our Christmas party.  Our main January meeting had to be postponed due to a pipe bursting in our social hall.

This seemed like the perfect virtue for January.  How many of us make a resolution in the new year to get organized?  Well perhaps our meeting, along with some of the activities will help to get some of the girls and moms motivated to keep those resolutions.

I'm not sure why I struggled with this virtue.  Perhaps my mind was still spinning from Christmas.  What's so wonderful is that I was able to fall back to the workbook.  We focused on working on some of the activities.  I've never heard a mom complain about getting some of the activities completed during the meeting.  It's always nice to get a jump start on getting them completed.

We started by having the girls all tell me about their Christmas vacation - ALL AT ONE TIME!!!  No order whatsoever.  It was loud and of course, no order.  We learned fast that it is important to have some orderliness at our meetings.

To work on our first activity, we talked about how God presented us with the first opportunity to see order, Creation.  I talked about how God had a plan and He had a purposed for putting each day in a certain order.  Then we talked about what would happen if God had decided to just mix things up.  It just wouldn't work that way!

Using the Leader's Manual, I encouraged the moms to make sure that they didn't just expect their daughters to know what goes on in their heads.  Explain why we always hang up our keys.  How it keeps things running smooth and we don't run around like crazy women in the morning looking for them.  Of course, if we do happen to lose our keys, we can always ask St. Zita to help us find them as she is the patron saint of lost keys.  We can use this handy little prayer, "Zita, Zita, help me please.  Help me to find my missing keys" (Sorry, I can't remember where I found like).

Then we talked about two women who really knew something about being organized.  The first being St. Zita.  The second is the Proverbs 31 woman.  I gave the girls a little background info on how it was a mom telling her son about the kind of woman he should find.  I can take absolutely no credit for this part of the lesson.  I found a wonderful guide which I borrowed.  I cut out the bible verse and used the one from my Catholic Bible but otherwise it was very helpful in breaking down the different virtues that the woman should have. You can find the guide here.  We talked about how Little Flowers is helping them to develop all those wonderful virtues.

Lastly for our activity, I had the girls make hot cocoa cones.  This was so perfect!!!  The girls had to layer the ingredients in order.  We also passed out the ingredients in an orderly fashion.  Just a warning if you decide to do this activity.  I totally lucked out finding the plastic cones to layer them in.  There were some clearanced right after Christmas at Michael's.  At first I couldn't find them and I was a little panicked thinking of a craft that I could do.  Then at the last moment, they appeared!!  I got this idea from the Catholic Missionary Family.  The post was a few years old so maybe Hobby Lobby no longer carries the cones she used.  Ours definitely didn't look as nice, but it got the job done.

Here are the instructions.

- Each girl received 4 packets of hot cocoa mix, a small cup with 1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips and a cup of mini marshmallows. 

- Empty the hot cocoa mix into a snack size baggie and then stick down in the cone bag.

- Dump the mini chocolate chips in and then layer it with the marshmallows.  Add a twisty to close it and you are done!!

I typed out a little card with the instructions that Catholic Missionary Family had posted.  It reads, "Heat 5 cups of milk and chocolate chips over medium heat until the chocolate chips have melted. Reduce heat to low and stir in the cocoa mix until the drink is smooth. Serve with marshmallows. Makes 4-6 servings."

With the cold weather that is headed our way, I know the girls are going to be enjoying their creations right away!!

Lots of Notes of Cheer!

Things have been rough at our church over the last couple of weeks.  A pipe burst in our social hall and the water just poured in for hours before it was discovered.  There was a whole lot of damage.  We will not be able to use it to hold classes or meetings for at least 3 months. 

Needless to say, my mood has been down as we sort through the damage and plan how to fit religious education classes into the church.  As usual though, God is so good to me.  I got a few bits of mail that just really lifted my spirits.  I was so excited to be able to take them to our Little Flowers meeting.

We received a wonderful thank you note from the hospital that we sent the get well cards to back in the Fall.  We also received a nice thank card from the maternity home babies that the girls made blankets for at our December meeting.

Now, saving the best for last!!!  We received a response from the Vatican from our Christmas card!!  This was so exciting.  The holy card is so beautiful. 

God knows how to lift my spirits and keep me moving forward.  The girls asked me who got to keep the holy card.  I said that I would hang it in my office.  It will be a great reminder of His love.

Merry Christmas, Pope Francis!

While it might seem a little early to be wishing Pope Francis a Merry Christmas,if you are going to do it by mail, you have to start early.

All the Little Flowers looked their best and wore their aprons so that we could send a picture in the card.  It's so hard to get them all settled and looking in one direction, but when I promised they could make some silly faces after a good one, they did it!

I ordered a beautiful card from Treat .  It's was a pretty card and I added their nice pose on the front in sepia.  Then on the inside, I added one of their silly poses.  Pope Francis just seems so down to earth, I figured if he saw the card, he would get a chuckle.  I added that we loved him and were praying for him.  I'm just waiting for it to be delivered to me and I'll be sending it off.  Treat doesn't deliver overseas, but it should be in the mail by the end of the week.  Below are the mailing addresses that I found for the Pope.

His Holiness, Pope Francis PP.
00120 Via del Pellegrino
Citta del Vaticano 

OR

His Holiness Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace
VATICAN CITY, 00120

OR

His Holiness Pope Francis
Vatican City State, 00120

I have heard that Pope Benedict used to answer some of the Christmas cards.  Wouldn't it be awesome to get a response?  No matter what, the girls were so excited to think that they were sending their Pope a card. 

Now back to Thanksgiving!! 

UPDATE:   The card was mailed off to the Vatican and postage was $1.10 for a regular Christmas card envelope.   It was mailed from Pennsylvania.

A Stocking for Jesus

With Christmas music already playing in stores, I thought it would be good to get the girls to focus on preparing for Jesus instead of making their lists for Santa.  There is a sweet little book called, "A Stocking for Jesus".  Here's what the book looks like because I can't even remember where I got it from.

 

In the story, the little girl is helping her family decorate for Christmas.  She notices stockings for everyone in the family, including the cat, but no stocking for Jesus.  Her and her mom go out and buy a beautiful stocking for Jesus.  Then throughout Advent, they write out what gifts they give to Jesus.  They visit someone in the nursing home, pray for the sick and donate their old clothes.  Then they wrap up all their papers in little boxes and put them in Jesus' stocking.

After the story, I encouraged the girls and moms to think about what they can do for Jesus for his birthday.  We went around the room with the girls calling out ideas.  Afterwards it was time to make our own stockings for Jesus which the girls will fill with their gifts to Jesus.

A few weeks ago, Joann Fabrics had a sale on their felt.  I bought some white and using my pinking shears, cut out stockings.  I used red thread and just did a quick stitch to sew them.  At the top, I added a little ribbon loop so that the girls could hang them up.  

I kept the supplies simple as it could get expensive to go to fancy.  The buttons came from a fabric outlet.  I attempted to dye them but Pinterest failed me.  I wound up spray painting them red.  I printed out "Jesus" onto the fabric ahead of time and sewed them onto the hearts for each girl.  The girls got to pick their buttons and ribbons.  It's so neat how each one of them was unique.

Here are some pictures of a few of them.

Friendliness....Continued

We continued our discussion on friendliness this evening.  It is nice to have a second meeting each month to sometimes continue discussions.   I know there are several girls in our group that really struggle with being shy.  My daughter is one of them.  I really wanted to give the girls some good tips that they could use to help them be friendly.

- First I let them know that it might not be comfortable but to try it anyways!!  Like any virtue, it takes practice to become friendly.  I shared that I struggled when I was growing up with being shy and that I still struggle.  It's not always easy for me to talk start conversations with people, but I know that I have to work on it.

- Next, start with a simple hello.  It doesn't have to be a long, drawn out conversation.  They can simply say hello, but make sure to say it with a smile and eye contact.  I had a couple of girls try this out and it was really tough.  Making eye contact when you are shy takes a lot of practice.

- Be focused on the person.  Don't be on a phone or playing a video game.  Show the person that you are interested in what they have to say.

- Never forget to pray about it.  Ask Jesus for help.  I shared that when we first moved to this town, I asked God to help me make some Catholic friends.  The next thing I knew, I was being led to start a moms' group at church which also led to starting Little Flowers.  God answered my prayer.  Of course I pointed out that He didn't just drop the friends in my lap.  I had to leave my comfort zone, but He truly blessed me.   I have some very wonderful friends now.

They were all given a homework assignment to work on this week.  Go up to at least one person that they don't usually talk to and say hello. Perfect way to get started on being friendly

I gave the girls time at the end of the meeting to practice .  They were encouraged to pick a friend that they might not know very well, and visit with them.  They spread out around the room and sat face to face.  It was great to see.  Even my very shy daughter came home all excited.  She shared that she had made a new friend!!  We are off to a good start.

 

Friendliness - Wreath III

If there is one thing that I really learned from this last meeting is that the girls love to play games.  They LOVED the games this month.

There is a lot of helpful information in the leader’s manual to help with planning.   Jessica started the lesson by explaining the virtue of friendliness.  She made sure to point out that there is a difference between friendship and friendliness.  Friendliness is about being warm and kind to all, not just our friends.

The saints of the month are Ruth and Naomi.  Jessica read us their story.   Since we have talked about Ruth and Naomi before, the older girls knew the story.  It's wonderful that these stories and saints are being reinforced time and time again.

After talking about the saints, the girls gathered to hear the story, "The Selfish Giant", by Oscar Wilde.  I think this was a new book for all of us which was surprising since this isn't a new book.    This was one of the activities the girls could do to help earn their badge for the month.  YAY!!  

We did one more activity before the games.  Jessica had the girls do a heart activity.  The girls were given construction paper and then draw a large heart.   After that, they wrote down all the friends that came to mind.   Each name was given a certain amount of points depending on the relationship.  The point of the exercise was to have the girls look at all the different people in their lives who are their friends (other Little Flowers, classmates, siblings, parents, grandparents, ourselves, cousins, our Guardian Angel, Jesus).   Let me tell you, it was sort of funny because they were getting a little confused and focused too much on adding up the points which of course was not the point of the exercise.  I did see quite a few light bulbs going off as a new group of people were called out.

Then it was game time!!  These games were found at ehow.com.

The Human Knot

Best played in groups of six to 10, this game involves the cooperation of the entire group. All the members of the game stand in a circle and grab the hand of someone in the circle, but it cannot be the person to their right or left. Once everyone has grabbed hands, they must untangle themselves without letting go of their companion's hands. The participants must communicate and plan how they are going to break the knot. Some of the players may end facing outward, which is okay, as long as no one lets go.

I'm Your Friend

This game encourages children to learn to recognize their friend's voices. One child is chosen to be "it." The child who is "it" sits in front of the rest of the children, her eyes closed. One of the children in the group quietly walks up behind the chosen child and says, "I'm your friend," and then returns to his original seat. The child who is "it" must then guess who it was. It's important that the children who are not "it" do not trade places and that they speak in their normal voices, to assure a fair game.

The girls were so disappointed when the meeting came to a close.  I had to promise that we would have time in the coming meetings to keep playing.  

The Feast of All Souls

I made myself a rosary today, in memory of my very best friend, Kacy.  It has been over 10 years since she passed away, but she is still in my thoughts all the time.  She loved turtles so when I saw these beads, I knew they would be perfect. 

So on this day, the Feast of All Souls, I pray for Kacy and all the precious souls who have gone before me. 

Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, 

and let your perpetual light shine upon them.

May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, 

rest in peace. 

Amen

Liturgical Calendar - The Week in the Church

While this isn't totally related to Little Flowers, I thought I would share the liturgical calendar that I made for our church.  It's right above the drinking fountain so that anyone who gets a drink can see it.

I got the calendar from the USCCB website.  While I would have loved to include all the saints from both the old and new calendar, I stuck with what the USCCB calendar had on it.  I thought it best to keep things simple.    I also used information from the Catholic Culture website.  They have great ideas on activities to do on each feast day too.

This was super simple to make.  I used a regular bulletin board and just nailed a very thin piece of wood for the clothespins to hang.  Each season, I will change the background colors.  Of course when I took the picture, we were in Ordinary Time.  One each saint card, I try to find a picture of the saint, a quote by the saint and what they are a patron saint of.  There just isn't enough room to be writing bios about each one.

This was a fun project.  I love sitting down each week to learn about the saints for the week and the  seasons in the Church.   This would be a great tool for a group or family to have.