Badge Ceremony

Last year I used to hand out the badges at the beginning of each meeting.  I would fumble through the envelope looking for each girls' and I always seemed to struggle (not quite sure why).  So this year I decided to simplify. 

We are having 2 badge ceremonies this year.  Absolutely nothing fancy, just waiting to give out the badges.  We did one back in February and we'll do the other at the end of the year.  It saves a lot of frustration on my part, and really, who sews on badges every month?

A Night Out at the Assisted Living Home

This year, I have been trying to add more service projects for our group.  It was suggested that we visit a nursing home.  I was truly blessed that one of the religious education teachers volunteers at an assisted living place here in town.  She was able to get me connected with the activities director.  I told her that these girls weren't used to visiting so if she had some ideas for us, we would appreciate it.  She was so awesome.  She told me just to show up and she would have Bingo all set for all of us to join in.

It turned out to be a wonderful experience for all of us.  She led us in and got the game going right away.  It was so neat to see how much some of the residents enjoyed playing with the girls.  Each girl was given a chance to call a game.  While there wasn't a whole lot of visiting, it gave the girls a chance to get used to going there. We were invited back to spend another evening there.  It is my hope that each time we go back, the girls will feel more comfortable and start interacting with the residents.

Now to think of a craft we can do with them.

Self-Control - Wreath III

I guess I'm a little behind in my posts.  There have just been so many snow days!!! Our meeting for Self-Control was back in February.  I'm finally getting around to posting this.  

Jessica led the meeting.  I was lucky that she typed up all of her notes for me so I'm going to go ahead and just post them as is.  It was a great meeting and the girls really enjoyed the activities.

SELF CONTROL

Set out a cup of M&Ms in front of each girl – do not let them eat it until the end. This will demonstrate self control.

Explanation of Self-Control 

Does anyone know what self control is? 

Once girls raise their hands, I asked them to all raise their hands (that demonstrates right there a sign of self control)

control or restraint of oneself or one's actions, feelings, etc. (from dictionary.com)

·         Remind children that they will never be tempted beyond what God will help them handle *Self control is taking us out of the center of our hearts, minds and universes and putting Christ in it. (from leaders book)

·         It’s even a daily struggle your parents face, but with Jesus as our guide we can do all things well, even control ourselves! (from leaders book)

·         What is a good way you could help yourself maintain self control?

1.    Example, do not sit beside a friend who you enjoy talking to when you are supposed to be quiet, or choose to leave a play area

2.    when tempers are getting heated and you feel angry with a friend.

3.    When doing homework

                       

Kick-off craft

The craft suggested here will help remind your children to practice self-control and is based on

1 Peter 5:8: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around looking for someone

to devour.”

A self-control poster

Directions 

•  Help your children draw or trace a picture of a lion on the poster.
•  Next have your children place their hands over the lion and trace around their hands.
• Write the memory verse of your choice on the poster.
• Use the poster as a reminder that the best way to defeat Satan when he tries to devour us is to pray.
•  Review the questions for discussion below to enhance your children’s understanding of the concepts.

Throughout the day, encourage your children to clasp their hands together tightly when they feel like they are going to lose self-control. Have them come to you so you can help them pray. Explain that Satan is strong like a lion, but we can be stronger than Satan when we go to God for help. Just as the tracing of their hands covers the lion, they can be stronger than the temptation Satan sends when they are full of the Holy Spirit. Tell your children that putting their hands together will help remind them to talk to God and ask for His help in maintaining self-control.

WWJD sign (read #6 and do it in a group)

fulfill #6 on your list for this month

Self-control scenarios

– give scenarios and ask the 3 questions after each one.

• Someone has just taken your favorite toy from you.

• You have had one piece of cake and your stomach feels full. Someone offers you

another piece.

• Someone has just called you a mean name that hurt your feelings – now they are laughing at you.

• You just received some discipline from one of your parents, now your brother or sister is smiling.

Questions for discussion

• Would you need to use self-control in this situation?

• Would it be easy or hard to be self-controlled in this situation?

• If you would have a hard time using self-control, how could you make it easier?

Key concepts

·         When we are full of the Holy Spirit, it is easier to use self-control. It is one of the fruits of the Spirit.

·         Remind them - you will never be tempted beyond what God will help you handle.

           (1 Corinthians 10:13).

·         Close by praying and thanking God that He understands what it is like to be tempted and that He will never let us be tempted beyond that which we can handle.

Talk about St. Felicity  fulfill #2 on your list for this month (http://www.holyspiritinteractive.net/kids/saints/0710.asp)

Felicity was a noble Christian woman of Rome. After her husband's death, she served God by prayer and works of charity. Her good example led others to become Christians, too. 

This angered the pagan priests (they worshipped false gods), who complained to Antoninus Pius, the emperor. They said Felicity was an enemy of the state because she was making the gods angry. 

So the emperor had Felicity arrested. Her seven young sons were arrested with her. Like the mother of the Maccabees in the Old Testament, Felicity remained calm. The governor tried to make her sacrifice to the false gods but she absolutely refused. 

They finally threatened to kill her sons one by one if she did not do as she was told. The governor said to her, "Unhappy woman, if you wish to die, die! But do not destroy your sons." And Felicity answered "My sons will live forever if, like me, they scorn the idols and die for their God."

This brave woman was forced to watch her sons being put to death. Four months later, Felicity, too, was beheaded. Her strength came from her great hope that she would be with God and her sons in heaven. 

St. Felicity, it could be said, was martyred eight different times as she had to watch each of her sons die. Then she too gave up her life for Jesus.  

Look how praiseworthy it is to die for the King (Christ). This woman (St. Felicity) feared not the sword, but perished with her sons. She was given eternal life.

Bible Story and questions

Picking fights

Read Genesis 26:17-22.

Questions for discussion

1. What do other kids do when they want to pick a fight?

2. How about your brother/sister?

3. How do you feel when someone says that something you own is his/hers?

4. What happened to Isaac’s servants?

5. What did they do?

6. How many wells did they have to dig before the herdsman of Gerar didn’t bother them?

7. What is the best thing to do if someone picks a fight with you?

Key concepts

Isaac’s servants had moved into a new territory. Part of moving into new territory involved finding water for the flocks they were caring for. As Isaac’s men dug wells, the herdsman living in the new territory argued with them and kept claiming the wells as their own. Instead of fighting back and fighting for the wells that were rightfully theirs, Isaac and his people just kept moving on and digging another well, until the herdsmen of Gerar left them alone. These men exercised self-control and didn’t fight for their rights. Isaac and his servants set a good example for all of us of what to do if someone picks a fight with you. The best thing to do is to walk away and keep the peace.

Giggle game

Then I selected one LF to go before the entire group to attempt to make the group laugh.  She had full reign to be silly and the audience had strict instructions not to laugh.  A good time was had by all.  Upon completion of this round, the girls discussed their strategy to exercise self-control so they did not laugh despite the silly antics. 

We held one more round.  This time the silly girl could not get her audience to laugh.  We discussed the reason for this outcome, was it because it was not funny or was it because it becomes easier to exercise self control after time of practice?

http://joyfilledfamily.blogspot.com/2011/11/saint-felicitas-was-widow.html

After the game, talk about self-control. Explain that it is usually okay to laugh in life, but there are times when we shouldn’t laugh. We should not laugh when someone is hurt or sad, during quiet time at school or church, or if they are somewhere where they have been asked to be quiet. The following questions will help to clarify this for young children.

Questions for discussion

• Can you think of some times in life when we shouldn’t laugh?

• Eating is fun, like laughing is fun, but there is a time to eat and a time to stop eating. When is it

time to stop eating?

• Playing is fun. But when Mom or Dad say it is time to stop, it can be tempting to continue. When is it time to stop playing?

• Chasing around and being silly is fun, but there is a time and a place for silliness.

• When is okay to be silly?

• When is it not okay to be silly?

• How can you have self-control in these situations?

Key concepts

There are times when we need to obey the instructions of parents and stop doing what seems

to be fun. Even though it is tempting to do what feels good instead of stopping, we can ask God to help us be self-controlled and to choose to stop what we are doing.

Relevant Scripture

Ecclesiastes 3:1,4 “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heaven. . . . a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

Clap Hands Game(or use a drum)  (http://mattbgomez.com/fun-activities-for-practicing-self-control/)

Children crouch down with eyes shut on the floor and can only jump up like a Jack-in-the-box when you clap your hands, or hit a triangle etc, The length of time before clapping is varied so children have to really listen and not jump up impulsively.

Games (http://kelleyward.hubpages.com/hub/Focus-and-Self-Control-Life-Skills-For-Children)

·  Mirror what I do. For this game the parent and child sit in a chair directly facing one another. The parent plays the role of the leader and the child plays the role of the follower. The parent sits still in the chair using few words, so the child focuses on controlling his or her body movements. The object of the game is to have the child mirror the movements of the parent. This game increases self-control skills in children and helps them learn to become more aware of body placement and positioning.
·  Story sharing. Story sharing is a great activity that can be played anywhere— even in the car. One person begins a story with a short sentence and then the other members of the family take turns adding one sentence at a time. Story sharing helps children laugh their way to becoming more cognitively flexible, attentive, and self-controlled.

Finally they can eat their candy- this demonstrates the virtue self control. J

Most of above came from - http://www.kidsofintegrity.com/lessons/self-control/hands-options

March for Life

What a fantastic day!!  We had a bus from our parish join in the March for Life in D.C.  We are only a couple of hours away so it's a very easy day trip.  Of course we were a little concerned yesterday when they were predicting 10 inches of snow and freezing cold temperatures.  What were we thinking??!!  It turned out to be a bright, beautiful day.  We hardly noticed that it was only 11 degrees outside.

We had 4 Little Flowers join us this year and they were troopers!!  I'm really going to encourage more of the moms to bring their daughters next year.  My littlest is only 8 and she had no problem.  It would be great if they could march with our church group carrying their Little Flowers banner.  It's so good for them to see all the youth just filled with LIFE!!!  I love that my daughters are being taught from an early age that we need to protect LIFE and that every single life is precious.  

I'm still flying high, but totally exhausted.  It's time for bed.

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.