April Shower of Photos :: Day 16

SO... We now have pets!!!! This is a very first for our family!! I have always said that I have more to take care of than I can handle without pets, so why would I choose to add pets to my list of things to take care of... But, my kids have been begging for a pet, and when I saw that this weeks Garden of the Good Shepherd theme was based on "The Wind and Sea Obey Him," and that one of the days was based on fish, I couldn't help but think it would be a perfect time to try out having a pet fish... That shouldn't be too hard, right?!? At least till I have to deal with cleaning the bowl, ick!

We were going to start with just ONE, but when we got to the pet store and the little fishies were only .28 cents each. I splurged and bought 4. One for each of my children excluding Snuggles, who really didn't mind.


The kids LOVE their fish.

If you look closely you can see them all in this picture. It was so fun having the kids name their fish!

On the far left you can see Chiquita's fish. He is Orange and Black. At first she was going to name him Diego, but then decided on Flower, or rather Fwower!

Next you can see Twinkle Toes White fish. She, of course, named her fishie Princess.

The gray/silver fish is Rascals. He was named Sparkle.

The fish on the far right, the orange one, is Captains. Captain said, "I think I want to name my fish Peter, since Peter was a fisherman and a Fisher of Men..." (I was thinking, wow!!! great!!) Then he continued, "Orrrr, maybe Nemo!" He is still trying to decide which, and in the meantime, he has been calling his little fish "Mister."

Thankfully, the fish survived their first night in our home!

Garden of the Good Shepherd ~ Week 4

My kids are just loving celebrating the Fifty days of Easter with "The Garden of the Good Shepherd: A Sticker Calendar to Count the Fifty Days of Easter!" This past week, we didn't get to do all the activities that we planned, since the little ones & I were so sick, but what better week to give the kids "rain checks" than during the week that is based on "The Weather", right!?

This next weeks theme, starting today, is based on:

"The Wind and Sea Obey Him."

I added the bible versus to read, in case any of you would like to join in, but don't have the Garden of the Good Shepherd. Matilda and I put our brains together to try and come up with ideas for this week. Here us what we came up with:

The Boat : Read Matthew 8:23-27

• Make an Origami Boat
• Read Boats by Anne Rockwell
• Make Banana Boats (Matilda suggested this, and my kids would love it! I picked up some bananas on the way home from Mass!)

The Mast: Read Ezekial 27:4-7
Since the Cross is the "Mast" of the Catholic Church, we will either:

• Paint cross on the sail of a model boat with daddy
• Make Bread Dough Crosses page 136 of Catholic Traditions

The Sail : Read Acts 27:33-44

• Hang sail on mast of model boat with daddy
• Experiment with "What sinks and what floats."
• You could do this Halves Boat Craft
  
• Make Deviled Egg Sailboats (Michele sent me this link!) Aren't they cute?

The Net : Read Mark 1:16-20

• Matilda recommended making one of these.
• Make a Sea of Galilee Touch Picture from Little Saints Program.

Sea of Galilee Touch Picture

Need: Pattern #67, print this picture; brown construction paper background; cotton balls; sandpaper; aluminum foil; netted produce bag cut in a 6"x4" diamond; brown, dark blue, and light blue markers/crayons; glue stick; scissors.

1. Color boat brown, sea and sky blue.
2. stretch apart cotton balls and glue on clouds.
3. Staple on netting over side of boat for fish net.
4. Crumple aluminum foil and glue on as rocks.
5. Glue on sand paper to make beach area.
6. Mount onto brown background.
7. Discuss and experiment with the sense of touch.

The Fishes : Read John 21:4-8

• Make a home for a Christian Fish. Crafty Catholic Kids page 93.
• Buy a goldfish to have as our first ever pet!
• Play Go Fish
• Fish Snack: Need: Blue napkins, medicine cups, pretzels, gold fish crackers, peanut butter. Open up napkin and place fish in the middle. (The napkin is the ocean.) Have peanut butter in the cup. (This is the bait cup.) Use pretzels for fishing rods. Dip in bait (peanut butter) and catch a fish. Eat fish and bait. Keep fishing until all the fish are eaten.
• Fish in the Sea Snack: Need: Italian bread or French bread, Cream cheese, Goldfish crackers, Blue food coloring, Slice bread. Mix blue food color and cream cheese. Spread cream cheese on bread. Put goldfish in the blue sea.

The Barbecue : Read John 21:9-14

• Grill some fish out on the patio, of course!

The Leviathan : Read Psalm 104:24-30

• Matilda's family will be heading to their awesome local aquarium... I wish we had one!!
• We might possibly have calamari with/for dinner--I think Costco has a frozen calamari meal that we have tried and liked in the past.
• We will also read the story St. George and the Dragon in preparation for the feast of St. George on April 23rd. Also, with the Feast of St. George coming up, DON'T MISS clicking on Matilda's links. She made a totally awesome dragon for her kids to slay last year! I absolutely LOVE it!!!

Hope you all are having a wonderful weekend! God Bless!

The Fifty Days of Easter

Easter is the most important feast in the Christian calendar--even more important than Christmas. Since Easter is such a great feast, the Easter season lasts 50 days, from Easter Sunday until Pentecost Sunday.

This year, I got so wrapped up in our Lenten Activities that I wasn't very good about planning out anything for the 50 days of Easter... Our Easter week was wonderful, as was Divine Mercy Sunday, but this past week it seemed that our celebration of the season was fizzling out.

After seeing the wonderful plans that Dawn & Matilda had for celebrating the Easter season this year I ordered The Garden of the Good Shepherd: A Sticker Calendar to Count the Fifty Days of Easter, a great little booklet booklet by Peter Mazar, with illustrations by Tomie dePaola, (for an incredible price--in fact, I ordered a few...) with the plans of using it next year.

Well, it arrived on Saturday, and so yesterday I thought, "Why wait... Let's just do it!" There's nothing wrong with starting late, right? If I put everything off till the perfect time, I'd never actually do ANYTHING!

So, yesterday afternoon I took a few minutes (literally) to get it ready. I started out thinking that I would hang the eggs, but then I decided that could wait till next year, and shifted gears to numbering the eggs 1-49 (day 50 is actually Pentecost Sunday) and placing them in a basket. One for each day, since the Easter season lasts seven weeks -- a week of weeks-- of course, since 7 is the perfect number! :-) My thought was that this could also double as math practice for my little ones, by finding the correct number each day.

After dinner, the children gathered around our learning table and we did a bit of catch up! Yesterday was day 15 of the Easter season. It was quite fun, and got us off to a great start. The symbol for yesterday was "the sun" so we finished up by making a modified paper plate sun craft and hung it on the window of our school room.

My plans are to refer to Matilda's ideas for each day, modify them for our family, and then fill the correct eggs. So far she has posted ideas for Week 1 and 2 and Week 3.

Week 3 is all about how "The Heavens Tell God's Glory!"

I surprised the boys with a Weather Kid Kit that has been in my closet forever, so we will be doing a few extra weather experiments this week, in addition to the following:

• The Sun : make a paper plate sun craft
• The Cloud : Cloud experiments found (by Matilda!) here
• The Rain : Make a Rain Gauge and read Down Comes the Rain and Rain Drop Splash
• The Lightning : Read Flash, Crash, Rumble, and Roll and then begin working on our Ben Franklin lap books
• The Wind : Learn how to measure wind speed, Blow Bubbles and/or make a Paper Bag Kite
• The Rainbow : watch Signing Time # 6 and sign/sing Colors of the Rainbow
• The Hail : Play "Here comes the Rain Hail"
  

Here Comes the Rain/Hail Game

from Little Saints Pre-School Program

Prep: Take 2 aluminum pie pans and place 1/4 of beans in one of them. Staple the other pan on top. You will also need couch cushion and/or child's special blanket.

1. Discuss how animals seek shelter when it rains. Have child choose to make believe they are an eagle, dove or butterfly. Instruct them that they will have to listen carefully in this game so they can hear the storm coming and seek shelter before they get wet.
2. Have them place the cushion (nest) or their blanket (tree) where their nest/tree will be.
3. Have child pretend to fly around; butterflies seeking nectar, doves and eagles seeking food.
4. Hidden from view, gently start to shake the pie pan, building up to storm level.
5. Once the children have landed in their nest or under their tree safely, slowly stop the "rain/ hail" and repeat.

Well, that's the plan... Now I feel like we are still celebrating Easter at home!!!