Celebrating the Feast Day of St. Clare

Last week, the day before St. Clare's feast day, we had some friends over to do a craft and play! St. Clare of Assisi is known for starting a group of nuns called the Poor Clares after the model of St. Francis of Assisi. The monstrance is one of the symbols associated with her, because she held up a monstrance containing Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and enemies who were invading the town turned and fled. So, we had some coloring sheets of St. Clare along with a monstrance craft.

I found this craft here at Catholic Icing and bought the supplies, thinking it would be an easy one for Cecilia to do at some point, and then I had the idea to use it as a craft that is associated with St. Clare.

This was easy for the three year olds to do... they just glued a gold paper doily onto another paper and then glued a white circle of cardstock (for the Eucharist) in the middle. Then they used stick-on jewels that I found in the craft store dollar bins to decorate all around their monstrances however they wished. I made the stands for the monstrance by drawing them on gold cardstock, and then the kids cut them out and glued them on first, so the doily was on top.

After doing the craft, I turned on the St. Clare Glory Stories CD for them to listen to... although my kids ignored it since they've heard it enough that they go around reciting parts of it...

Caroline and her friends wanted to make a pattern with their jewels.

For a snack, I decided to make something Polish for the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day was coming up that weekend. Part of the reason for wanting to do this is that I am a quarter Polish myself! These are yummy Polish cookies called Kiffel... mostly butter so of course they are yummy! They are also filled with ground walnuts, so there is some redeeming health value in them. ;) I only made a quarter of the recipe but could see making the whole batch for Christmas treat-baking!

The three year olds eating their snack outside... I just thought this was such a cute photo of them!

Here are my girls with their finished monstrances... I forgot to get a photo of everyone with their finished work! Cecilia wanted to cut hers out... probably trying to get the most mileage out of the forbidden scissors, which she hadn't used since the unfortunate alterations she made to some dress-up clothes...

St. Clare, pray for us!