September Feast Days

We have begun September by celebrating several feast days... figuring I'll get them in before I have a newborn and end up not celebrating anything until Christmas! ;-P

September 5th was the feast day of Blessed Mother Teresa. We took a whole day... on September 2nd - t learn about her. We read a few books from the library, one of which Caroline retold to me. Then we printed her narration of the story and she made a page for her liturgical year binder along with a coloring page from Fenestrae Fidei and some copywork she chose from the book... a quote from mother Teresa.

Caroline reading one of the books

We made banana bread with an Indian touch... chai banana bread, along with chai smooties. The smoothies were not my favorite... they also had banana in them. I love Oregon Chai mixed with milk, but it's pricy to keep buying it, so I haven't had any in a very long time!

We had our chai-themed snacks at teatime, where we read a couple Mother Teresa stories.

We also did some mapwork... we are plotting saint and historical figures/places on a world map and locating them on our globe. Mother Teresa was born in Macedonia, so we plotted that, and then we plotted Calcutta, where she did all her work as a nun. She began studying to become a nun in Ireland, actually... so we followed the route she took from Ireland to Calcutta. She actually sailed through the Mediterranean Sea and then the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. It was interesting to follow the path she took!

On another day, we made this craft from the Seton Art 1 book. The dedication for the month of September is the Seven Sorrows of Mary. The girls colored an image of Mary and hearts containing each of the Seven Sorrows.

They also used our Seven Sorrows activity, which has photos from the Our Lady of La Leche shrine in St. Augustine... they have carvings of each of the sorrows, and I printed the photos and made matching labels. The girls match them up after putting them in order.

Here is Caroline with her finished project... we hung them on the china cabinet.

Then yesterday, we celebrated Mary's birthday. We did as we have for the past two years... made a blueberry cheesecake. We said our family decade of the rosary at the table after dinner, lighting a candle with each of the ten Hail Marys prayed.

Cecilia has recently begun leading a couple of Hail Marys each evening!

Then we sang Happy Birthday to Mary.. like we sing Happy Birthday to Jesus at Christmas - and then...

...the girls blew out the candles! This reminds me to add birthday candles to my grocery list for tomorrow... looks like Baby Lucy is going to let me have at least one more of my weekend trips to Wal-Mart and Kroger!