Apologies for not posting anything in so long!! I have Zoo Atlanta photos to share from over a month ago... hope to get to those eventually! But in the meantime, here's what we have been up to in the past two weeks. Caroline began second grade - here she is on the first day of school, which was July 23rd. We got a bit of an early start so we can take our time when needed throughout the year. I'm about to find out how homeschooling with a toddler in the house goes!
We are really excited that this is a big sacramental prep year for Caroline... she will make her First Reconciliation at the end of January, and her First Communion in May! We had a special treat to kick off the preparations and learning she'll be doing about these sacraments this year.
I found this idea on Catholic Icing... we cut the ends off large marshmallows and frosted a cross on each one and then stuck them on some sugar cookies we made. The marshmallows represent the host, and of course I made sure that the girls - Cecilia, mostly, as Caroline would not confuse this - understood that this was NOT the actual host and they were not consecrated - they are just to be a symbol of the Eucharist to celebrate Caroline's beginning of her sacramental preparation.
They ate their snack with milk while I read to them from St. Patrick's Summer, which is one of the chapter books we're using in our in-depth, fun sacramental prep curriculum. I have had so much fun putting together our religion materials this year!
Caroline will be putting together a First Communion notebook this year... here she is creating a cover for it using special stickers she picked out from the craft store. I hope this will help make the preparation meaningful and enjoyable, and then she will have a keepsake book to share with guests on her First Communion day and to look back at over the years to come!
The following week, we celebrated St. Anne's feast day. St. Anne was the mother of Mary, and traditionally she is pictured wearing red and green. We made some red and green watermelon treats for the day: a watermelon sherbet pie and a watermelon drink garnished with mint.
I don't like to use artificial colors, so I was excited to find a simple watermelon drink recipe with just the natural coloring from the melon. The sherbet, of course, is artificially colored, but after I made it, I was struck with a great idea for next year: use natural strawberry and pistachio ice creams for the green and red!!
Mmmm...
Caroline shows her new St. Anne card - they always get a holy card on their name days. Caroline's middle name has the name "Ann" in it. July 26th is also St. Joachim's feast day (Mary's father), but we focus on Anne since it's Caroline's name day.
Cecilia enjoying her snack
One other thing we've done recently... we made a "Fishers of Men" craft for St. James's feast day, since he was one of the apostles who was a fisherman prior to being called by Jesus. I gave the girls some construction paper and let them be pretty free with their design: I instructed them to sketch a boat shape and cut it out, to cut out dark blue paper to look like waves, and then to cut a mast and sail. Actually, I think I cut the sails, now that I think about it...
Then they glued it all down to make a boat scene. they drew apostles on the boat and fish in the water, and then we attached nets: pieces of a mesh bag that had onions in it.
Here's Caroline's... she opted for two small nets and copied her own Bible verse.
And here's Cecilia's... she chose to have one very large net!
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