Holy Thursday and Good Friday Meals

We have enjoyed doing some of the various Liturgical Teas that are described at Cottage Blessings. There are two for Lent: one for Holy Thursday, and the other for Good Friday! We did the Good Friday one last year, and this year we did them both, for our dinner on both days. It is a good way to retell the story of what happened while having dinner at the same time!

~Holy Thursday Dinner~

Caroline made labels for each of the dishes on our table this evening

Palm on the Road

This was made by buttering slices of sourdough bread and slicing heart of palm lengthwise and placing them on top if the butter.

Mk. 11:1-11 - Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey and the people lay palm branches and cloaks on the road to greet him.

Thirty Pieces of Silver

These were made by cutting slices of muenster cheese with a small biscuit cutter and serving them alongside round Nut Thin crackers... there were 15 of each.

Mk. 14:10-11; Mt. 26: 14-16 - Judas betrays Jesus in exchange for thirty pieces of silver

Costly Oil and Unleavened Bread

These are simply small dishes of olive oil with bits of chopped rosemary and whole wheat pita bread to tear up and share.

Mk. 14:3-9; Mk. 14: 12-22 - A woman in Bethany offers Jesus expensive oil, and preparing the Passover meal (Passover being the feast of unleavened bread).

The Mount of Olives

Just a pile of olives to form a "mountain"

Mk. 14: 26 - Jesus and his apostles go out to the Mount of Olives after eating.

Before the Cock Crows...

I made chicken salad for this one, to be the main dish: shredded cooked chicken breasts (I didn't really use rooster meat, ha ha!), mayo, some sour cream and/or plain yogurt (I don't like too much mayo, but it has to be moist enough!), dill, chopped pecans, salt and pepper, and sliced red grapes!

Mk. 14: 27-31 - Jesus tells Peter that he will deny him three times before the cock crows.

Here's the chicken salad on bread for sandwiches.

Gethsemane Figs

These are fig and honey cream cheese muffins... very yummy! Figs are used here because it is possible that fig trees grew in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Mk. 14: 32-42 - Jesus prays in the garden.

Judas's Kiss and Peter's Tears

Hershey Kisses obviously work well to represent a kiss, and peppermint Tic-Tacs resemble tears.

Mk. 14: 43-50; Mk. 14: 66-72 - Judas kisses Jesus as a signal showing who to arrest, and Peter cries bitterly upon realizing he has denied knowing Jesus three times, just as predicted.

~Good Friday Dinner~

Caroline made the crowns of thorns herself, with Cecilia helping some

The King's Crown

I made this by spreading most of a package of cream cheese on the bottom of a pie plate, then spreading most of a can of refried beans over that. Then I added a little bit of salsa on top of the beans and topped it all with shredded cheddar. Yum!!! The pointed tortilla chips around the edge make it look like a crown.

Mk. 15: 1-5 - Pilate asks Jesus if he is the King of the Jews.

Out of Envy

This is just basic guacamole: avocado, lime juice, garlic powder, and salt. The connection is the saying that people can be "green with envy."

Mk. 15: 6-15 - This says it was out of envy that the chief priests had brought him in for questioning.

The Crown of Thorns and The Purple Cloak

The crowns are round crackers spread with almond butter and edged with broken pretzels to resemble the thorns. The purple garment is squares of purple fruit leather - boysenberry, I think.

Mk. 15: 16-17 - The soldiers place the crown of thorns and purple cloak on Jesus to mock him.

Golgotha Eggs

These are hard-boiled eggs (from our chickens, so they are tan instead of white) with a skull drawn on each. The hard boiled egg inside is at least white like a skull! Golgotha means "the place of the skull."

Mk. 15:21-23 - Jesus is brought to Golgotha.

The Seamless Garment

I used kitchen scissors to cut tortillas into the shape of a garment like the one Jesus wore, for which the soldiers then cast lots. The "dice" on each garment are just cubes of mozzarella cheese.

Mk. 15:24-27 - The soldiers strip Jesus of his garments and gamble to see who wins the seamless tunic.

Vinegar to Drink

We didn't really drink it, but we used the red wine vinegar on the mozzarella and tomatoes and basil. I had the white vinegar out so it could be smelled (and tasted if anyone was brave enough!) to get an idea of how that would not have been a pleasant thing to offer as a drink!

Mk. 15: 33-37 - A soldier offers Jesus a sponge soaked in vinegar on a reed.

The Roman Centurion and The Two Robbers

There are 100 grape tomato halves in the bowl to represent the centurion, since he would have been in charge of 1oo men. Everyone took two of the basil leaves to represent the two thieves who were crucified on either side of Jesus. Interestingly, legend says that basil grew on the hill where the crucifixion took place, and basil is also symbolic of both hatred and best wishes, which reminds us of how each of the thieves acted.

Mk. 15:38-39; Mk. 15: 27-32 - The centurion says Jesus was truly the son of God after he dies, and the robbers are crucified with Jesus.

Laid in the Tomb

Do these look familiar? They were used again for tonight's dinner after being used for the figs the night before. Tonight, they had their tops sliced off, revealing the cream cheese filling inside. last year, I used another basic muffin recipe and hollowed out a portion inside to represent the tomb. Caroline said that the white stood for Jesus, wrapped in a white burial cloth. then the lid of the muffin is like the stone being rolled in front.

Mk. 15:40-47 - Jesus is laid in the tomb hewn out of rock.

The whole table, set and ready

Caroline shows her work on the crowns of thorns

The Feast of the Presentation ~ Feb. 2

A much belated post! We celebrated the Feats of the Presentation of the Lord in the temple, sometimes referred to as Candlemas, because in days of old, people would have their candles blessed on this day by a priest. Some parishes still do this, and we would have asked our priest if he could bless our candles had we seen him after the Mass.

We spent part of the morning making our own candles! We used a beeswax candle rolling kit, which makes it quite easy for kids! Using the sheets of beeswax, we were able to make several taper candles, including some Advent wreath candles (although we're short one purple! ;). You just stick the wick in them and roll them up! They can be cut to make tapers, or just rolled together to make thicker, straight-edged candles.

We wil have several candles now for use throughout the year... if only I could figure out the best candle holders for them! The ones that are a bit thicker than tapers... but not as thick as votives... for now, they are in votive holders, balancing precariously!

We made this red candle with cut-outs of doves on it specifically for Pentecost, but we used it also for this day's feast, as Mary and Joseph offered two turtle doves as a sacrifice.

After making candles, we headed to our parish's daily noon Mass, where we heard the reading from Luke which set the stage for our tea time luncheon. We did a similar luncheon last year, and the idea came from the Liturgical Teas by Alice at the blog Cottage Blessings. I also just read her book, A Haystack Full of Needles, and found it to be full of good ideas that could be useful throughout many years of homeschooling!

We got to use our nice new serving dish set that my brother and his wife gave to us for Christmas. The four sections contain whipped cream, strawberries, hummus, and baby carrots.

On Caroline's plate, you can see the turtle-dove shaped PB&J sandwiches, which I cut out using a dove-shaped cookie cutter. "...and to offer the sacrifice of 'a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,' in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord." (Luke 2:24)

Strawberries pierced with "sword" toothpicks and dipped in whipped cream - the white whipped cream symbolizes Mary's purity, and the strawberry symbolizes Mary's heart: "Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, 'Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.'" (Luke 2:34-35)

The girls used the "swords" to symbolize Simeon's words regarding Mary being pierced by a sword in the sorrows she would come to endure while watching her son die.

Baby carrots with hummus on the tip: these symbolize candles with a flame, as the day is called Candlemas, and also since Simeon commented about Jesus being a light for the world: "...for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in sight of all the peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel." (Luke 2:30-32)

We were also going to have pretzels, but I forgot to get them out! Their shape can remind us of arms folded in prayer, symbolizing Simeon, who held the infant Jesus in his arms: "Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was righteous and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel, and the holy Spirit was upon him." (Luke 2:25)

And for dessert, chocolate fondue! We dipped our homemade marshmallows from M week into it using long wooden skewers, symbolizing Anna, who was also praying in the temple, as she was a very devout and holy woman (the white of the marshmallow), and was also a widow (the "black" of the chocolate): "There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived seven years with her husband after her marriage, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer." (Luke 2:36-37)

Yum!!!

You can tell they thoroughly enjoyed this part! And the chocolate fondue definitely made the marshmallows taste great - I didn't care for them just plain, personally, although everyone else in the family had been eating them up!

A is for Apple Blossom Fairy, St. Anne, Angels, and Apples

We have pretty much finished our first week along the Alphabet Path - our first week of homeschooling! The letter A guided our theme this week. I have been using much of the basic structure from the lesson ideas at Serendipity, as well as looking over a few other blogs of moms who have incorporated the Path in previous years. Such a huge wealth of ideas out there!!

Above, you see the Flower Fairies Alphabet book open to the Apple Blossom Fairy. Each week, a different fairy is introduced, along with a saint for that letter. There are also other themes that we focus on for each letter. Behind the open book is our orange basket - that is my essentials basket, which lives right in the middle of the school table. It has all our important books and binders in it. You can see An Alphabet of Catholic Saints in it, and that is the book from which each of the saints is presented. I will be painting a small wooden saint for each week to be found on the table on the first day of each new letter!

Saint for Letter A

Here's a close-up of our first saint, St. Anne, mother of Mary. So, she has a small Mary alongside her. The original idea was to make the saints using felt and pipe cleaners and glue it together, but I thought it might be easier for me to paint them after seeing how Jessica painted hers.

We had an angel this week as well, since angels were one of our A themes.

Book Baskets

Here are our book baskets this week. The one on the left contains an assortment of picture books with various A-word themes, and the one on the right contains books relating to our themes of the week.

Science Theme - Apples:

Our Apple Tree

Apple Cider Making Days

Rain Makes Applesauce

The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

Johnny Appleseed

Apple Farmer Annie

Ten Apples up on Top!

Apple Picking Time

Brother Bartholomew and the Apple Grove

Theme - Angels:

Pascual and the Kitchen Angels

Angels, Angels Everywhere

Angel in the Waters

Our Guardian Angels

The Angels

Favorites for letter A:

The Art Lesson

Big Anthony and the Magic Ring

Angelina and Alice

Angelina on Stage

Amber on the Mountain

Alexander and the Magic Boat

Alexander and the Dragon

The Little Auto

We also will have seasonal books in our baskets - for instance, we had a book about Peter Claver in the baskets last week because his feast day was on Thursday. I am loving making use of interlibrary loans... I have been able to obtain nearly every book I wanted! It is pretty neat to see books that come in from library branches in counties on the other side of the state! I have been making multiple library runs as the books come in, and I am learning to reserve way in advance so that books have time to be pulled and sent to my local library. It is really cool, though, and I can't believe I never realized how it works before now... and I do it all online (except for the picking up part! ;).

I bought this blue pocket chart in the dollar spot at Target and will be using it to display the themes for each week. Caroline can refer to it when writing these words.

Work Activities

Caroline and Cecilia each have a shelf on which different work activities are placed each week. They use these on their own throughout the week. Some of the activities relating to A were: alphabet puzzles, abacus, animal puzzles, America puzzle, and acorn letters. There are also matching cards for the Seven Sorrows of Mary because that is this moth's dedication.

Caroline and Cecilia pretended to be flower fairies in the yard...

I am not sure what kind of flowers these are... not apple blossoms!

Food for the Week

I loved this aspect of the week - planning as many A foods as possible for our meals. It made meal planning very easy! In addition to having almond chicken, asparagus, angel hair pasta, artichoke, and apple-cheddar muffins, we also had:

sliced almonds,

angel-shaped tortilla sandwiches and avocado,

apple puff pancake,

apple bread,

asparagus-cheddar quiche,

and apricot fruit leather!

We kicked off the Alphabet Path with a special Letter A Teatime. We had A-shaped cookies, apple slices, animal crackers, and Martinelli's apple juice in apple-shaped bottles (on sale at Kroger a few weeks earlier)!

At teatime, I read to the girls from the first book in the Catholic Children's Treasure Box series, which included the beginning of a story about a guardian angel.

Here's Caroline's plate full of goodies!

The girls helped make the A-shaped cookies, and Caroline also made this one shaped like an angel.

They wore aprons and helped to mix the dough (which happened to be an Arrowhead Mills mix, also on sale at Kroger!)...

Then I rolled out the dough and they helped me to cut out As using our alphabet cookie cutters.

The cooling cookies

Here is Caroline working with making numbers on the abacus during work activity time.

Cecilia worked on an alligator animal puzzle.

Letter Formation

Caroline made the capital and lowercase As using a fresh batch of homemade playdough.

She got carried away and spelled out St. Anne's name!

Tracing letters in a tray of cornmeal

A good tactile experience!

Then it was on to tracing the printed letters with her finger and then with a pencil.

Caroline coloring her Apple Blossom Fairy sheet from this coloring book, which matches the book exactly. We also listened to the Flower Fairy CD, which has all the songs. This helped Caroline to memorize the Song of the Apple Blossom Fairy - she can recite it from memory much better than I can now! We listened to the song some as background music each morning.

This is our Alphabet path binder in which we will keep Caroline's work that relates to the Path. Each week, w will put her flower fairy coloring page in along with the copywork from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and God's Alphabet - she will also do illustrations for the poems which are copied.

In the beginning, each poem will be traced. I have made up sheets for the poems using Startwrite handwriting software. Eventually, she will move to forming the letters herself by looking at the printed poem and copying onto her own lined paper. In this photo she is tracing the St. Anne poem.

Making an illustration of St. Anne to go along with the poem

A is for Apple Aprons

We cut apples in half and then dipped them into fabric paint to stamp prints onto aprons.

Here are the completed aprons, which we can use each week when we do our cooking project of the week!

Caroline retold the story of Brother Bartholomew and the Apple Grove and I typed it... this is an early form of oral narrations. I am planning to read up more on how to do narrations properly. Caroline loves to talk and has a good vocabulary, so I figured she'd like telling me about some of the books we read. Here she is illustrating the typed up narration of the book.

Punch Out the Letter

This is an idea I saw at Pinewood Castle... I believe it is a Montessori activity in which the child uses a pin to punch around the outline of a letter. I think the idea is to make the punches so close that the letter becomes perforated and separates from the rest of the paper, but I think they look really neat attached to the lamp like this:

Notice how much better she did on the second letter... I think this will help improve small motor skills and strength, which will aid in handwriting in the future.

Word Box Work

We have an index card file box and will be adding words to it each week. I got this idea from reading Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home, and it includes lots of things we learned in our college education courses on teaching reading. It has dividers in it for each letter (including Mc, which Caroline asked about, ha ha - guess it was designed as a Rolodex-type thing!). Each week, Caroline will choose some new words from our weekly Alphabet Path story and I will write them on cards, which she will then file. It is a very basic introduction to alphabetical ordering. We will also use these words to do word sorts (like all the long vowel words, words that fit a certain consonant-vowel pattern, rhyming words... the possibilities are plentiful for word box work). We will also include words for our themes, so this week we added angels, apples, and Anne to the box.

All About Me Book

As a project this week, Caroline worked on a lapbook with the theme of All About Me. I found most of the printouts here. She hasn't quite finished it - it is lots of cutting, which I am helping with, but cutting is a skill she needs to practice!

Caroline weighs herself so that she can record her weight in the All About Me book.

Picture Study - A is for Apples

We are using the book Museum ABC, which has artwork in it from the Metropolitan Museum, Each week, there are four pieces for each letter, and this week the works featured apples. Caroline made her own reproduction of Paul Cezanne's The Apples. Do you know how many apple paintings that guy did????? The idea with the picture study is to just familiarize Caroline with some famous pieces of art and the names of the people who created them: art appreciation.

Cecilia did her own picture study...

Here is Caroline's picture above the original.

Here is Cecilia's... distinct apples, for sure.

Here are the girls modeling their new aprons!

Here is Caroline's angel poem copywork from the book God's Alphabet, along with an angel coloring sheet.

In lieu of a bulletin board, I am using sticky-tack to display the week's work on the massive mirror that (for some reason) covers most of a wall in our schoolroom. I will leave it up for the week and then put the pages into the Alphabet Path binder. I also plan to compile a report cover-type booklet of the picture study reproductions. The narrations will be in their own folder as well. I am thinking of having a folder of storybook narrations as well as a folder of field trip narrations.

The last thing to do is make an apple pie using some of the apples we bought when we made our trip to the apple orchard! I will post pics once we do that, hopefully tomorrow if our recently-developed colds/sore throats don't get worse...

Whew, we did a lot! Next up, Letter B!