O Antiphons - Days 4, 5, 6, and 7

~O Clavis David (O Key of David) - December 20~

This particular antiphon says, "O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel, who opens and no man shuts, who shuts and no man opens..."

So, going along with the house imagery, we assembled a gingerbread house on this day! The mention of a key and opening/shutting made us think about the door to a house as well.

I bought this kit on clearance for a couple bucks at Sam's a few days after December 25th last year and saved it... so there was no tasting of the building materials!! Quite frankly, the icing was awful. I don't know if it had gotten old or if it was normally that thick and non-sticky... but once it dried, it held everything very well!

My Girl Scout troop used to make and sell gingerbread houses (from scratch!) at our church bazaar each year, and it was one of my favorite things we did. It will be lots of fun to see the gingerbread house-decorating evolve as the girls get older and able to do more on their own and come up with detailed decorating ideas! (I was known for my "Big Red Roof of Gum" gingerbread houses!)

I thought the directions were hilarious, so I included a photo. They were written by a control freak or something... notice that if a piece of the gingerbread breaks, you are commanded "DO NOT BE DISTRESSED." This photo doesn't show it, but there were also gingerbread ornaments to be decorated and hung on the Christmas tree, and the directions stated specifically in bold type that "once you have placed ornaments on the tree, remember that they are there for decoration only and should not be eaten." I'll be looking out my window for the Gingerbread House Kit Police, then...

The finished house

~O Oriens (O Rising Dawn): December 21~

We went to look at Christmas lights this evening, since the antiphon mentions "brightness of light eternal" and how we await Jesus's coming to "enlighten those who sit in darkness." I made hot chocolate for us to all sip as we drove around different neighborhoods, and the girls love that they get to go in their pajamas! Oh, and did you know that hot liquids aren't supposed to go in sippy cups with valves? I did, but I didn't care. ;-P If you loosen the lid slightly and re-tighten it after taking a small sip, it is less likely to spew everywhere! ;)

Interesting also that this antiphon about light falls on the longest night of the year - knowing the Catholic Church, that was probably intentional!

~O Rex Gentium (O King of the Gentiles): December 22~

"O King of the Gentiles and their desired one, the cornerstone that makes both one: come, and deliver man, whom you formed out of the dust of the earth."

We baked a bunch of banana bread to give as gifts today... cornerstones. They are brick-shaped. Easy enough, huh? This is actually coconut banana bread, which is delicious!!

Here's the "cornerstone" that we ate!

~O Emmanuel: December 23~

"O Emmanuel, God with us, our King and lawgiver, the expected of the nations and their Savior: come to save us, O Lord our God."

Ero Cras: Tomorrow, I come.

We made a birthday cake for baby Jesus today! We'll share it with family on the evening of Christmas Day.

It's an eggnog cake, which has a strange frosting - it's made with granulated sugar, which makes tinting some of the frosting difficult. It's really rich and definitely a once-every-few-years kind of dessert!

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve - no antiphon since the vigil Mass tomorrow is technically the start of the Christmas season!

The O Antiphons - First Three Days

In this last week before Christmas, we are praying the O Antiphons, one each evening. I only learned a couple years ago what antiphons are when I came across something online. An antiphon is simply a verse that is chanted or sung. Here is an excerpt on the O Antiphons from the Catholic Education Resource Center:

"The “O Antiphons” refer to the seven antiphons that are recited (or chanted) preceding the Magnificat during Vespers of the Liturgy of the Hours. They cover the special period of Advent preparation known as the Octave before Christmas, Dec. 17-23, with Dec. 24 being Christmas Eve and Vespers for that evening being for the Christmas Vigil."

Each of the O Antiphons comes from a Biblical title for Christ:

"The importance of “O Antiphons” is twofold: Each one highlights a title for the Messiah: O Sapientia (O Wisdom), O Adonai (O Lord), O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse), O Clavis David (O Key of David), O Oriens (O Rising Sun), O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations), and O Emmanuel. Also, each one refers to the prophecy of Isaiah of the coming of the Messiah."

And this interesting bit of trivia regarding these antiphons:

"According to Professor Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Benedictine monks arranged these antiphons with a definite purpose. If one starts with the last title and takes the first letter of each one - Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai,Sapientia - the Latin words ero cras are formed, meaning, “Tomorrow, I will come.” Therefore, the Lord Jesus, whose coming we have prepared for in Advent and whom we have addressed in these seven Messianic titles, now speaks to us, “Tomorrow, I will come.” So the “O Antiphons” not only bring intensity to our Advent preparation, but bring it to a joyful conclusion."

Pretty interesting, I think! I would love for our family to learn more about the Liturgy of the Hours... with a seminarian for a little brother, I am sure I have a resource for that! ;)

We are praying the antiphons in the evenings by listening to the audio found here, and then we are reading them in English as well. Father Z also has them on his site, here. This year, inspired by some of the other Catholic blogs I have read, I am trying to incorporate one small activity or item in each day that corresponds with the antiphon of the day. Here's what we have done so far:

~O Sapientia (O Wisdom), December 17~

The girls got a new reference book which will impart wisdom in the faith: A Catholic Child's Picture Dictionary. I bought this awhile back with a bunch of other homeschooling supplies and have been holding onto it...

~O Adonai (O Lord and Ruler), December 18~

This antiphon continues with, "who appeared to Moses in the flame of the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai..." So, we used the imagery of the flaming hot burning bush and had something spicy for dinner:

Nachos Supreme!

Cecilia approves! Well, until it got a little to spicy (you know how your lips start to burn after eating slightly spicy food and salty tortilla chips awhile?)... I made these with Mexican cheese dip, which has some jalepenos in it. They also had diced tomato, olives, and shredded chicken on them - yummy!

~O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse), December 19~

We had some root vegetables today! Lunch was build-your-own baked potatoes, which turned out to be a great idea for a Sunday lunch which I heard from a friend: bake them while you are at Mass, set the oven to turn off after an hour and a half, and then they stay nice and hot in the oven until you're ready to eat! We got home and prepared bacon, sauteed mushrooms, sliced olives, shredded cheddar cheese, steamed broccoli, and sour cream as toppings! Then with our dinner, we had another root vegetable: steamed carrots.

I will try to post each activity that reinforces the O Antiphon of the day!

Third Week of Advent: Preparations

K is for Kingcup Fairy, Blessed Kateri, and Kindness!

We took a full two weeks on letter K, because we had some meetings and feast days throughout the past two weeks, so we took our time!

Here are our themes for the week, all of which went into the Word Box, as usual.

Our K poems for the week from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and God's Alphabet

~Circle Time~

Caroline and Cecilia brought some stuffed kittens for Show and Tell. There were keys in the mystery sound pouch this week.

Songs and Rhymes

Old King Cole

Sing a Song of Sixpence (on the "King" theme again)

Seasonal (for Advent):

See the Candles Burning Bright

Advent is a Time...

Waiting for Jesus

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus

O Come O Come Emmanuel

Mary echo pantomime (of the Annunciation/Visitation)

St. Nicholas pantomime and song

~Foods for K Week~

kiwi for snack

fruit kabobs (which also included kiwi!)

Chicken a la king - first time making this, and I didn't care for it, even though it had a whole stick of butter in it!

Kung Pao Chicken

We also had kale chips and Kix cereal. I also would have liked to have had kielbasa, but I like to avoid nitrites and couldn't find any without it. Maybe at Trader Joe's? I'll have to look when we are there over Christmas... Also, I should have made Korean BBQ - so, so yummy - how could I have forgotten it????

~Tea Time~

We had Three Little Kitten cookies for teatime, which we'd made a few days earlier as our baking project of the week (see further below). We'd also made a couple of batches of our Christmas Bark this morning, so the girls each sampled a piece. Cecilia wouldn't eat hers... how can you not like butter, brown sugar, chocolate, and saltines??

Rambo enjoys tea time (I swear, she does this headband thing herself!)

Here's a close-up of the teatime snacks... they also had some blueberry tea (what, no kiwi tea?!?)

~Letter Formation~

forming letter Kk using playdough

writing K's in cornmeal

Cut and Paste K Collage... Caroline also noted that "kids" is a K word, although she didn't write it down by their images on the K collage

Punch Out the Letter - Capital and Lowercase Kk

~Flower Fairy for Letter K: Kingcup~

Caroline coloring her flower fairy page from the Flower Fairies coloring book

Caroline's completed Kingcup Fairy

~Saint for Letter K: Blessed Kateri~

painted Blessed Kateri

Copywork from An Alphabet of Catholic Saints and illustrating Blessed Kateri

Caroline's completed work

~In the Book Baskets~

Favorites for Letter K:

Katy and the Big Snow

Mrs. Katz and Tush

Katie Meets the Impressionists

Katie's Sunday Afternoon

Katie and the Sunflowers

Liturgical Year and Religious K Books:

Kateri Tekakwitha

The Legend of St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend

Saint Nicholas

The Miracle of St. Nicholas

various other Advent/Christmas books

~Picture Study: K is for Kiss~

Caroline drew the painting Virgin and Child by Dieric Bouts, which shows Mary and the infant Jesus sharing an intimate moment.

Caroline's work next to the original

~ABC Virtue of the Week: Kindness~

These are virtue coloring sheets found here. Using the great idea of another Catholic homeschooling mom, I am reading Caroline a relevant story from this sweet little book full of stories with morals to them. This weeks's story was about a girl who made a gift for her little sister.

Cecilia wanted a kindness picture as well... here it is, alongside an Our Lady of Guadalupe picture that she helped to color. She got to use markers, and oh, how she loves them! She will sit for a long time and thinks she must cover every bit of white space - well, that is what real artists do, isn't it? ;) I know somebody who's getting washable markers for her third birthday! Caroline was so concerned that Cecilia would run out her blue marker while doing the kindness picture!

Caroline's copywork from the K poem in God's Alphabet

The girls also had a coloring page of the word "kneeling." Caroline saw that it had a silent k. We also sorted words with the k sound into piles of words beginning with k and words beginning with a hard c.

~Activities for K Week~

Another silent k... knitting!!!

Finger knitting, that is

Caroline was so patient with this... she made a couple of mistakes, but overall, she was able to do it all on her own with little help from me after I got her started! She was excited to be making a doll scarf to give to Cecilia for Christmas, and she said she was going to keep going even though it was hard, because she was making a sacrifice for Cecilia (the Holy Heroes Advent Adventure is really paying off! ;).

I should have also taken a photo of her with the finished product, but it is already wrapped up now... I will try to get one after Cecilia opens it! I found the directions for how to finger knit on this Youtube video. It was really easy, and the directions are very clear.

~Cooking Project: K is for Three Little Kittens Cookies~

We recited the Three Little Kittens and then made cookies - I got the idea for this here. Caroline opened the can of pumpkin so we could make the recipe for pumpkin rollout cookies, one of my favorite rollout recipes.

Mixing the dough...

...rolling it out...

...using the letter K cutter to cut out cookies (we also used a cat shape - from Halloween, but oh well - and I freehanded a mitten shape)...

...lifting the cookies to a baking sheet...

...adding some "pie filling," aka jelly...

The kittens got their mittens pretty messy eating that pie! ;) They even got some on their paws and on a few Ks!

Yum!

~Chores/Practical Life: K is for Kitchen~

unloading the dishwasher

Caroline also did her usual daily kitchen chores of sorting clean silverware into the drawer and setting the table, and the girls helped with some cooking, particularly starting to bake Christmas treats to give as gifts!

~Outdoors: K is for Kicking~

Now for a break for the rest of Advent and the Christmas season. We'll be on to L week after Epiphany!