Sacraments and Feast Days.

Isabella is preparing for her sacraments of reconciliation and communion this year! Although only in 1st grade, she has been working a year ahead in religion since the beginning and I felt that she was completely ready for this! She is also an older 1st grader, with a birthday in January, so she will be the appropriate age when receiving the sacraments.

As with Marco, we'll be doing so much more extra "stuff" this year to make sure she is ready! Besides our regular religion curriculum (Faith and Life 2), we are doing the St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism, reading King of the Golden City (for the 2nd time!), making Catholic lapbooks (we purchased all of these), and of course participating in our parish's faith formation and sacramental prep classes. I suppose we'll also throw in even more extras into the mix, but only because we love it!!!

A fun project we did, which didn't really start as a project, was the making of a Mass Journal. During the first sacramental prep class, students were handed a Mass Journal to keep track of all the Masses attended. It contains fill in the blank questions for the kids to fill out...who was the celebrant, what color vestments were worn, what were the first and second readings, etc. It's actually a great way to get kids to pay attention during Mass.





Of course, the journal they passed out was just a bunch of pages stapled together. So Isabella and I decided to make an actual book out of it. We followed the directions on this video. Really simple. No music, no talking...just shows how to make a book!





After making our own book, I made copies of the Mass journal onto pretty paper that Isabella picked out. Each little form was then cut out and then glued to the Mass Journal book we made. Isabella is even working on illustrating the book. It's super cute and I know she will love taking it to Mass more than a bunch of stapled papers. Of course, none of this is necessary. But it was fun!!

Isabella picked a pink cover with yellow paper.

Isabella holding her Mass Journal.

As for celebrating feast days....we worked on some super cute bookmarks this week. An archangel on the front and the prayer to St. Michael on the back! I'm planning on doing this little craft with my 5th grade faith formation class as well.

Fabulous coloring by Marco and Isabella!!

Little Jimmy has enjoyed playing with our bookmarks.