"Ordinary" Time

A perfect way to move from the Christmas Season into ordinary time is to celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord.  Jesus Himself started His ministry with the example of His baptism.  The fact that He did it publicly was His message to the world: If it is important enough that I should do it, it is important that you should do it also.

All four of the gospels speak of Jesus' baptism.  The book of Mark records that upon being baptized he saw "the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.' "  All four gospels record the baptism in this manner. It must be extremely important. In fact, no one else in the river that day or any other received rays of light or voices or doves from the heavens. This was God's miraculous way of showing that Jesus' baptism was important indeed.

And so begins the life and works of Jesus...

Wedding at Cana

Very early on in the narrative that is the story of Jesus's life, John records that Mary and Jesus are guests at a wedding feast when the wine the family is serving runs out. Mary pleads to Jesus on behalf of the family, and Jesus turns all the water there at the feast into wine...thus beginning his public career as a miracle worker.

All the gospels record various stories of Jesus ministering to sick, blind, deaf, paralyzed, and even those who have just died.  He did not merely minister God's message to them...He healed them!  He brought them back to life when necessary. Perhaps my favorite of these is when Jesus heals the paralytic.  I love the idea that the man and his friends had such faith that Jesus would heal him, that they put him on the roof and lowered him down into the room where Jesus was speaking!  What effort!!!

May we all live our lives with the same effort to be in the room with Jesus. May we all trust him to heal us and lift our burdens when we are heavy.  May we never give up.

I use the term in the classroom "ordinary" lightly, because the life of Jesus is certainly no ordinary time.  Jordan and I use this break from seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter to focus on the miracles of Jesus, how we can apply these lessons to our lives today and to introduce students to the Luminous Mysteries of the rosary.

Join us for the next couple of weeks before Lent focusing on the miracles that Jesus performs.  Lean on Him when times are hard. Trust Him with the same effort as the faithful in these stories.

God Bless!

We journey with Christ

Our class is designed so that the students journey with Christ through the liturgical year. I am so proud of our class and their parents this year. I can tell they are receiving reinforcement at home. We have animated discussions about what is going on in our church every Sunday.

This Sunday we discussed the third candle of the Advent wreath, the rose colored candle. We discussed how the candle represents the joy that comes with Christmastime with the birth of Our Lord.

We used a Nativity set to discuss the night that Jesus was born. Using Luke Chapter 1 as our reference for the story, we explained the Nativity scene. Our students were right there with us because they have experienced this aspect of their faith at home.

We read the story of Juan Diego, and introduced Our Lady of Guadalupe to our class. As an honor to Mary, we played Andrea Botticelli's Ave Maria while assuming a posture of prayer.

Next week we will have our last class before Christmas break. We will pray the Third Joyful Mystery of the Rosary.  Please continue to work with your children on their rosary prayers.

Merry Christmas!

When we return to class at the first of the year, we will concentrate on the miracles of Jesus and the Luminous Mysteries.

May you find the joy of Christ this Advent, and God bless you all and your families this Christmas.

With Peace and Love,

Mrs. Miranda and Ms. Jordan

A New Way to Learn the Rosary

http://johnsonfamilytoday.blogspot.com/2012/09/rosary-hopscotch.html

 

 

Prayer Sticks for Learning Prayers

http://catholicmom.com/2013/12/10/prayer-sticks-an-easy-craft-for-incorporating-daily-prayer/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+Catholicmomcom+(CatholicMom.com)

 

 

 

 

These are good for when they have certain prayers that need to learn they can draw a stick from the jar and the one they draw is the one they learn and practice for the week until they return back to class!

Seasonal Lesson on the Trinity for First Graders

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Candy-Corn-Trinity-1474741

This one is fun to in the fall!

The Messiah, The Savior, The Lord

Welcome to the First Sunday of Advent!

So blessed was I to be in the choir this morning for the first Sunday of Advent. Charmaine did us up right in our robes today, which I thought was a special way to celebrate the season and the beginning of the Church Liturgical Year.  We celebrated the Knights of Columbus and their service to the Church. The Knights were dressed in their ceremonious attire as well. I took note of the fact that the Knights did not assume an heir of importance. Although it was "their" day, they were sure to be served the Eucharist last...as a testimony of their servant-hood to the Church.

Father Sexton preached of the beginning of Advent as a time when we wait in the HOPE of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He came once as a man; He will come once again at the end of time, and He comes to us daily in the Eucharist. So blessed are we to be in the Catholic Faith!

One thing I noticed as I sat in the choir today was how kids went to the bathroom during mass. Now, it is far from me to criticize any parent for allowing their child to go to the restroom during the homily...that is between the parent and the child. A child's need to go to the restroom comes at the least expected moment.  What I noticed was the numbers of children who didn't pause at the center of the church to show respect to the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle.  Sometimes, in an emergency, a child may forget to do this, but on the way back would be a good time to pause and show reverence.

Genuflection and reverence to the Blessed Sacrament are one thing that Jordan and I teach in our class.  The lessons that we teach are life lessons for our children, but only parents can make sure that they become life habits. In observing one adult leading the child to the restroom, the adult did not pause, nor did she have the child pause.

Please remember this Advent that the reason we celebrate this season is to welcome Jesus Christ, Our King, Our Lord, Our Savior. Please remember that He is there with us in the Blessed Sacrament. Please let reverence be part of your focus. Please pass that reverence on to your children.

Forever in Christ, pray for each other daily.

Miranda

Our Class Begins

Our church provides us with wonderful literature with which to teach our class. This year we even switched to an evangelistic edition of the text.  Jordan and I are not "teach by the book" teachers. We use the book; don't get me wrong, but we let the Church's liturgical and calendar year of saint feast days guide our lessons.

The beginning of our class establishes for our children that Jesus is our friend. Without that first knowledge that we can trust in Jesus, the rest of the year is in vain. We establish first and foremost that Jesus is a friend we can talk to day or night.  We also use this first lesson to establish that we are all friends and that as Catholics and Christians we can depend on each other at church, at home, and at school.

We spend the next several weeks establishing God as the creator of our world. We discuss how God created first the beautiful world we live in and then the people in it. Students begin to realize their own creation and the beauty of it. We establish up front that God created the people in this world to love him. Students today question why the world was created with all the ugliness in it. They doubt the existence of God in many cases. Schools teach all sorts of creation theories. We establish first and foremost that GOD is the creator and that He loves us, which is why we were all beautifully made.  We go on to explain temptation and original sin as it applies to Adam and Eve.

In our lessons we use stories from a children's bible, coloring pages and aids that come with our teacher material, such as worksheets for the class to complete. We incorporate songs and do short dramas, having the kids act out things we have studied. We create posters and complete color pages to enrich or introduce what we learn.

Perhaps that most significant method of teaching that we use is hands-on training. Once we have established God as the creator, we explain that God created things that are holy: the Bible, the rosary, the church itself. We take the students on a tour of the church and teach them the behaviors
and postures that are to be used during mass or when simply walking through the building.  We use the sign of the cross, and we genuflect. We visit the altar, the sanctuary lamp, the confessional, the stations of the cross. We visit with the Blessed Sacrament for a moment. We explain confession in a positive light, showing that the confessional is nothing to be afraid of and that the Priest is there to be our friend, as Jesus is our friend.  We take the mystery out of the church and open the students' eyes to what is going on when they enter the church.

During this first unit, the class is introduced to angels as spirits that God has created. We discuss the important jobs of the angels in history and talk about some of the most famous of the angels during our Archangel Feast Day lesson. We teach the Guardian Angel prayer as a prayer children can say when they are scared or lonely.

We wrap up the unit learning about different types of prayer and how Jesus taught us to pray the   Our Father. This becomes the first major prayer that the children learn in the year. We open class with it every week, and after this point, we begin calling on children to open us up with the prayer that Jesus taught us.