St Catherine of Siena

It was the feast of St Catherine of Siena on 29th April (as per new calendar). She is born in Siena and died in Rome, both in Italy. St Catherine was a Dominican tertiary, virgin and the Doctor of the church. Her spiritual teachings were devised on our union with the Lord, bridge between earth and heaven.Her own virginal entrustment to Christ the bridegroom was reflected in many visions.

She was a wonderful saint, which we were reading from the book  '' A girl who saw saints in the sky''.
It was great to read her passion to our Lord and the little girl who wanted to be a saint, ended up leaving home and reached a cave to become hermit. Lord talked to her and asked her to back home, to be in the world to become a saint, she was taken back home in air by angels. This saint showed fortitude to go and meet pope in France when she was 29 and encouraged him to back to Rome, without any fear. She had stigmata which was very hidden from outside world, when she lived and her body was found incorrupt.

Adopted some ideas from Shower of roses and twoplusmore, children were taught about faith  which St Catherine served church faithfully and was compared to a sunflower, since its gaze is fixed above and turned on glorious sun of divine faith. Hebrews 11;1 was introduced ''faith is confident assurance that something we hope for and conviction about the things that we cannot see for''.

We tried to make some sunflower with whippeed cream on crumpets,idea adopted from catholic cuisine. 

St Catherine of Siena pray for us and help us to grow in holiness, Love for the Lord and fidelity to his body, the church like you.

Spring 2015

The days are getting longer and brighter, you could hear the bird songs and ready for the spring. We planted some flowers, fruits and vegetables in our garden which can help children to put their feet close to God's creation.

This time of the year with Eastertide giving  more hope, children started getting play more outdoors, water their plants in the evening, going for bike rides with Jobychayan as I am not able to go with them being 31 weeks pregnant.

Children along with me learning about spring, reading spring books, doing nature study which makes us praise Lord for his wonderful creation, filling nature journal, bird watching, walking etc.

Teen boys

had

Our Lenten Journey 2015

I would like to post some of the simple  tradition and practices we trying to follow  in our family, not to make others feeel bad that they are not doing anything.

We are using a simple calendar reminding forty days of lent and children each day of the lent .

Below is the sacrifice jar for each good deeds or sacrifices they do to encourage by fillinf the jar with some candies.

This is the crown of thorns made from dried holly branches since I couldn't buy any grapewine wreath this year.

Children painted  Golgotha using chalk pastels. Lots of  lenten arts are found in Loraines's web,

Praying the way of the stations is another tradition of christianity. We are thinking to make stations grotto using popsicle sticks and stones/

On Maundy Thursday

 

 

Our Lady of Kibeho

Our Homeschooling group did  a day on Our Lady of Kibeho. It was coordinated by Allison Khan. This was the first time I came to about it.So we learned about African traditions and many brought things for show and tell, including dresses, food etc.

Theresu is coloring Ruwandan flag along with other little ones.

 

 Big children making Rosary of seven sorrows which Our Lady asked to do.

                                     African costumes

                               Our Lady Of Kibeho pray for us.

Music Concert

Musicals done by Our home schooling group for the St Joseph residents. There were songs from sound of music, Joseph and the dream coat, Chitty chitty bang bang etc. It was a great performance, many children even done recitals and munnu was so poorly that he couldn't perform with the group but just joined in the end. Thanks Allison for all her hard work along with others.

Latin

Why we learn Latin?

Learning Latin  is a brilliant way to support children's literacy by Dr Lona  Robinson,who is the founder of Iris Project. It improves the writing skills in literacy. More than 60% of English root words came from Latin. It helps in analysing, designing the English Grammatical structure in high level. Children of all level ability can benefit though it is a great way to extend gifted and talented children.

Some of the resources are Cambridge Latin Course, Minimus, Galore park books for Latin beginners.

Ancient MEesopotamians/ Sumerians

We thought of learning Bible and introduce history along with it. One of the very olden civilisation was Ancient Mesopotamians, some 7,000 years ago. People began to move into area between Tigris and Euphrates  rivers and settled there, This area is called Ancient Mesopotamia. Word Mesopotamia means land between two rivers and now it is known as Iraq (The Usborne Book Of World History)

Life was hard due to weather was dry, hot and floods. So they move into South the land of Sumer e]where Sumerians lived. From there close to Ur where we were learning about Abraham, nomads and reading the scripture and learning Genesis (including premevial  -Genesis 1-11 and patriarchal history  Genesis 12 onwards ). Munnu was concentrating on Cuneiform writing, ziggurats, covenant. Anu and Munnu began Bible History with 7 days of creation, fall, Noah's arc  and Theresu did some coloring of creation.

St Joseph Feast day

It was a great day and children read the Story of St Joseph. Kids did some word search and puzzle, learnt the tradition of keeping St Joseph altar.We bought life of St Joseph colouring page from Holy Heroes

                               
                                          
                                                 Card made by Munnu

                                      Card from Theresu

Annu and Munnu decorated St Joseph altar and they made some tools and baked in oven.Even they made a b beautiful card of their own for their appa and amazing.

We had meal together and they gave card to appa, prayed for all dads and husbands.Towards evening we went to St Joseph church for the deanery mass and enjoyed the day.Some of the resources used are it is on my to do list, A slice of smith life, catholic icing and a beautiful lapbook from Shower of roses.

                                St Joseph Pray for us.

St Patrick's Day

Another wonderful feast day during lent. We went for the Holy Mass in one of the Irish church in Chorlton, read the Life of St Patrick book with children. Children got some shammrock leaves from the church.

Kidoos worn green dress and went for the Holy Mass, came back home and studied about St Patrick, the place where he was born, his journey, miracles and death. Looked at maps and plotted places in Ireland, researched little bit about celtic cross, traditional food, Gaelic language and wrote a paragraph on St Patrick. Annu, Munnu and Theresu is having lot of fun trying to learn some Irish dance and children had a treasure hunt and was fun too.

Although I had some plans to make Irish soda bread , I couldn't do in the end. But it was a great day in our family.Some of the resources I borrowed from Real Life at Home, Love grows wild and Secrets of a super mommy.

                         


                               ST PATRICK ORA PRO NOBIS