02/26/15 Our Holy Father Simeon the Myrrh-Streamer

Saint Xenia:

Today, on the fourth day of the Great Fast we commemorate Our Holy Father Simeon the Myrrh-Streamer. St. Simeon was once known as Stevan Nemanja. He was the ruler of the Serbian people. During his rule he unified the Serbian lands, made Serbia its own country independent of Greece, drove out heresy, and strengthened the Orthodox Church within. After this, he became a monk at the monastery of Studenica , and was given the name Simeon. After he had lived in Studenica for two years, he went to the Holy Mountain with his son Sava. They stayed in the monastery of Vatopedi. Father and son spent days and nights in prayer. There they built six chapels: to the Savior, the Unmercenaries, St George, St Theodore, the Forerunner and St Nicholas. They also bought the ruins of Hilandar and built a beautiful monastery, but Simeon lived there only eight months before his death. One year after his death, Simeon was recognized as a saint by the community of Mount Athos because holy old was flowing from his relics. Even today his relics give forth a sweet smell. Below is an icon of both St. Simeon and his son, St. Sava.

Today we spent some time with some good friends. We learned a game that is similar to “red light, green light”, but it is called “1,2,3, star”. Basically one person stands across the room from the others and turns around and counts to three. Once they count to three they turn to face the others and they say “star”. The others try to make it to the other side of the room as quickly as possible, but they can only move while the one person is counting. When the one person says “star” and turns around, the others have to freeze. Whoever makes it to the other side first wins. This is a great game to get children to listen and follow instruction.

It has been snowing all day today and is supposed to keep snowing for a while. I am so glad I have a four-wheel-drive car. This weather is really great for the first week of the fast. 😉

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. 

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephriam

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/25/15 St. Meletius, Archbishop of Antioch

Today, on the third day of the Great Fast, we commemorate St. Meletius, Archbishop of Antioch. St. Meletius fought his entire life against the Arian heresy. This heresy did not recognize the Son of God and also blasphemed against the Holy Trinity. There were many times that St. Meletius showed the truth by simply using his hands. Once, at the Second Ecumenical Council in 381, he raised three of his fingers, each separated, then he brought them all together – at that moment lightning flashed from his hand before the gaze of all present.

Theia spent some time doing a few activity pages in her “My Book of Great Lent” by Pontamitis Publishing.

We also took some time to make some homemade pretzels. The way the pretzels look show two images of prayer. One is simply how someone may fold their hands in prayer. The other, that Theia recognized, is that a pretzel looks like the way we fold our arms during Holy Communion. Because we are focusing on increasing our prayers during the Great Fast, this was a fun activity to do. The link for the recipe I used is here. Make sure you substitute canola oil or grape seed oil for the butter and soy milk or almond milk for the cow milk! Also, just skip dipping them in butter after they are cooked. They are healthier that way. 😉

We also took the time to read through our book, Lent! Wonderful Lent! by Debra Sancer.

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. 

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephriam

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/24/2015 Hieromartyr Blaise of Sebastia

Today, on the second day of the Great Fast, we commemorate St. Blaise. He is prayed to for the health and well-being of domestic animals and for protection from wild beasts.  His life story is very edifying, but two things I pointed out to Theia was that: when he retired to the mountain of Argeos and lived in a cave, ferocious wild beasts, recognized him as a holy man, came to him, and he gently tamed them. Also, St. Blaise once healed a boy who had a bone stuck in his throat, and when a widow asked him, he made a wolf who had taken her pig return it to her.

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. 

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephriam

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/23/15 The Hieromartyr Charalampus

On the first day of the Great Fast…

Happy 1st day of the Great Fast and happy Monday to everyone!

I hope you all had a good weekend. We got a lot, and I mean a lot, of snow here in Colorado. The girls loved watching the snow storm and Theia loved playing in it afterward.

So, for the next weeks, during the Great Fast, I am going to try to do many “meaningful” activities with the girls. I really want to make this a special time of anticipation, just like how we look forward to Nativity.

Today our Circle Time songs are:

• Monday: The Angels (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• My Cross (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Sing! Sing! Sing! (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Boom Boom (by Raffi)
• Here Sits a Monkey (by Raffi)
• Celebrate the Feasts (by Gigi Shadid)

For our Saint’s Life today we read about the Hieromartyr Charalampus. He was 113 years old when he suffered for Christ. The Emperor of Magnesia, Septimus Severus, began a very harsh persecution of Christians, however Charalampus did not hide from him. Saint Charalampus remained bold in his faith and endured all of his tortures. He even succeeded in bringing the Emperor’s daughter, Gallina, to the Christian faith. After his execution, Gallina took his body and honorably buried it.

For our activity today we made a Lenten Calendar. The way we did it is:

1: Take a large piece of paper and thumb-tac it to the wall.

2: Using a paint pen, write the words, “Our Lenten Journey” across the top. Also, draw a swerved path from the top to the bottom.

3: Cut out 40 leaves, number them 1-40 and glue them onto your path.

4: Print and cut out correlating icons. You can do an icon for each of the 40 days, you can just do the Sunday ones, or you can pick out the ones that are most meaningful to you. Glue the icons next to the day they go with.

5: Choose a “changing” theme. I chose caterpillars to butterflies. You can also do seeds to flowers, or eggs to birds…

Place the butterfly (or flower, or bird) at the top of your path.

Create caterpillars (I made mine out of different colored pipe-cleaners) and each day of the fast you glue one onto the leaf. So, today we glued a caterpillar onto day one. (If you are doing flowers, you would use seeds for this – and if you are doing birds, you would use eggs for this)

6: On Lazarus Saturday (the 41st day) you take all of the caterpillars and hang them from the ceiling with a string. With the seeds you could “plant” them in a pot, and with the eggs you could place them in a nest.

7: On Pascha morning, before the kids awake, you replace the caterpillars with butterflies! (Eggs with birds and seeds with flowers). You can buy small butterflies, flowers, or birds from your local hobby store.

This whole “changing” theme will give the children a visual idea of the transformation that takes place during the Great Fast.

This was the only activity we did today – it was a very long one so it took up all of our schooling time.

I will let you all know what we do tomorrow.

 O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. 

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Lenten Prayer of Saint Ephrem

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/19/15 The Holy Martyr Dorothea

Hello Everyone!

I have to apologize that we were out this whole week. The girls have been sick and we weren’t able to do school.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the schedule I have Theia on. So, I run into a lot of people who make comments like; “you do so much”, “I don’t know how you do it”, “I could never do that”, or “you must be so busy”. I just want to say, it really isn’t that much. My girls keep me busy, with or without planned activities. The planned activities actually make the day go smoother and I find myself getting more done. If you were to follow one of my days and just do morning prayers, Circle Time, Saint’s life, and 2 activities – without any outside time or breaks, it would take you, at the most, 2 hours. Prayers and Circle Time take the longest. The majority of the activities I do with Theia take her about 5 minutes to complete, except for ones like baking. Now, some of the activities I do require prep-work on the parents part, but that work only takes 5 -10 minutes. If you were to do morning prayers, Circle Time, Saint’s life, and 2 activities starting at 8am – you would be done by 10am, at the latest (if you didn’t do anything extra like outside time). So, let this be an encouragement! You CAN do this with your children. It is no harder than what you do with them now every day. Your kids keep you busy, doing this or not. Planning some activities just requires a little thought and preparation. How beneficial is it to provide them with Church-centered activities?!

This past Sunday we went up to the Cathedral of the Dormition in Buena Vista to celebrate the Feast Day of the Meeting of Our Lord. This was a very special day and it was so nice to be able to celebrate the Feast Day with the Fathers.

Today our Circle Time songs are:

• Thursday: The Apostles (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• My Cross (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Sing! Sing! Sing! (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Bumpin’ Up and Down (by Raffi)
• Going to the Zoo (by Raffi)

For our Saint’s Life today we used the felt board to tell the story of The Holy Martyr Dorothea. She was a very brave young woman. Sapricius, the administrator of the district of Caesarea, sent two pagan sisters to try to convert Dorothea to paganism. However, Dorothea succeeded in bringing both sisters to the Christian faith. Sapricius condemned the three of them to death. Theophilus, a nobleman, who was present during Dorothea’s torture laughed at her and called out to her: ‘Here, you bride of Christ; send me apples and wild roses from your bridegroom’s paradise!’ Dorothea replied, ‘Yes; I’ll do that!’. When Dorothea was about to be executed, an angel of God suddenly appeared with three marvelous apples and three red wild roses. Dorothea asked this angel to take them to Theophilus. The angel did so and said: ‘Here is what you asked for.’ When Theophilus received the gift, (this was also during the dead of winter) he was very much afraid. He rejected his pagan beliefs and became a Christian. He was then tortured and killed for Christ, and his soul quickly followed Dorothea’s to the Lord’s Paradise.

Today we made a Kyra Sarakosti in preparation for the beginning of the Great Fast.

The Kyra Sarakosti, or Lady of the Fast, has seven feet to represent the seven weeks of the Fast, including Holy Week. Every Saturday of the Fast, you cut off one of her feet. This helps you visualize the length of the Fast. She also has no mouth because she is fasting, and her hands are crossed in prayer. She has a cross on her head to symbolize that she is a nun. The last foot that is cut on Great and Holy Saturday is placed inside a dry date or fig and whoever finds it receives and extra blessing after the Fast.

The recipe can be found on page four of the Festive Fast.

2-2 1/2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of salt

2-2 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon

water (as much as needed)

Combine the dry ingredients and gradually add enough water to form a stiff, but flexible dough. Roll it out to about 1/2 inch thick. With a sharp knife cut out the figure. Also, cut out two narrow strips for arms and join at the shoulder with water. Make slits in the dough for fingers. Mark the closed eyelids and nose with the knife. Bake in a moderate oven (about 250) until golden.

* This is not edible

I also had Theia color a couple paper Kyra Sarakosti’s that I printed up off of the internet. We are keeping these hung on our fridge for the Great Fast and will remove their feet each Saturday as well. I don’t think we will be putting the last foot of these paper ones into a date. 🙂

I should also like to mention, we have two new pets! Goldfish. We have no names for them yet. If you would like to suggest names, please do.

That was the end of our day, and our week. I hope you all have a wonderful and sobering Forgiveness Sunday. I will be back on Monday (God-willing the girls will stay healthy)!

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/12/15 The Holy Martyr Theophilus the New

Hello there everyone!

We had a fun-filled day today. We had some very special visitors today and we were even blessed to have a visit from our Bishop, Vladyka John! This is such a blessing and one of the reasons I am so glad we were able to move to Colorado Springs. Not only is there an Orthodox community here, but the Fathers are only 2 hours away and we are blessed to be able to visit often.

Silly Faces!

Today our Circle Time songs are:

• Thursday: The Apostles (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• My Cross (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Sing! Sing! Sing! (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Listen to the Horses (by Raffi)
• Shake My Sillies Out (by Raffi)

The saint commemorated today is The Holy Martyr Theophilus the New.

As commander-in-chief under the Emperor Constantine and Empress Irene, he was enslaved by the Hagarines and held four years in prison. When he withstood all the Moslems’ insistence that he repudiate the Christian faith, he was beheaded with the sword in the year 784, and went to the Lord.

We did a counting activity with the girls today. We worked on counting and keeping in time with a music beat for 8 counts. We made some “soup” while counting. Basically the girls used a wooden spoon to splash their soup for 8 counts and then stir their soup for 8 counts. They each were able to take turns “putting something in” the soup and in the end they got to “taste” it. After that counting activity, we worked on counting to 12 for the 12 holy apostles. Then, we worked on naming all twelve of them by using the Thursday song from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos.

Our sensory activity today was with shaving cream. The girls were able to make designs on the sliding glass window with shaving cream. This activity was so simple, but so fun!

Shaving cream mess!

Well, that was the end of our day, and our week. We are planning to go and visit the Cathedral of the Dormition for the feast day of the Meeting of our Lord on Sunday and are looking forward to that trip. We will be back on Monday and I will let you know what we are up then!

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/11/15 The Hieromartyr Ignatius

Good Evening!

I hope you all had a wonderful day. I had a really busy day and feel like I can’t keep up! I honestly feel like my life is set at a speed of 10 and I can only go 8. 😦 I just have to trust in God to give me the strength I need to get through every day and try to take it one day at a time.

Today our Circle Time songs are:

• Wednesday: The Cross (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• My Cross (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Sing! Sing! Sing! (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Listen to the Horses (by Raffi)
• Shake My Sillies Out (by Raffi)

The saint commemorated today is the Hieromartyr Ignatius. Today we remember the translation of his relics from Rome, where he was martyred, to Antioch, where he had been archbishop. I took this opportunity to explain what exactly it means to “translate relics”. I began by describing how you can move things and we moved some things around. Then, I described that translation is simply to move something from one place to another. Next, we talked about what a relic is. I explained that it is the body after one has died. We all have a body and a soul. When a saint dies, their soul goes to heaven, but their body stays on earth and is called a relic. I did not explain yet about how, because many of these saints were so close to God, their relics, or bodies, did not decompose like usual and they remained incorrupt.That is a lesson that I will explain later.

For our prewriting activity we worked on tracing lines again.

Something fun that we did today was building. Theia built a “house for her bunnies” out of legos. Its pretty awesome too. It has carrots and flowers on the roof for them to eat! This sweet little girl thought it through!

In the middle of the day Theia had a dentist appointment. So, that is all of the homeschooling I got done today. Theia did get a “No Cavities!” certificate and a prize from her dentist for being such a good girl. 🙂

I am working on planning what exactly we are going to be doing, both in homeschool and as a family, during the Great Fast. I have found some great resources and am getting approval for some of the activities from our Priest. I will let you know what my plan is once I have it down so that you can follow along with us if you wish!

Have a great evening and I will let you know what we are up to tomorrow!

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/10/15 Our Holy Father Ephraim the Syrian

Good Evening Everyone!

We had a fun day today. It was a really nice day outside again! I am getting spoiled to the nice weather here is Colorado. It is like spring right now, but I now we are going to get slammed by a few more storms before spring is truly here.

Today our Circle Time songs are:

• Tuesday: St. John the Forerunner (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• My Cross (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Sing! Sing! Sing! (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Listen to the Horses (by Raffi)
• Shake My Sillies Out (by Raffi)

The saint commemorated today is Saint Ephraim. He loved work and was constantly writing books, teaching, or praying. He wrote many beautiful books. His best known prayer is :

O Lord and Master of my life, a spirit of idleness, despondency, ambition, and idle talking give me not. But rather a spirit of chastity, humble-mindedness, patience, and love bestow upon me Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my failings and not condemn my brother; for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.

For our outside activity Theia went to her ballet class. She did really well today. She kept beat to the music very well and did a front tumble all on her own!

We practiced drawing some curvy lines today for our pre-writing activity. You can find the worksheet we used here.

For our science experiment we used salt to melt ice. This was a lot of fun. So, what you do is you set out your ice cubes on a plate (with a rim so the melted ice doesn’t spill), you put some salt in an easy-to-get-little-hands-into bowl, and you pick out the colors of food coloring you want to use. Then, you let them sprinkle some salt onto the ice-cubes.

Next, you drop some food coloring onto the ice.

Now, you watch as the food coloring goes down all the little craters and creases.

Fun, fun, fun!

We also had some kitchen time today. Theia helped me make some cookies. I was really craving some! The link to the cookies we made is here.

I hope you all have a wonderful evening! I will let you know what we are up to tomorrow!

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/09/15 St. John Chrysostom

Hello Everyone,

I hope you all are doing well. We had a wonderful weekend full of Church services and visiting with friends. So, today we had to get back to our normal routine.

Today our Circle Time songs are:

• Monday: Song of the Angels (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• My Cross (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Sing! Sing! Sing! (from the Children’s Garden of the Theotokos)
• Listen to the Horses (by Raffi)
• Shake My Sillies Out (by Raffi)

The saint commemorated today is Saint John Chrysostom. Today we celebrate the translation of his relics from Comana, where he died in exile in 407, to Constantinople where earlier, as Patriarch, he had governed the Church. It is said that when the Saint was carried into the Church of the Holy Apostles and placed on the patriarchal throne, the assembled throng heard these words from his mouth: ‘Peace be unto all!’

For our outside activity today we practiced drawing with sidewalk chalk!

For our prewriting activity we practiced drawing our lines. You can find the worksheet we used here. You can click on the image to view it larger.

For our Art project we made some glitter rocks. Theia went out into the yard and picked out five rocks. Then, we used a paint brush to paint a design on the rocks with glue. After that, Theia picked out the color of glitter she wanted to sprinkle on and sprinkled it!

After it dried we brushed off the extra glitter and had a piece of art left! She kept 2 for herself and gave one to her Daddy, one to me (Mommy), and one to her sister Apfeya. 🙂

That was the end of our day! I will let you all know what we are up to tomorrow. Right now, I have a roast in the crock pot and it has been driving me crazy all day. I am excited to get it out and try it! Nothing like having a roast during meat-fare week (the last week to have meat before the Great Fast begins)!

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

02/02-05/2015 Saint Maximus

Hello Everyone,

This is the last time I am going to make this one post for a whole week. I think the day-by-day works much better. Anyway, this is what we did this week…

This week, our Circle Time/Finger Play activities:

• My Cross
• Baa baa black sheep
• Open, Shut them
• Mary had a little lamb
• Alphabet Song

Saint’s Lives:

The Saints that we studied this week were:

Holy Father Euthymius: He lived in asceticism from his youth. He had many other men join him in his labors such as Cyriac the Hermit, Sava the Sanctified, Theoctistus and others. He taught his monks the love of hardship, saying: ‘If you eat bread that comes not from your own labors, that means that you eat the labor of another’. He also said: ‘A tree that is frequently transplanted does not bear fruit,’ meaning that a monastic should not move around from place to place. On love, he said: ‘As salt is to bread, so is love to the other virtues.’ There was a monastery established near his cave. His last command before his repose was that the monastery should be loving and hospitable to all its guests, and that its gate should never be closed.

Saint Maximus the Confessor: One of our chapels here in Colorado is named after Saint Maximus, so we attended liturgy at that chapel to celebrate the feast day. St. Maximus was the greatest defender of Orthodoxy against the Monothelite heresy which says that there is in Christ only one nature, an therefore in Him only one will. I think one of the most profound things about Saint Maximus is that he kept the true faith even when it was only himself and his few disciples against all others. In a way, this should encourage the Orthodox Christians of today to keep the true faith despite all of the heresies around.

The Holy Apostle Timothy: You can read about Saint Timothy in the books of the New Testament of 1st and 2nd Timothy. He met Apostle Paul in Lystra, and was the one to witness Paul’s healing the lame man. Later, Timothy followed Paul to many countries. Saint Timothy worked much to spread and establish of the Christian faith around the world. Paul called him his own son in the faith (I Tim. 1:2). After Paul’s martyrdom, Timothy had St John the Evangelist as his teacher.

The Hieromartyr Clement: He became bishop of Ancyra at the age of twenty. He spent twenty-eight years under torture and imprisonment under he reign of Diocletian. He was so harshly tortured that it is said he was tortured as terribly ‘as anyone has ever been since the foundation of the world’. He worked many miracles during his life.

Activities:

We worked on finger painting.

Theia colored her calendar page for the month of February.

We had our Ballet class.

We made a butterfly out of paper plates.

We did a “study” on emotions.

We worked on counting objects.

We worked on sign language.

We started to learn Russian.

We practiced our Alphabet (English).

We played with play-dough!

I will let you all know what we are up to on Monday. I apologize for the last two weeks of being away. I will get the posts back to normal on Monday and work on explaining the activities more thoroughly again.

In Christ,

D. Kyriake