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