01/15/15 Saint Seraphim of Sarov

Hello Everyone!

I apologize that today’s post was not done on time. I had my last and final surgery on my foot done today and so, it is a little delayed. Thank God this recovery has been very quick.

This week, our Circle Time/Finger Play activities are:

• My Cross
• Brush Your Teeth
• Down By the Bay
• Baa Baa Black Sheep
• The More We Get Together
• Mr Sun

For our Saint’s Life today we learned about Saint Seraphim of Sarov. For some reason, I got it mixed up in my head that we were celebrating Saint Sergius of Radonezh, so we read his story (which is beautiful). Then, I double-checked the calendar, and oops, it is Saint Seraphim. So, we had a double lesson. Anyway, Saint Seraphim is one of the most renowned Russian monk. He is known for many things throughout his life, but I focused on a story of when he was a young boy. When he was 10, he became very ill. While he was sick, God granted that he see the Theotokos in his sleep. She promised to heal him. During this time, there was a religious procession in Kursk for the miracle-working icon of the Theotokos. Due to bad weather, the procession took an different route than planned and past right in front of Saint Seraphim’s house. While it was passing, his mother put him up to the miracle-working icon, he recovered rapidly. When he turned 18, he decided to become a monk. His parents gave their blessing for this and his mother gave him the family’s large copper crucifix to take with him, which he wore over his clothing all his life. After this, he entered the Sarov monastery.

For our “Pre-Writing Activity” we worked on tracing our lines.

Then, for our other activity we decorated our bowling pins. I let Theia decide what she wanted to use to decorate. We ended up using markers, glue, glitter, and pom-poms.

That was the end of our day and of our week!

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

12/29/14 Saint Theophano the Empress

Hello Everyone!

I hope you all had a very nice weekend. We had a great time on our trip up to Dormition Skete. It is always so refreshing to go visit the Monastery. I have a hard time explaining it, but you always feel energized spiritually, and it is always sad to leave. So, I mentioned in my previous post that I would talk a little bit about the “Old” and “New” calendar, so here we go…

When Christ founded the Church through his Apostles, the calendar that everyone was using was called the Julian Calendar. This calendar was established by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. When I say “everyone”, I mean it was the predominant calendar used throughout the world. Now, many many many many many years later, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced his own calendar. The calendar reform was initially adopted by the Catholic countries of Europe, since it was their Pope who designed it. Protestants and Eastern Orthodox countries chose to stick to using the traditional Julian calendar for quite some time, but they eventually adopted the Gregorian calendar reform for the sake of convenience in international trade. The last European country to adopt the reform was Greece, an Orthodox-Christian country, in 1923. The very last country in the world to fully convert was the Orthodox-Christian country of Russia, or should I say the Soviet Union, in 1929. By 1930, all countries that had used the Julian calendar had discontinued it. You can see that, in the history of the world, this is a fairly new change. The Orthodox-Christian Church has still not changed its calendar, and rightfully so. If we were to change to the Gregorian Calendar we would be celebrating all of the feast days on the wrong date! For example, lets look at Christmas since it is fresh in everyone’s mind. Everyone knows that Christ’s Nativity, or birth, was on December 25th. It was recorded on the 25th of the Julian calendar – the calendar being used at the time of His birth. So, when you celebrate Christmas on the 25th using the dates from the Gregorian calendar, you are really celebrating it early – on the 12th of December. That is why the Orthodox celebrate it on the true 25th of December (on the Julian Calendar), so that we are truly celebrating the day of his birth! Another note on this day…the Church celebrates Theophany (Christ’s baptism) on January 6th using the Julian calendar (January 19th on the Gregorian). If you were to celebrate Theophany on the Gregorian calendar’s January 6th, you would be celebrating Christ’s baptism before celebrating His true birthday! That doesn’t make too much sense, does it? So, that is why Orthodox Christians celebrate Nativity (Christmas) “late”. I really hope I did a good job of explaining that.

Alright. Now for today’s lesson!

This week, our Circle Time/Finger Play activities are:

• My Cross
• The Wheels on the Bus
• Baa Baa Black Sheep
• Old MacDonald Had a Farm
• This Old Man

For our Saint’s Life today we used the felt board to tell the story of St Theophano the Empress. She had a beautiful life story. The most notable thing about her life is: The Emperor Leo, her husband, wanted to build a church over her grave. When the Patriarch refused to allow this, he built the church of All Saints. He said that: if Theophano were a saint, she would be glorified together with the others. At that time, the feast of All Saints was introduced, to be celebrated on the Sunday after the feast of the Holy Trinity.

For our “Pre-Writing Activity” today we worked on tracing straight lines and curvy lines. I realized while we were doing this that it had been a long time since I had just let Theia color! She loves coloring, so she absolutely enjoyed coloring in her page after she drew her lines.

For our “Outside Activity” we stayed inside, due to extremely cold weather, and played red light/green light, sort of. Theia does’t quite get the idea yet, she would rather run in circles around Apfeya, but it was fun to try. 🙂

For our “Nativity Activity” (haha, that rhymes), we worked on our “Twelve Days of Christmas” unit. The sixth is: “On the sixth day of Christmas a wonder do we see: Six oxen lowing, Five angels sing! Four shepherds, Three wise kings, Mary and Joseph, and the holy babe lying in a cave.”

The seventh is: “On the seventh day of Christmas a wonder do we see: Seven donkeys braying, Six oxen lowing, Five angels sing! Four shepherds, Three wise kings, Mary and Joseph, and the holy babe lying in a cave.”

That was the end of our day! I will talk with you all tomorrow!

In Christ,

D. Kyriake

10/27/14 The Venerable Parasceva

And…we’re back!!!

Welcome to another week of my homeschooling activities! 🙂 I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

Our Circle Time/ Finger play activities for this week are:

• My Cross
• My Guardian Angel
• The Angels
• Here’s A Ball
• I am a Little Toad

For our “Saint’s Life” today we talked about The Venerable Parasceva. She practiced asceticism by living in the wilderness for some of her life. It always amazes me to read about those who had so much faith and trust in God that they left every comfort. It is very edifying.

We did a science project today that was a lot of fun. We made our very own cloud! You can do this very easily using only a few things:

• A Jar
• Warm Water
• Ice
• A Match

You simply place some warm water in a jar and turn the lid of the jar upside down. Put some ice on the lid. Then, you lite a match and place it in the jar with the water and cover it with the upside-down lid and ice. You can watch the cloud forming and when it is big enough you can “set it free”. Theia had so much fun she wanted to do it twice.

For our “Pre-Writing” acting we did an activity page out of our Almost Ready to Write book.

After we ate lunch we got to go outside and play in the fall leaves! Theia had a blast walking/running through the piles. Apfeya even enjoyed herself!

I hope you all have a good night and I will let you know what we are up to tomorrow!

In Christ,

D. Kyriake