New Blog!

Those of you who journey with me on a regular basis have met my dear friend in Moscow, Asmic. 

I am excited to announce that she has started her own blog called Amazing & Amusing! 

Asmic is the mom of three very active boys, and she is so creative. I can't wait to read all of her great ideas. She'll be posting about everything amazing and amusing in her life as well as her journey with Montessori and Godly Play. 

Asmic's youngest son engaged in a Montessori sorting activity.

A fleece heart craft that she did with her boys hanging on a framed  Nicene Creed.

Thanks for taking the time to share with us, Asmic!

Beginning Lent

Lent has become a special time for our family to slow down a bit and take more time for God and each other. Although we fast by abstaining from meat during the week, we try to focus on what God wants to give us in this season rather than on what we are giving up. 

At our Sunday Brunch and children's service, I finally found a way to hang up my Circle of the Church Year. The kids knew exactly where the hand of the "clock" should be - on the last Sunday of the green, growing season (also known as "Ordinary Time") before Lent. 

Since I neither grew up Catholic nor in the state of Louisiana, "Fasching" (what we call Carnival or Mardi Gras here) was not part of my tradition. But it is celebrated here in northern Germany as a children's holiday on Shrove Tuesday, and the kids have parties at school. It is a fun way to say good-bye to Ordinary Time before greeting Lent.

This year, we had a doctor in the house . . . 

and a visit from Legolas . . . 

(If you'd like to know how my husband made those elf ears, click here.)

Then we enjoyed a "Pfannkuchen" (pancake) for afternoon tea.

It's actually more of what Americans would call a doughnut and filled with jelly. We call it a Pfannkuchen, but Germans outside of Berlin call it a "Berliner". And this is incidentally what caused the roaring laughter in the crowd when John F. Kennedy said, "Ich bin ein Berliner!" Because he used the indefinite article, he inadvertantly referred to himself as a jelly-filled doughnut.: )

Today, we began to build our Lenten Nature Table. 

It's tulip time in Europe right now, and they are my absolute favorite. I couldn't resist adding them to our nature table.

On Sunday the children made Lenten prayer pots. My daughter made a new one, since she made the last one when she was four.

and my son still loves his old prayer pot, 

so he created something new for the nature table . . .

We ended our day by attending an Ash Wednesday service at a church near our home. The children had the experience of getting ashes on their forehead for the first time, and found it to be a meaningful symbol. 

Many blessings on your Lenten journey!

Ideas for Celebrating Lent with Children

Ash Wednesday, February 13, begins the season of Lent. I'd like to share with you some of the ideas from the past three years for making this season meaningful for the children in your life. If you have never observed Lent as a family before, I encourage you to try it. Preparing ourselves and our children for Easter makes it more celebratory and communicates that Easter is much more than hunting eggs and eating chocolate bunnies (although those things are loads of fun!) . 

Click on the links below the pictures for the original posts. 

A Lenten Nature Table

Children need time to prepare for important holidays just as adults do. Having symbols of Lent in the home help children to prepare for the joy of Easter.

Lenten Nature Table 2012

Lenten Nature Table 2011

The Stations of the Cross for children

This website offers a great plan for doing the Stations with children in a way that they can understand.

Lenten Prayer Pots 

These are small bowls that the children make out of clay and nature materials. Each week they place a small object in the bowl to remind them of God and help prepare their hearts for celebrating Easter.

Lenten Prayer Pots

Godly Play: The Mystery of Easter & The Faces of Christ

These stories focus on the meaning of Lent and the life of Jesus.

The Mystery of Easter
Post 1 and Post 2

The Faces of Easter

Pray for the poor of the world

Make meals that the poor in other countries eat on a daily basis. Pray for them with your children, and use the money that you save to send to an aid organization.

Helping Children Identify with the Poor

Do a social project

Serve someone else during Lent as a family, church, or school group.

The Easter Club visits a Senior Center.

Grow Easter Grass in the Shape of the Cross

Easter Grass

Resurrection Eggs

These eggs have symbols inside that tell the story of Jesus' death and resurrection.

Resurrection Eggs

Ideas from last year's Lenten Link-Up, Celebrating Lent

You can find 39 more ideas from some other wonderful bloggers here!

Linked to Montessori Monday at Living Montessori Now

and Eco Kids' Tuesday at Like Mother-Like Daughter and Organic Aspirations

and Waldorf Wednesday at Seasons of Joy

and Friday's Nature Table at The Magic Onions

Godly Play: St.Valentine

As preparation for celebrating St. Valentine's Day on Feb. 14, I decided to go ahead and tell this story from Godly Play Volume 7 early. As many of you may remember, I started working my way through this volume last year. Since it is only available in English, I have been using it mainly for my own children. As I'm only averaging about 4 saints a year, I'll have them all done hopefully at the end of 2014.: )

Materials for the story:
1. St. Valentine peg doll
2. mortar & pestle
3. white felt crocus
4. scroll with "From your Valentine" written inside
5. purple underlay (since Feb. 14 falls during the time of Lent this year)

You may notice that this peg figure has eyes, while my other saints do not.
My dilemma was that Valentine is usually pictured with a beard, and
he would have looked really strange with a beard and no eyes! Maybe
I will have to add eyes to the others.

To tell you the truth, I avoided telling this story last year. Why? Because there are so many different versions of Valentine's story, and it is difficult to trace his historical facts. The legend may even be a conglomeration of two different persons. And because my children first learned about Valentine from a book with a slightly different take on his story, I thought it might confuse them to tell the Godly Play version.

But as I read and re-read the Valentine story in Volume 7, it began to grow on me, because it is a great example of someone selflessly loving another. A common thread running through each of the stories in Volume 7 is a dramatic childhood experience, either in the life of the saint or someone that he/she loved. In Valentine's story, this child is the jailer's daughter, who has been born blind.  As he is led away to his execution, Valentine thinks not of himself, but of the little girl that he has befriended. The story ends with the little girl's father reading her the note that Valentine has left for her. As she opens it, a white crocus, her favorite flower, falls out of the rolled up note. When she bends to pick it up, she realizes that she can see it. 

As I had previously suspected, my kids (ages 7 and 9) were thrown off by the differences in the details of Valentine's life that they had previously read in a storybook that we have. In that book, a big deal is made of Valentine marrying people in secret, because the Roman emperor had outlawed marriage in order to get more recruits for his army. In the GP version, Valentine is a doctor as well as a priest and more is said about his gathering herbs to help cure his patients. The kids had lots of questions about why the Godly Play story does not mention him marrying people. My response was to say that maybe the writer of the story decided that this was something we could leave out and still have everything we needed for the story. :) I then added that we don't have many written historical facts about Valentine from that time period, so there are several legends about him. I think any storyteller should be prepared for questions like this from children about Valentine's story, because the truth is that we can't historically trace much of his life.

After we got beyond this, we able to wonder about his life. What did we like best in the story? That Valentine prayed for his patients and he prayed for the little girl the most. That he was friends with the little girl. What was most important? That he thought about her in his last moments and not just about himself. What part of the story tells something about us? One child answered that he liked herbs just like Valentine. 

One of our children wondered some more in the Response Time:

The picture is unfinished, but you can clearly see elements of the story. It was unusual to see this child wondering about the story that was just told - in Godly Play children often wonder about a story they heard earlier and not the one that was just told - but very nice.

Hope your Valentine's celebration next week is lots of fun! 

You can read about our family's traditions in this post from last year. 

Linked to Montessori Monday at Living Montessori Now

and Eco Kids' Tuesday at Organic Aspirations and Like Mother - Like Daughter

and Waldorf Wednesday at Seasons of Joy

Sketchy Sunday: Birds

We're joining the Artsy Ants again for Sketchy Sunday, and this week's theme is birds. 

My son decided has also decided to participate, so here are his sketches of a hawk and an apple for last week's fruit theme.

I am trying to use as many drawing mediums as possible this year, so that I avoid getting comfortable with just one. The black Pitt pens that I drew with last week are my favorite drawing tool.

I drew this owl with my least favorite, a pencil.

I adore my chunky charcoal. It has such a painterly feel to it. Though it is too thick for a sketchbook drawing, I used it anyway for this cardinal.

Next week's theme is "in the kitchen", so it'll be interesting to see what everyone comes up with! Be sure to visit the Artsy Ants to see the other sketches or join in yourself.

Candlemas Nature Table

Our nature table sat empty from the time Christmas was over until today. Mainly from lack of time, kids being sick and lack of inspiration. But this morning we had some extra time, and spontaneously made one for Candlemas.

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, also known as Candlemas. It is when the church remembers Mary and Joseph presenting baby Jesus in the temple, where he is recognized as the Messiah by Simeon and Anna. The name "Candlemas" comes from "candle mass" and is called so, because of Simeon's recognition that the child will be a light for all the nations. 

Even at age 9 1/2, the nature table tradition is still important to my son. I gave him and my 7-year-old daughter a few ideas and then let them decorate. She built the temple and he arranged the nature objects. (They had a few additional quarrels about what would go where, of course!)

My son's class at school rolls beeswax candles each year during Advent. Because we already have so many candles at Christmas, I usually save them for Candlemas.

Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus are from our Godly Play nativity set. Simeon and Anna are wooden figures from Young Children and Worship. Baby Jesus is lying on a bean-like pod from a particular tree that grows in the park near our home.

After breakfast we read the story of Jesus' Presentation in the Temple from the Children's NIV Bible, found in Luke 2:22-40. Amidst the squirming (lest you think that my children or anyone else's sit through these things quietly!), both of my children became very interested in the figure of Joseph. Was he really important in the life of Jesus? Why doesn't the Bible say very much about him? And how could Jesus have been conceived without an earthly father? 

After talking about these things, I brought up that Simeon and Anna recognized Jesus as the Messiah because they had been very close to God and "heard" him speaking to them.

How do we "hear" God's voice and how does he "speak" to us today? After some verbal wondering together, we then lit our Candlemas candles and thanked God for giving Jesus to be the light for the whole world. 

This the second year that we've done a Candlemas nature table. Click here to see the one from last year.

Linked to Eco Kids Tuesdays at Like Mother-Like Daughter and Organic Aspirations

and Waldorf Wednesday at Seasons of Joy

Some more Response Time Ideas

A Godly Play classroom can include all kinds of materials to help children creatively respond to and wonder about the the stories. And not just the classic story materials and art supplies that are usually seen. 

In Holland, our colleague, An from Belgium, brought these wooden toys for us to use in our response times. 

This hammer set is manufactured with younger children in mind to work on fine motor skills, but older children, teenagers and adults could also have a great time working with it in a Godly Play classroom. 

I like that whatever you create is not permanent and will eventually be taken apart. This helps children get away from the idea that our artistic endeavors are always something that we have to keep forever and put on our wall at home. Like land art, it a moment to be enjoyed between a child and God.

During one of our response times in Holland, I actually had a rather profound prayer experience  using the wooden Mandala above. I dumped all the blocks out and began making patterns with the colors. I watched as order and beauty came from chaos, and some of the shapes that come out of this had spiritual significance for me. It helped me to "hear" God's voice in a different way. 

As I've written in other posts, I also include Montessori Practical Life activities on my shelves when I have younger children present. Leslie from Thoughts from the Sheepfold has an article here that I have read over and over again about why we do this. 

Here is what we call a "transfer activity" below. The child transfers a hungry bird on the right to each apple in the ice tray on the left. This develops simple math skills and trains fine motor skills. 

When I visited my colleague, Heidi, in Wittenberg last fall, she had another interesting idea on her shelves. She had cut A4 mats of burlap and had a basket with bundles of colored wool in it. The children could then make pictures out of the wool by attaching it to the burlap. The unspun wool sticks to the burlap, so there is not need for glue. You'll be seeing more of that idea in our upcoming Easter Club 2013!

Burlap is an all natural fibre, and its rough texture is a
nice contrast to the soft wool.

What creative Response Materials have you used in your Godly Play settings?