Oct. 14, 2012: We Pray as Jesus Did

     Today was all about prayer! We learned that we can pray anywhere and at anytime. We read a book called "God, Do You Love Me?" by Karen Lynn Coffee. The Book starts with Karen asking God a simple question, "Do you love me?" God then proceeds to tell Karen how much he loves her, through his gifts. "The grass to comfort your feet... The Bible to guide you...The family to care for you" just to name a few. We talked about how God answered Karen's prayer, not by actually speaking to her, but by showing her he loved her by all of his gifts around her. We also talked about how God might not always answer prayers right away either.

     We read page 202 of the We Believe textbook together. We learned that prayer is talking and listening to God, we can pray anytime, we can pray anywhere and we can pray about anything. We didn't get a chance to draw a picture of ourselves on that page, but feel free to do some at home.

     We spent a good chunk of time today talking about how there are different ways we can pray. The first thing we did was an activity where we showed different postures for prayer such as: Putting you hands together with pointing upward, putting your hands together with your fingers locked, praying with your arms open (like during the Our Father at Mass), folding them in front of you or putting them in the air. We talked about how it does not matter how you fold your hands for prayer, what matters is that you are focused and showing respect to God.

     Spontaneous prayer can be difficult for some children. Some think that the only prayers are the formed prayers like the Glory Be or Our Father. We used the "Give me 5!" method:

This poster hangs in our classroom

1. Thumb: Praise God
2. Pointer Finger: Confess Your Sins
3. Middle Finger: Thank God
4. Ring Finger: Pray for Others
5. Pinky Finger: Pray for Yourself

    

     We completed page 203 in our book as well. This page shows us that we can pray at anytime and anywhere. It shows different pictures of people praying in groups. Children are asked to place a check mark next to the pictures that show where they pray with others.

Jacob's Service Project

      Today we also completed our first service project as well. We colored crosses for those in need. Each one says, "I said a prayer for you today" and will be distributed later this year by our confirmation class on a field trip as they complete a service project.

     The final activity we did in class today was read the booklet found on pages 205 and 206 of the We Believe textbook. We talked about how people were praying and what they might be praying about on each page. We concluded by praying the "Glory Be".

     For homework, we assigned We Believe page 208, Reproducible Master 23 & Video Reproducible Master 23. It is not necessary to watch the video to do the assignment  but if you wish to do so, you can by clicking this link: Video for Chapter 23. This week we also sent home parent information for the saint you child has been assigned for the Saint Parade in November. We will be spending one more week practicing the "Glory Be" in class before moving on to our next prayer, "Hail Mary." If you would like to get a head start on the "Hail Mary," go for it! We hope you have a great week!


Yours in Christ,

     Jason & Laura Madrigal

Oct. 7, 2012: We Learn About God with our Families

     We are so glad that we had the chance to meet several of you parents during our first Parents Day. We hope that you get a better idea of how our classroom runs, even though we held class in the large hall this week. It means a lot to us that you are passionate about your child's faith.

     We started class by not sharing a big bag of Starburst candy. Immediately everyone had said that that was not fair and that we should share the candy with them. We did decide to share it with them after all, we told them that God's love is like candy. There may be times that we want to keep God's love for ourselves, but His love is meant to be shared with others. A great place to share God's love is with our families.

Morgan's "Stained Glass" Heart

    We asked everyone if they knew what their favorite color was, everyone was ale to answer that easy question. Then we began to ask some tougher questions like "What was their Mom's favorite color?" or "What was their Dad's favorite color?" Those were a bit harder to answer, but most children knew the answer. At the front of the room we had set up tables with broken crayons, separated by color families. They were each given a piece of wax paper and asked to put their favorite color on it along with those of their Mom, Dad and siblings, if applicable. We melted down the crayons and framed the "stained glass" in a heart frame. This represents how families share God's love. 

     It was parents vs. children as one group acted out ways to share God's love while the other group guessed how they were sharing God's love. We had someone sharing toys, someone helping someone with a boo boo and people cheering up someone who was sad. Page 103 in the We Believe book had an additional activity that showed more ways families can share God's love.

     This week we assigned Reproducible Master 11 and Sharing Faith Chapter 11, both of which are handouts. In addition we assigned each child the saint they will be researching for the Saint Parade next month. We will be providing parents resources on the saint assigned to your child(ren) along with more information on what is expected. The following is the list of assigned saints:

                                                                                                         

Bl. Kateri Tekakwitha	Ashlyn
St. Mary, The Blessed Virgin	Marion
St. Joseph	Jake
St. Cosmas/St. Damian	Kyle/Tyler
St. Patrick	Jacob
St. Nicholas	Len
St. Peter	Tommy
St. Francis of Assisi	DeVaughn
St. Sebastian	Jonah

     We hope to see everyone at the Halloween Dance this Saturday!

Yours in Christ,

     Jason & Laura Madrigal

Sept. 30, 2012: We Belong to the Church

     Hello all,
     I apologize once more for not being able to update the blog last week, the following is the entry for the class held on September 30, 2012.

Together we make up the Church, just like these links make a chain.

     Each child was given a strip of construction paper to make a link. This link represented them. One by one we added the links together. We had asked them what they noticed as we put our paper chain together. The natural answer they gave was it got bigger, a great answer. We proceeded to tell them that the more people we would add, the larger the chain would get. The chin represented the Church, the people make up the church. We talked about how the Church is a family that we all enter with the sacrament of Baptism.

     We covered Baptism by reading and completing the activities on pages 194-196 of the We Believe textbook.

     The highlight of this class was getting to tour our church. We started by learning that the church has holy water and we bless ourselves with the water by making the "Sign of the Cross" when we enter. We learned that the church is a very special place, and at the front is a place where the body of Christ is stored and it is called the Tabernacle. We also know that before we go on the alter we have to bow as a sign of respect to Jesus. We went up on the alter to get a good look at the baptismal font. 

     While we were in the church, we thought it was a good place to learn our next prayer. All the children learned how to genuflect and that the name for the benches is church are called Pews. We knelt as we learned how to pray the "Glory Be".

Yours in Christ,

     Jason & Laura Madrigal

Celebrate Faith... Let's Dance

St. Matthias Religious Education and CYA Young Adult Ministry are hosting a Halloween Dance Party just for our families.

Saturday October 13th

6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

All children in St. Matthias Religious Ed Kindergarten through 8th Grade are invited to attend. At least parent must be present during the event regardless of age.

The cost is free and we invite the whole family to attend.

Wear your costume and come see your favorite and future teachers groovin' to the music.

Please RSVP the number planning to attend by calling 219-663-4281 or E-Mail at JACKIEMGENTRY@Yahoo.com

Sept. 23, 2012: God Created You and Me

     Today we finished our unit on creation, by learning that God created everyone and he loves us all. We started by learning that God created a man from the clay and called him Adam, who was the first man. We also learned that God created Eve from one of Adam's ribs.

     When looking around the room, one can notice that everyone is different. Our next activity shows just how many different personalities are in our class. "A Bear of a Different Color" is one of our favorite activities of the year because it allows us to get to know each child in the class. Each child is given a coloring page of a teddy bear. We ask them to look at everyone's bear and notice that they are all the same, because we were all created the same.

A Bear of a Different Color 2012

     Next we ask a series of questions, that have between 2 to 4 answer choices. Each question requires them to color a different part of their bear according to the answer they chose. For example, "If you have a brother color the bear's HEAD blue, if you have a sister color the bear's HEAD pink, if you have both color the bear's HEAD red and if you do not have a brother or sister color the bear's HEAD orange." So if the child said they have 2 brothers, they colored the head blue. The rest of the questions range from "Do you like grape or apple juice more?" to "Do you go to church?" (The church question was the heart and they colored it yellow if they do. As you can see our whole class said they go to church!)

     Finally, when all the bears were colored, we asked everyone to look at the bears around them and asked what they noticed. Everyone was able to say that they were all different. Then we asked if God would love one of these bears more than another and one child said that God loves them all the same. This is a great activity to show how God makes everyone special. As you can see from our wall of "Bears of a Different Color" that no 2 students are a like, not even the set of twins (one prefers to have both chocolate and vanilla ice cream).

     The We Believe textbook has great little booklets inside it and today we used one that shows that people all are different either by the way they dress, the things they like to do, the things they like to eat or the way they look, but on  each page it asks, "Who made these people?" The last page concludes with "God loves all these people."

Ashlyn's Person

     Going back to the second story of creation, where God made Adam out of the clay, we used Model Magic to make ourselves out of clay. We talked about how God blew the "Breath of Life" into Adam and only God could do that, so our clay people won't actually be able to come to life. Each child was able to create themselves our of the Model Magic and decorate themselves with with googly eyes, pipe cleaners and construction paper. 



     Everyone will be able to take these home next week after they dry. Everyone should also have brought home the Earth they made on the first day of class today as well.

     Today was the last day dedicated to working on The Sign of the Cross in class, please continue to work with it with your child as it is fundamental for all of the other prayers. Next week we will begin working on the Glory Be, feel free to practice at if you would like to get a head start. All the prayers they will be learning this year, with the exception of Angel of God, can be found the last pages of the book in a booklet called My Prayer Book.
     
     A few reminders, class starts at 8:30 am and we ask that all kindergartners are dropped off directly at the church. Next week we will begin talking about The Church, we ask that if possible, please send your child with a picture of their baptism that can be glued into their book. Please remember to sign the homework sheet and have your child return it and their completed homework each week.

     Have a great week everyone!

Yours in Christ,

     Jason & Laura Madrigal

Sept. 16, 2012: God Created the World and Everything In It Part 2

     Today we learned more about the awesome gifts that God gave us, in fact we started by drawing gifts that God gave us on slips of paper to put in our gift jar. Our gift jar was used for our closing prayer in which we thanked God for his gifts including: grass, sky, lions, tree, water and flowers.

Jonah's Day 2 Bottle

     Then we made our Day 2 Bottles.

      With some water, food coloring and some baby oil, we can take an aquapod and turn it into what the world would have looked like on the second day of creation.Gently rock the bottle and create some peaceful waves. We even cracked open the We Believe book this week and read the thank you prayer for water.

     The Earth was still not complete, so we talked about how God had given us land. Through Dr. Suess' The Lorax, we learned that we have to take care of the land because God gave it to us as a very special gift.

     Today several of our students attempted "The Sign of the Cross" and everyone either knew it or came very close, so we would like to thank you, the parents, for working on it over the past week. We encourage you to keep practicing it with them at home this week as well. After next week, we will move on to our next prayer, "The Glory Be."

     For homework this week, your child has been assigned pages 42 & 50 in their We Believe book, as well as the Sharing with my Family Chapter 4 handout. As a final note, please remember to send your child to class with their book, as we will be using it in class every week unless otherwise specified. Have a great week and see you Sunday.

Yours in Christ,

     Jason & Laura Madrigal

Sept. 9, 2012: God Created the World and Everything In It Part 1

Tyler's World

     Today we started class at the very beginning of time, The Creation. We discussed that God created the world and everything in it. If your child told you that today they created the world, they would be referring to our marble art project. We started by learning that there was nothing before God created the world, like their blank page, then we took that blank page, put it in a box, added some paint and marbles and shook it up.

     The Classroom went dark as it was when God created the world, and when learning that God created light, the classroom was bright. Finally, each student made a special animal friend as we talked about all the creatures God had made. These activities cover material from chapters 1, 2 and 5 in your child's textbook. If your child would like to to play games or get additional activities on the computer over these chapters, visit our book's companion website.

     We took time to start learning our first prayer, "The Sign of the Cross" and ended class with a "Glory Be." We ask that you at least practice "The Sign of the Cross" this week with your child. Your child has also been assigned 2 worksheets and a family page for homework this week. Reproducible Master 2 instructs your child to color the spaces with stars yellow to find the hidden word "God" and Reproducible Master 5 instructs your child to circle an animal and draw a picture of how they can take care of it. The family page does not need to be returned next week, but we ask that you answer the questions on it together as a family at some point this week. It can take as little or as long of time as you would like. If you have any questions regarding homework, feel free to comment on this post or reach us on any of the methods in the letter we sent home for you. It is expected that both Reproducible Masters and the signed Homework Sheet are returned next class.

     Next week, we will continue to learn about the things that God has made. We plan on holding part of class outside next week, as long as it does not rain, so please make sure your child has a sweater or jacket.

     We hope you and your child have a great week!

Yours in Christ,

     Jason & Laura Madrigal