All Saints Day

Catholic Saint Craft for Kids

March 10, 2011 By Lacy

Catholic ABC’s Week: 24
Letter of the week: S
Theme: Saints
Saint of the Week: St. Sebastian
Craft: Saint Collage Craft

This craft is soooo easy to do! Just fold some paper in half, cut out a heart, glue it down, and trace around it with a marker. Then write “Saints, Our Heavenly Family”. Have the kids cut out and glue down pictures of the saints in the heart. You can use holy cards, print pictures from the internet, or cut up some of your Catholic catalogs you have lying around. We used our Autom Catalog.

I actually didn’t invent this craft idea- it was thought of by my friend Denise, who used to teach my preschool class before me. Here’s a variation of this craft on a cloud:

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter S: (be sure to check out the Classroom Script
for directions on using the grab bag.) Snack, Saint Statues, Sock, Strawberries, Star, Snake, Sun, Snowflake, Salt, Sugar packet, Stone, Soup can, Smiley face, String, Sand or Sandpaper, Sail boat, Soap, Sardines, School Bus, Screwdriver, Seashell, Sunflower Seeds. Try to avoid things that start with “Sh” when they’re first learning the sound of the letter S.

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter Ss. (Her Ss lesson is on the Samson.)

Catholic ABC’s runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday (except for today… which is a Thursday. Lol!) with the new
letter of the week. You can find the details of the program here.

Filed Under: 00 All The Time, All Saints Day, Catholic ABC's, Crafts for Kids, Liturgical Year, My Crafts, Saints 3 Comments

Queenship of Mary Craft

February 22, 2011 By Lacy

Catholic ABC’s Week: 22
Letter of the week: Q
Theme: Queenship of Mary
Saint of the Week: Mary, Queen of the Saints
Craft: Queenship of Mary Sun catcher

I know that Catholic ABC’s usually runs on Wednesday, but today I have this post ready and I won’t have today’s post ready until tomorrow…. so I switched them around.

This adorable craft was actually developed by the lady who used to teach my preschool class before me. It’s one of my favorites! I did change it up a little.

Materials Needed To Complete This Craft:

Wax Paper
Black Fabric Paint (glue mixed with paint*)
Stained Glass Paint (or regular paint mixed with glue**)
Colored paper
Gold glitter glue
Glue

Start by drawing a very simple picture of Mary with a crown. I wanted to provide this for you, but I’m having scanner issues. Trust me- you can do this! When you have your sketch, tear off a piece of wax paper and lay it on top. Trace around your simple lines with black fabric paint. *I have read that you can open up some white glue and add a little black paint to it in substitution for fabric paint, but I haven’t tried it. Let this dry. (These only took me about a minute each to outline once I had my sketch).

When it’s dry, have the children paint in Mary with blue stained glass paint. **If you’d like to save yourself some money and a trip to the craft store, you can substitute this for a paint/glue mixture. This mixture needs to have more paint than glue. It’s not quite as nice as the stained glass paint, but it works in a pinch (and it’s what we used for ours).

After they paint all over their wax paper, you can wipe off the paint around Mary’s dress and in her face with a paper towel. Then have them squirt gold glitter glue into Mary’s crown. Again, you can wipe with paper towel if they make a mess.

Cut out a paper frame for your Mary and glue it on around the edge of the wax paper. We used colored poster board, but construction paper is just as good. We then glued on a scrap of our paper to make the frame a Q since “Q is for Queenship of Mary”.

Last year the kids made them a little differently. Here are some more pictures:

I like these ones with the stars, but it’s very time consuming to draw them all with the fabric paint, so I skipped them. They really do look really cute hanging up in the window!

Check out this post for an alternate Queenship of Mary Craft.

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter Q: (be sure to check out the Classroom Scriptfor directions on using the grab bag.) Quilt (or quilted toilet paper), Quarts crystal, Q-tips, Quarter, Football player (Quarterback), Bee toy (for Queen bee), Quail, Quill (take any feather, cut the end off, and scribble on it with a sharpie), Queen, Quaker oatmeal.

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter Qq. (Her Qq lesson is on “Quail”)

Catholic ABC’s runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday (except for today when it ran on Tuesday) with the new letter of the week. You can find the details of the program here.

Filed Under: All Saints Day, Catholic ABC's, Crafts for Kids, Mary, May Crowning, My Crafts, Queenship of Mary 2 Comments

Nun Craft – Paper Bag Puppets

February 2, 2011 By Lacy

Catholic ABC’s Week: 19
Letter of the week: N
Theme: Nun
Saint of the Week: St. Nicholas
Craft: Paper Bag Nun Puppets

Materials needed to complete this craft:

Paper lunch bags
Assorted construction paper
Glue
Googly eyes
Manila File Folder
Scissors
Assorted supplies for “extras”

I developed this craft to use with my preschool co-op class, who are all 2 years old. This is the version I intended for them to make. (They didn’t get to make theirs yet because class was canceled this week due to weather).

This is a generic nun craft. Lets call her Mother Superior. She’s made out of black construction paper and white copy paper. Because the kids in my class are only 2, I cut out the pieces ahead of time but allow them to assemble the pieces themselves. Here are the pieces you’ll need:

To get the size of the dress right, just trace the paper bag onto black paper. First glue on the rectangle for the dress, then the side pieces of the habit, then the white rectangle of the habit, then the top black rectangle. Add the white collar piece. Then decorate the face as desired and add any additional pieces you’d like. When assembling, be sure to hang the head half way off of the bag flap so it functions as a puppet. Let the habit pieces hang down- don’t attach them to the body or the puppet won’t work.

Sometimes, when this craft is made by a 2 year old, it turns out like this. Who am I to argue with an “artist”? If that’s where he wants the eyes, I say “That’s very creative, Julian!”.

I wanted my preschool class to make little rosaries for their nuns. I think this will be a big hit, because 2 year olds love to string stuff. I’m providing half a pipe cleaner each and some regular pony beads. My plan is to encourage them to string on 10 beads for a 1 decade rosary. Stringing onto pipe cleaners is super easy to do because they’re already stiff, and the pony beads just stay on- no falling off the bottom. Bring the loop around, twist it shut, stick on one more bead for the “Our Father” and add a crucifix to the end. I have a pack of these crucifixes from Autom- they’re only 9 cents each! I love to let kids use them for crafts because they’re no good for regular rosaries. (They’re not much more sturdy than aluminum foil). You can just glue these rosaries right onto the puppet. If you don’t have any crucifixes, just cut some crosses out of paper.

Because we studied monstrances last week for “M”, Lydia was absolutely insistant that her nun have a monstrance instead of a rosary. My reply to that? “Sure! She can be Saint Clare!”. (Who, by the way, would actually have a brown robe).

This one was all Lydia. She did all the cutting, gluing, and designing. She (of course) chose the largest googly eyes I had, and multiple colored markers for the face. She even traced around a can for the head and cut the circle out herself. She’s almost 5. The monstrance she needed help with. I helped her to cut out the yellow piece like you would a simple snowflake craft by folding it first, and then cutting. We used felt for her habit because I actually ran out of black paper. Can you believe that? Then I made a nun with a monstrance, too!

So if adding a monstrance turns a generic Mother Superior to St. Clare, who does the nun become with some roses?

St. Therese! Sort of… but she actually also needed to have a brown robe. That would be so easy because you would just leave the bag brown! Anyway, her roses are made from tissue paper and green pipe cleaners. Nuns actually come in all different colors, so do a google search and make a bunch of them from all different orders! Pink and purple nuns definitely exist.

For extra fun, dress up like a nun when teaching your preschool for the letter “N”. You have no excuse not to because I posted directions for making the world’s easiest nun costume ever yesterday! (And now it allllll makes since.)

And dress your daughters up like nuns, too. So much fun!

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter N: (be sure to check out the Classroom Script fordirections on using the grab bag.) Nuts, Napkin, Nail polish, Nurse hat, Necklace, Nun doll, bottle Nipple, Nail file, Nail (use caution), Name tag, Nativity, Nerds candy, Net, Newspaper, Notebook, Nickel, Noodles, compass for “North”, Nose (compliments of Mr. Potato Head), Nutmeg.

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter N. (Her N lesson is on Noah’s Ark.)

Catholic ABC’s runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday with the newletter of the week. You can get the details of this program by checkingout the Classroom Script.

We had a lot of fun with these! Expect to see more paper bag puppets from me in the future because my children adore them!

Filed Under: 00 All The Time, All Saints Day, Catholic ABC's, Crafts for Kids, Monstrance, My Crafts, Nun, Ordinary Time, Saints, St. Clare, St. Therese 9 Comments

How to Make a Nun Costume

February 1, 2011 By Lacy

That’s right- a no sew, no fuss, super easy nun costume. Most of you can probably put this together with stuff you already have at home.

What you need to make an easy nun costume:

Graduation gown (or plain black dress)
White t-shirt
Black fabric or black t-shirt

Start with an old graduation gown. If you don’t have one, you can probably get one pretty cheap at a thrift store. I’m pretty lucky that my husband graduated from Franciscan, so his was black. However, if your graduation robe is a different color, do a quick google image search to see if nuns come in that color- chances are there’s an order somewhere that does! Then put on a white t-shirt- but not all the way. Put your face through, but don’t pull it all the way over your head. Like so:

Then throw the sleeves behind your shoulders. Nothing too hard here. You can even see that the shirt I’m using has a small logo on it- whatever!

Then throw a piece of black fabric on top. I didn’t have any black fabric, so I folded a black t-shirt in half long ways and it worked just fine. Attach with bobby pins for extra wearability.

Then hold a rosary and try to look really “holy”.

And because I’m not really that cute, check out this picture!

The baby on the left (a baby friend of ours) has a costume made with a very similar technique, and Violet on the right (My little sweetheart) is wearing a nun costume that I already posted directions for.

This post might seem a bit random to you today (given that it’s not currently Halloween, All Saint’s Day, or any other day of which you think you would need a costume… YET!) But tomorrow, “N is for Nun” and you just might find this post a little more handy. I know I will!