First Communion

Make Your Own Candy Cross Pops!

March 29, 2012 By Lacy

I’ve been seeing diy jolly rancher pops around the internet, and the wheels in my brain started turning. I was sure you could easily make these into crosses, and it turns out, I was right!

There was a learning curve to figuring out how to make these into crosses, but luckily, I’m willing to share my research with you.

Supplies Need:

Regular ‘ol Jolly Ranchers. *Have your preschooler arrange them by color as a bonus montessori activity, then have your 6 year old graph the colors for a bonus math activity! Ok, the homeschooler in me will shut up now.
Life Savers (to make the flowers, not the crosses)
Wooden Kitchen Skewers (or go to your local craft store and over-pay for “real” lolli-pop sticks)
Aluminum Foil
Cheap sandwich baggies (without zippers)
Ribbon

How to Make Your Own Jolly Rancher Cross Pops:

Preheat your oven to 225 degrees Fahrenheit.
Unwrap your jolly ranchers, and cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil, shiny side up.
The jolly rancher in the middle of your cross needs a little extra oven time, so place just your middle jolly rancher on the cookie sheet and place in the oven on the center rack for 1 minute. (Allow room on the foil to build the rest of your cross and also for your stick.)
Remove the tray from the oven (don’t burn yourself) and arrange the rest of the jolly ranchers around the middle one in a cross shape. Place them as closely together as possible.
Place the tray back in the oven, and heat for about 5 minutes, or until the jolly ranchers melt together.
Take the tray out of the oven, immediately place the stick on the cross, (I used wooden skewers because they’re way cheaper than loli pop sticks) and roll until the candy surrounds the stick.
Allow the candy to cool and harden, then lift off the foil.

Each pop comes out unique and beautiful!

I love the colors on these and they’re so beautiful when the light shines through them! The cross pops look like they’re made out of stained glass!

After you’ve finished making your cross pops, wrap them in cello and tie a cute little bow at the bottom! (By the way, when I say “cello”, I actually mean cheap sandwich baggies that come without a zipper. Also, I used ribbon from the dollar spot at Michael’s).

I also made some cross pops out of jolly rancher “smoothies”. They had to melt about 2 minutes longer than the regular jolly ranchers.

We also made some flower-shaped loli-pops from life savers and jolly ranchers. For these, you don’t need to melt the middle any extra time. Just arrange on the tray and heat for about 5 minutes.

Arrange like this...

and make flower pops!

We had a fun time making these! Lydia was a great helper.

We’re going to be sticking these cross pops in our Easter baskets this year. I’m sure they’ll be a hit!

These could also be cute a religious snack or favor for pretty much anything- First Communion, Vacation Bible School… pretty much anything bible related.

Here they are all wrapped up and waiting for Easter!

I made them into an Easter candy bouquet by sticking them into a block of Styrofoam. Also, I made labels to put on the sticks from this adorable Jesus from Happy Saints. (I heart Happy Saints!)

Pin It

Filed Under: Bible Crafts, Christian, Cross, Easter, First Communion, Fun Food, My Kitchen Creations, Vacation Bible School 12 Comments

Craft for Catholic Kids – Make a Monstrance!

April 1, 2011 By Lacy

April is the month dedicated to the Holy Eucharist! We’ve been learning about the mass and Eucharist around here, plus I’ve been teaching my kids about adoration, so this is perfect for us! My daughter has been pretty fascinated by monstrances ever since “M” week around here, so we recently crafted these monstrances.

What you need to make this Catholic Monstrance Craft:

A Pool Noodle (yellow)
Pipe Cleaners (yellow or gold)
White Paper
Popsicle Sticks
Craft Glue
Gold glitter and or glitter glue

This is so incredibly cheap and easy to do that it would be a great craft for a whole class of kids, like for instance a first communion class. I actually had enough pieces left over from our pool noodle rosary make several of these! This is also a good craft to do in preparation for adoration for kids. Here’s what you do:

Before you begin, slice the pool noodle up. I got our pool noodle from the Dollar Tree, and it was flower shaped, but I have confidence that the craft would be cute with regular round pool noodles, too. I like to slice pool noodles with my bread knife- just be careful! You’ll also need to make 2 cuts for inserting the popsicle stick. You can do this with scissors. Each monstrance you make will need one pool noodle to have a cut in the bottom, and the other one in the side. See the picture:

Each child will need 2 slices of pool noodle, and 1 Popsicle stick. (We happened to have yellow popsicle sticks, but a regular one would work, too. You could also color them yellow with a marker.)

You can cut the pipe cleaners in fourths with scissors. Have the children insert them around one pool noodle slice- they will stick right in. My 5 year old and 2 year old were both able to do this.

Decorate with gold glitter and/or glitter glue. Lots and lots of glitter makes children very happy! Plus, monstrances are supposed to be special for Jesus.

We also added jewels with red and green glitter glue. (You can get packages of gold, green, and red glitter and glitter glue at most Dollar Trees).

Put a little glue on the ends of the popsicle stick before inserting them into the pool noodle to keep them secure. Cut a white circle from paper and insert it in the middle for the “host”. If you stick the popsicle stick all the way through, you should be able to glue it right onto the stick. Cover anything that’s still visible in yet even more glitter.

We made our top pipe cleaner piece into a cross with another section of pipe cleaner, because monstrances seem to have crosses on top. This was super fun and easy, plus they came out pretty cute. Even the one 2-year-old Julian made.

If you’re looking for something even easier, don’t forget

about our Gold Doily Monstrances we made!

Happy Catholic Crafting, everyone!

Filed Under: 00 All The Time, 04 April, Adoration, First Communion, Monstrance, My Crafts, St. Clare 16 Comments

First Communion Craft – Make a First Communion Banner

March 1, 2011 By Lacy

Either I was the last Catholic on the planet to hear of first communion banners, or some of you also aren’t familiar with this popular first communion tradition. Some parishes have all of their first communicants make banners. If this is the case at your church, you’ll need to check and see if there are “rules” you need to follow (for instance, they want everyone’s banner to be the same size, etc.) The rest of you may feel free to fly by the seat of your pants!

Believe it or not, it’s pretty easy to make a first communion banner, and there is no need for sewing! If you’re feeling like this might be too crafty for you- think again! I’m going to show you exactly how to make a first communion banner and I promise you it’s not as hard as you think!

Materials Needed to Make a First Communion Banner:

Big piece of felt or other fabric for background (don’t shy away from bright colors!)
Wooden dowel
String
Glue
Assorted colors of felt (the stiff kind works best)
Sharp Scissors
Glitter glue or Fabric paint and craft jewels (optional)

Start by having you child sketch out what they want their first communion banner to look like. Let them design the first communion banner themselves- it will be more special to them that way! Some different symbols you can suggest for their first communion banner could include a chalice, dove, host, monstrance, lamb, grapes, wheat, cross, angel, bible, Jesus fish, or even a rainbow. Don’t forget to leave room for your name and possibly the date.

When they’re ready, have them cut their symbol pieces out of felt. We found that the stiff felt was easier to work with than the floppy kind, and I love the felt with glitter!

Have them keep arranging their pieces and designing their first communion banner until everything is where they want it. Then they can glue the pieces down. You can either make an attempt to cut the letters of your child’s name out of felt, or you can look for pre-cut felt letters at your craft store. You can even buy iron-on letters. You could also just use your fabric paint to write on the name and date, which would be a lot easier than cutting the letters out.

Once the felt pieces are all down, your child can embellish their first communion banner with glitter glue and fabric paint or even fake jewels! The possibilities are endless, so be creative!

When your child is finished decorating the front of their banner, let it all dry before moving on. Now you need to be able to put the dowel through the back so it can hang up. Here’s how we went about doing that- and yes- a picture is worth a thousand words.

We let it dry like this.

It worked really well!

Tie on your string to your dowel and you’re all finished!

Now that wasn’t so bad… was it?

What do you do with a first communion banner? Well, it’s generally displayed at the first communion mass. Some churches hang them all up on strings, some hang them off the sides of the pews. After first communion, taking your child’s picture with their adorable banner is a must!

When you get back home hang it up in their room as a memento of this important day! (By the way, this is my little brother. He is so proud of his banner!)

If you’d like to see more first communion banner examples, Angie at Many Little Blessings has a pictures of more than 40 child-made first communion banners. Of course, all inclusive first communion banner kits are available if that’s more your speed, and some of them are quite striking when completed!

Filed Under: Crafts for Kids, First Communion, My Crafts, Spring 5 Comments

Craft a Monstrance with a Gold Doily

January 26, 2011 By Lacy

Catholic ABC’s Week: 18
Letter of the week: M
Theme: Monstrance
Saint of the Week: Mother Teresa
Craft: Monstrance Craft

Supplies needed to complete this craft:

Gold Doilies (Available in the cake decorating section of your local craft store. I got a package of 12 for about $2.50)
Gold Paper (I bought just one sheet in the scrapbooking aisle for 60 cents. It was enough for about 10 monstrances.)
Glue Stick
Stick on Jewels (also available in a craft store)
Foam Board and/or Paper (You can get foam board at the Dollar Tree, and each board will yield enough to make 4 of these).
Marker

This week in my preschool co-op class, M is for “Monstrance”. This was a great craft for my class!

I cut the pieces out ahead of time so the kids could put them all together. If your kids are good with scissors, I would let them cut the pieces themselves. I first had them glue down a piece of green paper for the table (so the monstrance wouldn’t appear to be floating). We used green because we are currently in ordinary time. Next they glued on the golden sticks for the monstrance, and then the doily. The “host” I just cut out of white paper and drew on a cross with a marker- have them glue it in the middle and decorate with jewels however they want.

As they’re working on their craft, talk to them about how the monstrance is gold and decorated with precious jewels because of how special Jesus in the Eucharist is to us.

I really like the one my 4 year old, Lydia, made on purple paper! I would have liked to offer the kids in my preschool class to make them in different colors, but it wasn’t feasible with so many kids.

Because Lydia is older than the kids in my preschool class and she is learning to write her letters, I wrote the word “Monstrance” lighly with a pencil and let her trace over it with a black marker- then erase the pencil marks.

We also talked about circles at preschool this week, so this craft went along perfectly as a Catholic circle craft! Also, consider a field trip to adoration this week for your child to see a real monstrance. Our church has a special hour for children’s adoration, and I’m taking them tomorrow (weather permitting…).

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter M: (be sure to check out the Classroom Script fordirections on using the grab bag.) Monkey, Money, Man, Monster, Moon, Moose, Mother Teresa holy card, Motorcycle, Mouse, Mug, Magnet, Marble, Mouth (from Mr. Potato Head), Monk.

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

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.