easter 2015

In my last post , I showed some seasonal drawings I'd done with a five-year-old friend. I wonder if anyone noticed the little circles in the upper left of each picture. Remember my presenting the lesson about the liturgical year this summer ? Well, my friend certainly did! As soon as I began to explain that I wanted to make pictures for the seasons of the year, she made the association. She pulled out a red tube of glitter glue and explained that it would ideal for that one red square that is HOT . Even after I explained that I wanted the four seasons of Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall (rather than the liturgical seasons like Pentecost), she could not shake the memories of the Godly Play lesson.  You can talk about how time is in a line and also in a circle,  she offered. [This is how the Church Year lesson begins.] Our solution was to draw the Circle of the Church Year in the corner of each seasonal picture. I suspect that this association may be why she decided to put even ...

It may well have been Deb's Living Montessori Now post that first introduced me to the Montessori way of observing a child's birthday. The birthday child carries a globe around the "sun" , once for every year they have been alive. At many schools this is accompanied by a special song, looking at photographs of the child growing up, or even reminiscences from the different years of the child's life. For another description with a couple of gorgeous photos, see MariaMontessori.com . I decided I'd like to try something similar for my godson's birthday. Not having a globe, I started by printed out a large picture of the earth. Then Godson's sister and I drew labels for the four seasons of the year. the drawings by Godson's sister and Storyteller I put a big yellow candle in the middle of the room to signify the sun, placed the season signs around it, and then we sat in a rough circle around the candle. (Some Montessori schools are even more correct, s...

I drew this myself, as part of an exercise for my spiritual director.  (Please ignore the torn bit, caused by taping it up and then taking it down to bring home.)