Celebrating Easter Vigil at home 2020

In these interesting times of being at home and not able to get out to church, I thought it might be helpful for others to see how to conduct a Liturgy of Light in your home.  This is similar to what happens in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.  The Easter Vigil in many churches includes introducing a new candle at the evening service.  You can have your own home liturgy similar to that which happens in the Church.

You need to prepare a candle to use.  Find a pillar candle that you can paint.  Acrylic paints seem to be the best.  Consider how you would like to paint it.  The decorations need to be a cross.  Also you need to include the year "2020" and the symbols for Alpha and Omega.   Here are some pictures to see how we have done it in past years.

You can also look up #domesticeastercandle on Instagram for more photos.  

And please share your photos with this hashtag!  

The Liturgy is here.  You can print a copy for each family member, or read from your phone or computer.  Feel free to adapt to your needs!  I wish you a very happy Easter Triduum.

Scouting and badge making

Our learning community, Sursum Corda, has been working through the Scouting guidelines.

Last year it was appropriate that we get a little handicraft action and make the badges for our group.  Our group is hosted in Illinois and our state bird is the cardinal.  We thought it best to use this bird as our nature club figure. 

Each child was given a little piece of muslin and support to draw a head of a cardinal lightly in pencil.  Then using different colors of embroidery thread they stitched their bird and the words Sursum Corda.  Holding the muslin in an embroidery hoop while sewing helped to keep the stitches straight.



When the embroidery was done, each child was given two little rounds of wool for backing and a 1 inch pin back to sew on.  I used pinking shears to create the serrated edge. Need help starting Embroidery?




 
The children wore these proudly at our meetings and our final showcase in Spring 2019.

At our next Term (Fall 2019), we began to work more systematically through the guidelines and having the mothers check for real knowledge of the skills.  At the beginning of the Term, I asked each child to make a commitment to complete a certain guideline and make weekly efforts towards it.  They wrote down on a note card their goal.  Each time we met groups were organized around each kind of guidelines.  The children would review and work towards greater understanding.
The last time we met for the Term I asked each mother to determine which kind of tassel (or if no tassel) should be awarded for the work of the Term.

At our Family Showcase, I offered the tassels to each child (I had sewn them on for them at home) as I announced their completion of guideline. 

Need help making tassels?  Here is a tutorial. For single colored tassel, use one color.  For bi-colored tassel, I used two shades of the same color  For tri-colored tassel, I used three shades.  Pictured above is for Starcraft-Plain tassel.   I used 10 strands for each tassel.  

This is a picture of all the badges with tassels attached waiting to be handed out at the Family Showcase night.



Have you tried your hand at badge making?  At Embroidery and tassel making? 

Handicrafts: Embroidery

Charlotte Mason's programmes recommend a handicraft as part of the afternoon occupations for Forms 3 and up.  The younger forms would provide for some lesson time in the morning to learn basic skills to support the handicrafts.  In our family we tend to all do the same handicraft during the same term.  I've found embroidery to be one handicraft that supports a wide variety of ages and skill levels.  This year I have children in Forms 1b, 1a, 2, 4 and 5.

We are having a smaller 8 week Term to allow for holidays and travels.  So I chose to offer embroidery supplies again this Advent term as an easy way for the children to make gifts for friends and family.

Because of the great outpouring of encouragement and wonder from my pictures, I'm placing here some basic instructions to help get you started in your home.  Begin where you are.  Move forward slowly.  Let needle and thread become your friend.  This is a life long skill.

Things to buy:
Simple plain cotton or cotton blend fabric in either white or grey (1 yard each)

3 inch and 4 inch round wood hoops (enough for each child to have 2 or 3)
Embroidery floss (might want to pick up a multi color pack)
Embroidery needles
Scissors

Preparation by the mother:
In a large open basket, place:
-A pin cushion, magnet or small tin to store all the needles in. (I only put out 1 per child at a time)
-Small pair of scissors
-Embroidery hoops prepped with fabric.  First iron the fabric.
(You can employ a child to help with this!)

 

Cut the fabric to 5 inch squares for the 3 inch rounds or 7 inches for the 4 inch rounds.  Place fabric in embroidery hoops.
Using a simple pattern, such as this made by my high school aged daughter, carefully write with a pencil on the fabric to create some guides for sewing.  ETA: Valentines Day embroidery ideas

-Embroidery floss Cut the floss into 18" and wrap onto embroidery thread cards.  Place one or two lengths on each card.  Refill as needed.  (Giving the child a whole skein of embroidery floss is almost a given that you will have a knotted ball the next time you see it!)

To begin embroidery, you may wish to teach a child how to sew on a button first.  This helps them get comfortable with pulling the thread through the fabric forward and back and not around the hoop.  I have given my Form 0 child a hoop with gingham check fabric to allow them to see the lines and make patterns with the white squares and the colored ones.  Let them learn by doing, by failing and by trying again.
Let them learn how to thread a needle themselves.  Make sure to choose needles with large enough heads to accommodate the size of floss you are using.   Teach them how to reduce the floss to just two strands of thread.  Pulling thread of six strands of floss through any fabric can be difficult.

Set a timer (I personally think 10 minutes for Form 1) for the first few times they work.  It's much smarter to end happy and wanting to return to your project than to quit frustrated and never return.  A hoop with a project ongoing can easily be set back into the open basket waiting for the next afternoon.

Teach the child to store their needle in the fabric of their own hoop while projects are still in the process.  It's never fun to find a needle in the middle of the room stuck in the carpet.

As the mother you may wish to watch this simple video.  I like to teach these basic stitches to my children when they are around Form 3 or developmentally ready.  With six children of my own, I have all skill levels at all ages.  Some kids have great fine motor skills and this comes easy to them.  Others struggle and it becomes a real development of the will to continue to work on this skill.  Progress is the key.

Consider a "shared" 20 minutes of everyone working at the same time.  With younger children you may wish to have the lesson learning be part of the morning, then offering an more independent time in the afternoon.  With mom offering her wise passiveness beside the child while she works on her own embroidery project, you can create the attitude of independent work and help mother have some down time doing her own growing work at the same time.  My older children will sometimes do embroidery while I read aloud a family read.

Make sure to show off the work or make it ready to give away as a gift!
To complete the project, place a bead of glue around the edge of the back side of the hoop where the two frames meet.  Tighten the hoop one last time.  Then trim the edges off.  (Be careful to not over trim!)  Trace a circle of high quality paper/cardstock to cover the back.  Glue onto the frame.  Thread a ribbon through the metal screw at the top of the hoop and you are read to hang up your embroidery.

Here are two projects I finished a few years ago while we were traveling.  

Can you guess which state we might have visited?  

Pysanky Time

For the past seven or more years, my children and I have been doing Pysanky.  The local Anglican church has a group of ladies that learned Pysanky from the priests wife.  The priest and his wife had lived in New York City and learned from some Ukrainian women while living there.  When this priest and his wife moved to this area, she chose to pass on this skill to her parishioners.  I was lucky to be invited to join in the fun.  They now offer classes each Lent. It is such a delightful time to learn this art of dying and waxing.  Each year means more eggs for our family and it's great fun to compare the ones from years past.




















And it's so colorful to use them for decorating.  I love the symbolism found in the using flowers, fish and crosses.  Doesn't it just lift your heart and mind?


 

Have you had a chance to try your hand {and patience} at Pysanky?

Saintly Peg Dolls (repost from Catholic Attachment Parenting blog)

Our peg dolls are smiling from the table. Little hands reach up to collect a few. Then we chat about who this saint was and is. Have you heard about the rage of saint dolls for Catholic children?

Meet some of our peg dolls.

I’ve been painting small pegs of wood for many years. Sometimes I do a few at a time.   Imagine the simplicity of having a small image of a saint that mom would allow a child to carry around! The thrill of having your own likeness of a saint for your very own! My young children love it! I hear them play in the voice and character of each saint. It’s an awesome way to work out the understanding of what you have learned about a saint. We are encouraged to grow in faith and virtue as we learn about someone who strived before us.

Last summer I painted 20 of the same saint and traded dolls with some other moms. I began with a gentle sanding of the wood with fine grit sand paper. Then a gentle buffing with a cloth. Next required some study and imagination to translate 2D images depicting a saint into a 3D simple drawing. Each layer of paint was given to the wood with adequate time to draw.   I wondered if it was similar to how an icon is written. There was much time waiting for the paint to dry. When I had finished with all the paint, I gave three coats of protectant to the dolls. Again this required a waiting for the paint to dry between each layer. I was learning patience and so were my children!

Now these saints grace our children’s tables and move throughout the house as reminders. These saints are showing us how to be more like Jesus whether in our work or in our play.

Resources

Would you like to make your own saintly peg dolls? Here are some resources:

Paint a Peg Saint Tutorial. This is a great step-by-step tutorial for getting started on your saintly peg collection.

Easy Peg Dolls. Lacy at Catholic Icing has made it easy for anybody to make saint peg dolls. She offers patterns of the saint’s body to decoupage onto your peg, then you only need to paint the head.

Knowledge of the Universe: Handicrafts for Boys and Girls, beginning with Wood

This is a continuation of a VERY LONG post regarding how our methodology (curriculum) matches our philosophy.  Please read previous posts to catch up!

By the time my children can grasp a rattle, they want to grasp anything daddy does.  This includes hammers to drills!  Just this week I found my two year old carrying a pocket knife around the yard.  And yikes it was opened, but thankfully he was carrying it around by the blade!

If there is a tool in the house, a boy will find it!

So I don't give pocket knives to 2 year olds, but I do let them learn to use a hammer.  I give them an old stump as their base.  The wood is softer because it is decaying and we don't HAVE to pull the nails if we don't want to.  I make accessible some longer finishing nails and some small tack hammers.  They have a ball doing this!  And they get very good at making a nail go in straight.  (This is the virtue of Industry!)  I demonstrate driving a nail or two, but they get the hang of how to angle the hammer very quickly!

Products to use
Safety is very important to me.  So I inform goggles or glasses and gloves.  Here's what we own.  And much more!  I have eye and hand protection for every "worker" in the house.  There are times that everyone wants to be working on a project.   (Click photos for links)

 

We have very light weight hammers available to the kids similar to this one.
TEKTON 3013 Wood Claw Hammer, 8-Ounce
When they have mastered the skill of hammering a nail, I allow them to learn to use a drill and a saw.  My boys have been using this drill for the past 8 years.  Fiskars Hand Drill (85116984)
This is the saw that they use until they are 10.  It's even been used by my 2 year old son on small pieces of quarter round.  Allway Tool #HSN Handy Hand Saw/Blades

Simple woodworking exercises.  I like using Montessori Services Catalog to see what is used in primary schools for woodworking supplies.  You might ask a wood worker friend if you can have his "scraps".  These small pieces of wood are perfect beginning supplies for a creative boy.  My sons (as young as four years old) have made "planes" to "bookshelves".  The finished product sometimes needs a little imagination from this mother, but they have made cuts with a saw and used a hammer.  This book was useful in the beginning when I was collecting tools and making a space.

The finished projects of 2year old and 5 year olds have some resemblance to the real thing (and sometimes not), but having a finished product in hand makes them so happy.  I like to display the woodworking projects on our kitchen table for a day or two.  We enjoy them and the remember the process in which they were created.

Do you encourage woodworking?
(next post woodworking for the older child...)