Lenten calendar

Matrushka Emily was wondering what others were doing to mark the passing of Great Lent for the little ones.

Our Lenten calendar is a simple one, adapted from
Macrina Lewis' Children’s Garden of the Theotokos.

Our little boat will move forward each Sunday. Each day the children collect one of the stones and place it in the jar after we read a section of the book suggested by Mary. Our Matrushka had recommended it as well and the post at Evlogia reminded me. Luckily they had it in our Parish bookstore. I have the stones for Holy week set a little higher than the rest.

Our jar usually has a candle on top and a liturgical/seasonal display in the bottom for lighting during our family reading time but I thought a simple rock/tomb would be appropriate for Lent. I'm thinking maybe when we get home on Pascha the stones will have been replaced by a treat and the rock replaced by an icon of the Resurrection. Hmmm...any ideas?

Happy Birthday Valentine!

My baby is 1! He was feeling a bit camera shy! It was a lovely day and he slept though most of forgivness vespers.

Matching Matrushkas...

When I found this scrapbooking paper at my local craft store I snagged the whole stack :)

It has been showing up in a lot of projects around our house.

Blue Eyes loves these matching cards I made by cutting out and laminating the dolls.

Foolish words...

We are finishing up a main lesson block on Animal Legends.
Our last story is "Foolish Words- A Jataka Tale" from Donna Simmons
It is a amusing Chicken Little type tale.
We have tons of old water color paintings hanging about so Biddy and I created this mural out of them.
She enjoyed the rare privilege of using Mama's sharpies.
We will enjoy it for a while then paste the pictures into her Main Lesson Book.



We used mostly stories from Donna's book for this block but we did make up our own version of the Tortoise and the Hare starring a crab and snail and a mermaid.

And we used this wonderful story Mouse Deer and Tiger from Aaron Shephard whom many of you will know from his lovely re-telling of the Baker's Dozen.

February...

Gluten Free Saints Day-Chinese Martyrs

OK so technically Chinese New Year is not an Orthodox Holy Day and technically fortune cookies are American not Chinese. However Chinese New year gives our family another chance to remember that the Church is bigger than just the building we go to each week- that the Church is many people and cultures from many lands all encompassed in the Body of Christ.

So here is a great fortune cookie recipe to munch as you read up on the Martyrs of the Boxer rebellion.

Gluten Free Fortune Cookies:

write out your messages first!- we wrote "kindnesses" on ours like -Hug someone today!

Ingredients: l egg
1/3 cup sugar or xylitol
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons water
¼ cup cornstarch

Beat egg until frothy then beat in sugar and oil. Whisk cornstarch into water (it will be thick like oobleck:) slowly drip in cornstarch mixture while mixer runs.

Heat lightly oiled pan to low medium -my dial goes to 9 and i cooked it on about 3.5, or until drops of water sizzle on the hot pan. Pour heaping tablespoon of batter on the pan and spread with the back of a spoon to about a 4 inches circle. Cook until edges are slightly brown and cookies can be easily flipped—about 5 to 6min.. If they stick they need to cook longer. Turn and cook the other side, until light brown.Place fortune paper on cookie as soon as it is removed from the pan -they get brittle as the cool so work fast! Fold in half, forming a half-circle. , then bend the opposite corners together into a fortune cookie shape- sort of hosreshoe-ish. Set in a muffin tin while cookie cools to help keep its shape. Stir the batter and do it again.

(The icon is from Orthodox Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.)

These are the days of the week...

There is a new atrium work in our Icon corner we have been setting out a tray with an object representing the weekly prayer cycle.

Here are our Friday, Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday trays...The Cross and Koliva and the Forerunner and an Apostle and Saint Nicholas.




Blue Eyes is enchanted and is always asking who/what they are.

Ferdinand enjoys figuring out which item to take from the box after checking the calendar.

Iddy Biddy reads the prayer cards from Mary's post at
evlogia on redeeming the week which are clipped above the tray.

Spring Chalkboard...

Among my favorite poems...I post it up as soon as the first bulbs peek up in the garden pots.

This is the first time Ive written it out entirely and Biddy was surprised.

Judgment Sunday

Oops... after I got the dc to bed I realized it was Saturday and I needed a new activity for church school.

I needle felted some felt and wool to make sort of a flannel board display for the Gospel reading tomorrow. That new needle felting tool is my new favorite toy!

I'll put it out on a tray for the kids to tell the story after I present it.

I'm willing to bet the kids will like sorting the sheep and the goats.

Keeping Blue Eyes busy...

The rain has been heavy except for one glorious day yesterday and Blue Eyes has had a lot of energy bouncing around our 900 sq feet. We decided to update her shelf and make some Valentine themed trays - As always wonderful ideas for trays over at http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/ . It always amuses me just how much stuff I have in my cupboards that shows up in trays on her blog.

Snails (Iddy Biddy Guest Blogs)

I usually don't like snails but it was snail day so I loved them!

We had fun making spirals in the sand tray.

Blue Eyes and I had a very fun time making snail spirals out of silkies.

And making snails out of left over pistachio shells was really fun!

So I guess sometimes I do like snails.

Meeting of Our Lord in the Temple...

What a beautiful Feast day! Despite the gloomy weather (early spring yes?) and the fact that the 2 little ones' behavior made Liturgy more of a pig wrestling match than a Divine experience we had a wonderful day. We had our candles blessed for our family as well as ones we made in church school to share with fellow parishioners . We took down our last branch of greenery over our table as usual and hung bare branches which will stay until Pascha and hung our two "turtle doves" up. Several people have asked if we are still doing "atrium" now that we are Orthodox and yes we have been in a slow process of adapting our works and most of them have been taken to church to share with the young children of parish as there was not a church school teacher for this year. The first pic is one of our new (almost complete) works.

Many Years Iddy Biddy!