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I created a Fire Safety book for my 3 oldest kids a few years ago, and I dug this file out of “moth-balls” for my two third-graders. When my older kids illustrated these books they had a blast!!  So I’m hoping Elizabeth and Joshua will enjoy this. too! How does it work? As they/you read through each page of the book the child can add an illustration to each page. This will help them to remember the rules of Fire Safety. My three oldest, Rachel, Rebekah, and Jacob, just couldn’t quit laughing as they drew funny pictures for this book! Yes, they take fire safety seriously, they just like drawing crazy pictures!! It’s always good to make learning and work fun! Download the Fire Safety Book Here: God Bless! ~Jen-Marie

Here are a few ideas for St. Patrick Day: An Art Project: My 2nd graders and up enjoyed this. Materials: Printable “Mini” St Patrick  – Free Download in our shop Light blue construction paper Green construction paper Yellow construction paper Crayons Glue stick Scissors Green paint (or crayon) cotton swab and a toothpick (if you use paint instead of the crayon) First, color the little St Patrick printable and cut it out. Cut out a sun from yellow construction paper and cut out some green hills for the bottom. Add a darker green edge to the hilltops, with the green crayon or green paint and a cotton swab. Glue the sun, hills, and St. Patrick to the blue paper. Now add the clovers with a green crayon or paint: If you use a crayon just draw three circles and a stem as pictured. If you are using paint here’s how to make the clovers: (Try it on scrap paper first) Add a few large drops of paint to a sheet of scrap paper so you can easily dip the cotton swab into it without getting too much paint… Cover the cotton swab tip with some of the green paint and poke the paper with it: (If you have a cotton “string” that is not allowing you to make a nice circle try spinning the cotton swab in the paint so it will make a more smoothed end.) Now do it again next to the first dot: and again: Now, with a toothpick, gather a bit of paint on the tip and scrape it from the center of the three dots to make a stem: Now you can add a saying, like: “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” Now it’s a beautiful finished project! A Coloring Page: For the younger kids I created a simple coloring page: Free download in our Shop Looking for bulletin board idea? Create a bulletin board like the above art project… The coloring page of St. Patrick could be used instead of the mini St. Patrick. Cover the grassy hills with clovers created by each of the children! Here is a  printable clover/Trinity craft  you could use. Have the kids make them and then add them to the grassy area on the bulletin board. Hoping you are all having a blessed Lent and will have a wonderful St. Patrick’s Day! God Bless! ~Jen-Marie

Happy Spring! It’s a beautiful time of year! The flowers are blooming and the birds are singing! I just saw a robin a few weeks ago and it was such a thrill! I look forward to the long warm days! After seeing that first Robin desired to do a craft that focused around a robin/spring theme. So here is my newest creative brainstorm… I also added the Bible quote from Jesus Sermon on the Mount. ~ Matthew 6:26 NOTE: You may need to shrink the size when printing. I love this Bible verse, but of course, I explained to my kids that it doesn’t mean you can sit around and wait for God to serve you! Even the robins have to work to find their food! The idea is that you trust God and remember that He loves you and will help in whatever way you need  (sometimes it’s not the way we want) so you can become a better person and one day live with Him in heaven. For this craft you will need: construction paper (yellow, light blue, red, and brown) light brown paper to crumple and make a nest 6 in. x 2 in. in size (we used part of a lunch bag) black crayon  (but light green, green, and brown – are optional) the printable Matthew 6:26 cloud (above) stapler glue scissors and a foot! 🙂 Trace a foot onto brown paper. Cut it out. Cut out a red belly and a yellow beak for the robin. Glue them to the light blue paper as shown in the completed project. Add an eye and crumple the piece of light brown paper. Staple the light brown paper down in the shape of a nest. Draw legs on the robin. Cut out two or three eggs from light blue paper. With a black crayon, color them lightly(using the side of the crayon) and add spots. Add the eggs to the nest. Cut out and add the cloud with the Bible verse. You can stop there, or you can add tree branches and leaves… Using brown and black crayons create branches. With the light green and green crayons make leaves. A circular motion is simple and easy. Here’s a few examples: Happy Spring! Pray for me to always trust in God’s love and protection! I will pray for you. ~Jen-Marie

Last year my kids and I made a Prayer Chain of People to pray for during Lent. This year I decided to go a little simpler. The days have been very busy and I didn’t feel we would have the time to make all the little people again. (Although, many of my kids were complaining that they really wanted to make all those people again! I told them that we’d try to make them again next year!) This year I made a list of people to pray for and I added that list to a paper chain. We will remove one of the chain’s links each day and pray for the people who are mentioned on that link. The neat thing is it doubles as a count down to Easter! I used the following image at the top of the Prayer Chain. I added a few sheets of decorative purple paper to make it look nice! Download the Lenten Prayer Chain here:

Our Lord said to St. Francis of Assisi, “Rebuild My Church!” My kids thought this craft was so much fun! But before we stated I read about St. Francis from our "Once Upon a Time Saints" book. “But that night, he (the pope) had a dream. He saw the great Church of St. John Lateran falling, crumbling into dust, and only one ragged little man was holding it up. It was Francis. Our Lord said to the pope, “This is the man through whom the church shall be rebuilt.”” St. Francis of Assisi Craft After reading the story about St. Francis of Assisi my kids made this craft. All you need is: the printable - download below (stock paper is best) building material like:-brown or red paper square “bricks”-wooden craft sticks, cut in half-toothpicks-mini rocks scissors (and cutters if you are using sticks) glue (we used Tacky white glue) Download the St. Francis Craft Here:  It is super simple and fun! Just print out the St. Francis and church printable and glue your “building material” around the image of  St. Francis. Feel free to be creative about what “building material” you will use! Choose the 6 small printable templates or the 2 larger templates. Here is a quick view of the craft pages: God bless. ~JenMarie

My younger children are at the ”alphabet learning age”. So when I was asked to review the book by Tracy Sands I thought it might fit in well with my lesson plans for the school year. I was a bit surprised when the book showed up at my door since it was not what I was expecting. Many younger kids like stories or rhyming poems. This book is not an easy read book and you cannot sit down and read this book straight through to your child(ren). I found a page (a letter) a day to be plenty for kids to handle. Plus, each page/letter needed discussion time and/or activity time to reinforce the thoughts and ideas. is meant to teach about Jesus, prayer, and the Bible. Each letter is used as a spring-board to teach children many different simple religious concepts. These ideas are very basic and easy to understand, but coming from a Catholic perspective this book is kind of disappointing. This book IS CHRISTIAN. While I saw nothing wrong with the information in the book, I personally would have loved to see more in depth Catholicism in the book’s teachings. I did see many Catholic symbols and ideas peaking through some of the teachings and images, which makes me think the author/illustrator is or was Catholic.  I can see that this book would work well as a teaching tool to reinforce religious concepts as children learn their letters. Although, I personally would add a more Catholic twist to the information given. Also, it could be used as a discussion starter when teaching kids of many ages.  From an artistic standpoint I thought the letter images were beautiful.  The author/illustrator, Tracy Sands , did an awesome job making the images look interesting. Although many of  the letters were not easy for my younger kids to make out, the kids did have fun trying to find the letter shape in the picture. My kids enjoyed the ”Seek and Find” section under each letter image, too. Personally, I found the ”Symbology” section in the back of the book particularly interesting. You can see some of the information on the image’s symbolism and it’s meanings  here on their website.   I was also sent a CD which included 5 songs, including the Christian Alphabet Song . If you feel having a song to go with the book would be helpful than this is an added bonus. Although, the CD only has 5 songs, it is reasonably priced.  Visit website to read more about this book and the other items they sell. NOTE: I was given a free copy of this book and CD in exchange for an honest review. I make no profit from this review.  God Bless. ~JenMarie

My family and I are adamant scapular wearers. From about the age of 7 or 8ish my kids enroll in the Brown Scapular  and start to wear a scapular 24/7. If you don’t wear a scapular I HIGHLY recommend it!! To learn more about the scapular click here  and here . I also recommend you read these books.  These are wonderful books and they have some awesome miracle stories about the brown scapular.   You can buy some really pretty scapulars, but they can be kind of pricey. So on our tight family budget I like to go simple and cheap. Here is a great spot to get a  FREE scapular ! On the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (July 16) I like to have a little something for my kids to make, color, or create!  Here are a bunch of ideas I found: This is a few past posts from Catholic Inspired: Make an Our Lady of Mount Carmel Felt Doll Click here to see this post Or make this wall scapular craft to decorate your room or home. Here’s more from other websites and blogs: Fun Food for the feast day: Scapular Brownies from Catholic Cuisine Scapular Cake from Catholic Cuisine Coloring pages:  Coloring pages from Coloring Book 4 Kids here and here  Coloring pages from My Catholic Source here and here More beautiful coloring pages from Hope you see something you can use! Have a blessed day! ~JenMarie

I’ve seen many beautiful examples of these little Triduum displays, so I thought you might like to visit a few of these websites and blogs to get some inspiration to make your own. Craft, Interrupted  has this fun Easter garden. Here is a neat tomb; it\’s an egg!  See this at Toddler Activities at Home Familia Catolica has made clever use of a potato in this garden. Go check it out! The Crafty Homeschooling Mama as a great post about this lovely garden: At the Butterfly Ball made this cute little display.  Mary and Joseph\’s Gem has a few pictures of this colorful garden. A Holy Experience  has pictures of this garden.  Visit The Frugal Homemaker for this tutorial.  JOY-filled Family has a beautiful garden, too. Visit Tiffany to see her Resurrection Tomb Terrarium

My kids love to give me weeds - I mean  flowers - during spring and summer! Some days they bring me so many flowers I don’t know what to do with them all!! Most of these floral bundles are tiny and cute. In fact they are so tiny they don’t fit in any of my vases. Most vases that stores sell are large vases for bouquets you receive through a florist. They just don’t work for the little bouquets that my sweeties hide behind their back and try to surprise me with! Really, a 3 inch tall bouquet just falls down into a deep 10 inch vase. It just doesn’t work! So what should I do with the tiny bouquets that are so lovingly given by my biggest, little fans? Maybe I can just secretly throw them into the trash? Oooh, if my young little fan club found out that I was throwing those flowers into the trash I would be in BIG trouble!! The feelings of my little crew would be worse than the way Naomi felt when Joshua fed Prince Charming to the dinosaurs!! Besides, if I did trash the flowers, I’d have to explaining to the little upset faces what happened to the beautiful posies my precious posy pickers picked!  What to do; what to do! My solution:  Votive candle jars! Many small votive candle jars are a nice size for my tiny bouquets of flowers!! This past spring, while I was at a yard sale, I found a set of 5 votive candle jars which were held in a small shallow basket. These have been working GREAT for holding my petite perfumed posies!!! The posy pickers are thrilled to fill up all 5 jars. I display the jars with their basket and my statue of the Blessed Mother and the infant Jesus. I added a few strings of pearls to make it look a little more royal for Our Lady.  The pearls really added a nice accent to the basket! It’s been such a joy!  Not only do I now have great little vases to display my tiny flowers, I’m also able to share them with my Mother Mary!! Can you get any better than that?!? Here’s another cool thing about it….They are easy to clean!! Love it! It’s nice that my kids can freely bring in flowers to give to Mary! That might be a nice new tradition for teachers to do in the month of May for Our Lady, too! Votive candle jars are easy to find at thrift shops or even a regular store in the candle area. Be creative! I like to think ”outside the box". Now, if I could get my hands on one of these: Click here to see on Amazon I could put a statue of Mary in the middle, where the large vase is. Then add little flowers all around, in the votive candle jars!! That would be sooo pretty! I’d just have to figure out how to add something to the middle to support a statue. Oh, well, just a thought….. Oh, by the way – for any one concerned – Prince charming was able to escape from his hungry captives.   He only sustained minor paint scraping and a disappointed Naomi who tossed him down when she realized the doll wasn’t actually hers. It was her sister’s – Abby! What a disappointment! Well, at least Charming got out with all his limbs intact! God Bless you and your family! ~JenMarie

I think gingerbread houses are fun, so I bought a pre-made kit that included the house parts and the icing. I thought it would be fun for the kids to help make a gingerbread house! But then I read this post at Mrs.Domestic Bliss about creating a Gingerbread Nativity and I thought that was the best idea! So we made a gingerbread stable and added a small plastic nativity!  It was our Christmas table display and it looked so cute –that is until we ate it! 🙂(No, we didn’t eat the plastic Nativity figures – although, my 2 year old would have!) The kit made this easy! All we had to do was cut out half an oval into one of the peeked ends of the house. Yes, this was a delicate job which I did while the kids watched with wide eyes. My 4 youngest daughters took turns saying, ”Carefully, mom, carefully!”, as they watched me saw into the gingerbread with a knife. Then I assembled the house as instructed in the box. We did add the Nativity pieces and hay to the inside of the stable before we added the roof.  Our hay was actually yellow coconut. You can create the yellow coconut by placing a few handfuls of coconut into a seal-able bag along with a few drops of yellow food coloring. Then shake it until all the coconut is yellow.  The little Nativity which I used was one that my grandmother gave me when I was young. I saw one on Amazon that looked like it might work for this… here . But any small set would work. Or you could used printed and laminated pictures of the Nativity figures and stand them with glops of icing. I bought the gingerbread kit at AC Moore (with a coupon). It looks similar to this one on Amazon (but AC Moore was MUCH cheaper).   Here is another one, too. We loved this and we hope to make one again next Christmas!! Although I think we might get a little more creative with the design! Christmas blessings to you all! Please, pray for me! ~JenMarie

The Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord is an extra special day at our house. Not only is it the feast of Our Lord’s Baptism, it is also the anniversary of our son Joshua’s baptism. He shares this special day with Our Lord. Eleven years ago, we told my husband’s uncle, who is a deacon, that we wanted to have our newborn baby boy baptized on the first available Sunday. And the first available Sunday happened to be Jan. 12 the feast of Our Lord’s Baptism. We thought that was wonderful, especially since Joshua was one day shy of celebrating the same birthday as Jesus! 🙂 Here at our house we celebrate baptism anniversaries like birthdays – but without the gifts. After all, the day we were “born” into God’s family is a VERY important day! So we had a party to celebrate Jesus’ baptism, as well as, Joshua’s. When we celebrate the kids’ Baptism Anniversaries, we don’t have lit candles on a cake like you would on a birthday cake. Instead we have the kids light a votive candle at Church. So this morning, Joshua lit his own little candle after Mass.  It’s a simple family tradition, but if our children’s Baptism Anniversaries don’t fall on a Sunday, we just have the child light the candle on the Sunday closest to the Baptism Anniversary. I’d prefer to go to daily  Mass on that special day so they can light the candle, but sadly life is often too crazy and we can’t get to weekday Mass. Later, at home, we had a small party. My oldest daughter made cupcakes and I made the decorations. Elizabeth and Rebekah helped to decorate. And it all looked so sweet! Download the Holy Spirit Drops Here: For best results I recommend printing these onto photo paper. The images made very nice cupcake toppers and party decorations! Just print the PDF out, cut out the images, and tape them to strips of ribbon to make decorations. Or you can tape them to the top half of toothpicks to create cupcake toppers. They can be stuck in the tops of cheese cubes or sandwiches, too.  It’s so easy and yummy! Here at our house, cupcakes are a special treat! All the kids love them! Now if only my 2 year old, Caleb, could figure out the difference between cupcakes and muffins! He just can’t seem to figure out what the difference is between them.  So after having mom correct him time after time he invented his own word: “Cupkins”!!  (That’s a mix between the words “cupcake” and “muffin”.) Now that was smart, I can’t correct him anymore! And  why would I want to stop him from saying such a cute made-up word!? 🙂 Everyone thinks Caleb’s creativity is sooo cute, but my older kids sure don’t like my cupcake-creativity! They think I’m crazy for eating my cupcake like this: I think it’s the best way to eat a cupcake! First, I rip off the bottom of the cupcake and I place the bottom (up-side-down) on top the icing. That creates a cake sandwich with the icing in the middle. It’s less messy that way. Otherwise, I might look more like Caleb does in the picture above! 🙂 But my teens seem to think that I’m a lunatic for eating cupcakes that way! Oh, well, I guess I might grow out of it someday! But I didn’t today! 🙂 God bless you all and I hope you have a wonderful week! ~JenMarie

Here is a St. Lucy coloring page my oldest daughter, Rachel, created for her younger sisters. I thought she did a beautiful job!! She is becoming quite the artist!  🙂 Download the coloring page here: All thanks goes to Rachel for sharing her talents and taking the time to create this cute coloring page! Hope you have a wonderful day! ~JenMarie