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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

Elizabeth and I made an altar for the Blessed Mother for the month of Mary. Unlike most Marian May Altars we tried to make it look more like Mary is in Heaven. First we took a cardboard box; cut, shaped, and taped it into a grotto that fit our Mary statue: Then we covered it with aluminum foil, secured it with clear shipping tape  and made a oval sun inside of it using permanent orange and yellow markers. We decorated it using flower shaped craft gems along the outer edge. Then, we added polyfill to the outside to create the look of heavenly clouds. The heavenly shrine for Our Lady turned out to be a fun and beautiful project! Enjoy and God bless!~Jen-Marie

In honor of Kateri Tekakwitha! Have fun making a Christian Indian headband. Okay, it's probably not historically correct, but the kids had fun!! Download the Bl Kateri Headband and Feather Here Click Here to print the Bl Kateri headband and feather that you can make. Ask the kids if they can see the Christian symbolism in the headband! Enjoy! ~JenMarie

This Holy Family set is made from old-fashioned clothespins and felt.  This set would be perfect for a Christmas project or to give as a gift. These cute little craft doll/statues can be used as a doll for young children, as a statue, or as an ornament for the tree. This craft requires the use of hot glue, so if you plan to make these with small children they will need help. Older children may be able to do these on their own if they are accustomed to using hot glue. M aterials For Mary : blue felt dress * (see felt cutting instructions) felt head covering we used light blue wooden old fashioned clothespin 4-inch piece of string Hot glue For Baby Jesus: mini old fashioned clothespin or a craft stick Scrap piece of white felt  (about 1/2 the size of the head covering) wooden ring (to help the doll stand, if it needs help) Hot glue For St. Joseph you’ll need: brown felt robe*(see felt cutting instructions) green head-covering -half the size of the one shown on the *cutting instructions. brown string for waist and head Hot glue NOTE: The instructions for St. Joseph are the same as those for Mary, just use different colors and a smaller h ead covering. After gluing on his head covering it looks a bit more masculine if you fold the sides of his head covering back away from the face and glue it in place. Add a string around the head covering, too. You may need to use a few tiny drops of glue to keep it in place. Hot glue a stick to his waist as pictured. Use a brown colored pencil to draw his beard. *Felt Cutting instructions, click to enlarge: Materials for Mary and baby Jesus: After cutting out your felt pieces, push the round clothespin head into the small head hole in the dress. You may need to add a drop of hot glue at the upper chest and upper back of the doll clothespin to keep the dress from sliding down the clothespin.  Pull all the dress parts down against the clothespin and tightly knot a string around its waist. You may need an extra hand to hold the dress down while you knot the waist string. Now, cut off the extra string ends. If the dress is too long, cut it to the correct length. If the opening on the sides of the dress are showing, hot glue it together.   Add hot glue to the top and sides of the dolls head and cover the top of her head with the head covering. Note: You may have to cut a slit in the back of the veil, (from the bottom of the veil up to the head)  so it will lay down properly. Then hot glue the back of the veil down in a way so you don’t see the cut. Now for the baby: Cut or break the bottom of the mini clothespin off so it is the correct size. OR if you don’t have a mini old-fashioned clothespin you can use a craft stick. Break the craft stick in half and hot glue them one on top of the other. Now add some hot glue to the top and side of the baby’s head and wrap the edge of the felt piece around the top of the baby’s head. Then wrap the rest of the felt around the baby, covering it completely. Hot glue the blanket in place. Then hot glue it to the doll of Mary. If possible, try to use the wrinkles in her dress and veil as arms so it can look like she is holding the baby.  If the doll has a hard time standing on its own you may need to buy a wooden ring to help it stand. If you can’t find wooden rings, you may be able to hot glue the doll to a small wooden flat shape. I hope I explained this well enough, If you have any questions please post a comment and I will respond. I hope you enjoy making these little doll/statues as much as we did!!  Take care and God bless. ~Jen-Marie

This is how my family counts down the days to Christmas. On Dec. 1 our image of Mary and Joseph starts to travel to Bethlehem. It moves along the numbers which are taped to the wall. They are traveling toward the stable. On Christmas Eve they are just above the stable. I put ours up high out of little kids’ reach, but you wouldn’t need to have it so high for older kids. This idea can be simple and easy. You could simply print off the numbers and star I have created along with this lovely coloring page  found on SuperColoring.com . Then, color the picture or just cut it out and use it to move along the numbers. Move it down by one number each day. That simple! The Art Project: OR if you like a bit more of a challenge, here’s how I made mine: I say “challenge” but it’s not really as hard as you may think! You will need: Glue scissors the Mary and Joseph coloring sheet light blue paper dark blue paper purple paper black paper sandpaper or brown paper stars (can be hole-punched, sequins, stickers, or drawn) The numbers to tape to the wall Painters tape to add the numbers to the wall  Picture putty works well for the Mary and Joseph image so it stays sticky each day as you move it. Cut out hill shapes from the sandpaper. Layer them on the bottom of the light blue paper. Add a half-circle sun on the horizon.  Layer the different colored paper, using wide strips.  Make the black area the biggest, and dark blue area bigger than purple and light blue.  Add a few dark blue strips to the top of the light blue area. Add a few light blue strips to the dark blue area. Add a few purple strips to the top of the dark blue area. Add a few dark blue strips to the purple area, and purple strips to the black area, Now cut the whole picture into a half-circle shape. Trim all the edges. Then add the stars. Cut out the Mary/Joseph picture and glue it on. Note : You may need to put a large book on top of it till it dries so the sandpaper stays down. It’s so much fun watching Mary and Joseph traveling to Bethlehem! Have a blessed Advent, ~Jen-Marie

Lacy over at Catholic Icing had a yummy idea of how to explain the Holy Trinity to kids by using a Snowman as a model. I love the idea of the three parts of a snowman (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) creating one God! Sadly my new healthy diet does not include those delicious powdered doughnuts!!  So I thought I’d share the Snowman Trinity Art project I did with my homeschool Art Co-Op. A few weeks ago, I was searching for a project to help teach the kids in my class about light direction and value I found this fun art idea at a lovely art blog called  For the Love of Art . The snowman, representing the Holy Trinity in its three parts, shows the light direction through its shadows and shading with the dark blue paper as its medium value. Here’s a step by step on how to draw this: On dark blue paper, use white to show the light areas anddark blue to show the dark areas. (A crayon, colored pencil, or oil pastel will work) Look at the finished snowman: Notice the light side and the shaded side of the snowman? Notice the shadow on the ground? You can see which direction the light is coming from. Here’s another one: He’s too cute! Okay, my oldest daughter and son went a little crazy on me! I guess the Holy Trinity could hold some of those signs!?! (My kids read a little too much “Calvin and Hobbes”) Well, I think they got the point! And they had a great time! It was easy for them to do! Even the kids who have a hard time learning art did a great job! Give it a try and have fun! God Bless! ~Jen-Marie

We played a game at our All Saint’s day party a few years back called “ Simon Peter Says “. It’s just like “ Simon Says ” but Simon wears a miter and is called “Simon Peter” in honor of our first Pope. Simon Peter tells the other kids to kneel and pray, genuflect, make the Sign of the Cross, lie prostrate, along with the normal Simon Says commands. I don’t use this game at our All Saint’s parties anymore now that the number of kids has gotten so large, but it works well just for fun on our family game days! We made our miter from a large white shipping envelope and gold-trimmed ribbon. Enjoy! God Bless, ~Jen-Marie

I grew up in what most would call a “large” Catholic family. I was born fourth in a line of five kids. It didn’t seem “large” to me, but the open-eyed, mouth-dropping expressions on people’s faces as we all walked into a public area made me realize we were a little different. I was okay with that. I actually liked having my brothers and my sister around, even as annoying as they were! Now, to put things in perspective you must understand that I only had one brother younger than me and I almost never saw babies. As a teen, I had very little experience with young children or babies. So taking on a babysitting job was just not really my thing. My older sister took babysitting job after babysitting job, and she loved it! She loved the kids, she loved the babies, she wanted to be a teacher, and I didn’t want anything to do with kids! At this point in my life I imagine God laughed, and laughed, and laughed!! For the Almighty has a plan, it may not be the plan we like, but it’s the plan we need for our salvation. At the tender age of 17, I was discerning whether or not God was calling me to become a nun. I loved my God, I trusted Him. And since being a mother just didn’t seem like my thing I figured He must want me to be a nun. I prayed for guidance, oh how hard I prayed!! Then God hit me over the head with a spiritual 2×4!! I had a saints book laying on my bed while I was praying. The book slid off the edge of my bed and landed on the floor. I picked it up and a holy card fell out from in between the pages. It was a very old holy card that my mother found years earlier in the crack of one of the horse-hair plastered walls in our old Civil War farmhouse. She had given it to me, but I never really looked at it before that particularly special day. It was a picture and prayer to St Gerard the patron saint of mothers!! As if that wasn’t enough of a blow, I continued to read the card and at the bottom it said his feast day was October 16….that very day that this happened was Oct 16!!!! Oh, that hit hard! God doesn’t use a megaphone to tell you his plan but that day He got very close!  At that point, I said to God “Well if you think that’s best. But I would need to find a good guy to marry first. And those seem to be a bit hard to find.” I’m sure God laughed again because He knew how and where I’d meet that guy. And just three months later there he was! At the age of 20, I married the man that God sent to me, a sweet man, though we both had some growing up to do! We were both open to whatever God’s plan was and we left the door open in all ways for God to send us children. So God decided it was time to give us a crash course in parenting!! Just one month after we were married I became pregnant with our first! Eleven months after our first was born I delivered our second. And it continued like that for 13 years! I had 9 babies and three miscarriages in less than 14 years! The past 14 years of my life have been a huge struggle! Pregnancy after pregnancy, while learning how to be a homeschooling mom was hard. We live on one income, money’s tight, the house is in need of constant repair, the vehicles rarely run, stress is up and time is short. But God has taught me more about life, love, and faith through my children and husband than being a nun ever could have taught me! Now, I’m not bashing those who become religious… Not a bit!! But God knew I needed these kids as much as they needed me! Sure I had a choice to not have my kids in machine-gun style, but once again I let God do the driving in my life. And He’s proven to me time after time that not taking the easy roads in life can often be the most learned and scenic route of all! This past week was a huge turning point for us! I’ve had a medical problem during those past 14 years of having babies which have just forced me to get a hysterectomy. So God has made my ninth baby my last. After talking to the doctor about my personal situation he said that my large number of babies in such a short time was not the reason for my problems. That being said, God’s plan of giving me my babies one after the other was his way of giving me as many babies as He could before I had to get a hysterectomy at the young age of 34. God’s ways are always the right way! I may not have been a great baby lover in my teens, but it’s my children that have brought me to a point of understanding God’s love for each one of us! Each and every one of my children has taught me so much. They are truly a blessing! Sure learning to be a mom was and is hard, and following the way God has laid out for me was and is even harder, but as I look back on how things are unfolding I see that God had a truly important reason for doing things the way He did them! So when I see the reality of abortion in our society it seems so wrong! My kids saved my life, they didn’t take it! They have been my inspiration! I will admit that I faced each and every pregnancy with fear and trembling, but God always gives us the strength we need to make it through the tough times in our lives. To live out God’s plan is the only way to live a happy life, so there was no choice if you want to be happy! God is the choice ! Put God in the driver’s seat; the road is rough, the view is great, and I’m told the end is beautiful! God Bless. ~Jen-Marie Pray the Rosary to End Abortion!

An active game to teach about sin and the need for confession. Are you looking for a fun way to teach kids about sin and the need for Confession? Well, I’ve created a new game to help teach the effects of venial sin, mortal sin, and Confession. It’s not a board game, but an active game where the kids walk along the “Life Path” and follow what the cards tell them to do. Along the way, they can help the souls in Purgatory. Then at the end of the “Life Path” (at death), they see if their actions on the “life path” are actions that send them to Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell. This is a game that I created (with some help from my loving hubby) to teach our kids about sin and confession. Our kids loved it. So I shared it with our local homeschool group. The parents and their kids loved it, too. It’s a game designed for 2nd graders and up. Even the homeschooled teens enjoyed this activity! Younger children played, too, but needed assistance. Every one of the kids, young and old, wanted to play this game again and again! It’s a perfect game for those who are receiving their First Penance and First Holy Communion, any RE class, youth group, or a fun party, like an All Saints Day Party! So I want to share this fun game as a printable e-file for purchase. This E-file comes with instructions, cards, and signs for heaven, hell, and purgatory.  You need to supply the “Life Path” which could be 3 – 2×4 boards or painter’s tape, and 2 carry bags with 5 lb. of dried beans, sugar, or any other dry 5 lb. item in each. Also, the bottoms of 5 half-gallon milk jugs are used to hold the cards, but this is optional. It’s only $4.99 to purchase this e-file.  FAQ Here are a few of the most frequently asked questions….. 1.How many kids can play at a time? It can be as many kids as you like, but this game works better in larger groups. The players are all independent players. Only the “souls” in purgatory need the help of the other players. The homeschool group I did this game with was about 40 kids of all ages! If you have a helper at each card area. (About 4 helpers) You can have about 6-8 kids physically playing at one time. If it’s just one person in charge, the number of kids on the “life path” will need to be less depending on that person’s ability to manage them. A group of young teens should be able to do this with only one teacher/parent.  2. About how long does the game last? It can be as long or as short as you like! For each child, the game will only last a few minutes, but the fun is in replaying and trying again! If it’s a large group of kids, they can line up at one end of the game’s “life path” and when it’s their turn they play the game. Then they get back in line to play again! If the line of kids waiting to play can stand beside the “Life Path” it can be fun so the other kids can cheer on those playing! It’s kind of a fast-moving game. 3. If the moms help the smaller ones, is it a game they could play? Yes, but you may need to make their “journey” a little easier than the card says. Kids younger than 7 don’t seem to understand the concept as well, it’s just a fun game to many of them! Here are some reviews from our old Store page: Parental Note: This game does mention hell and the children can end up in “hell” in the game. It is meant to show the severity of sin. If you feel your child can not handle this concept at this time please consider another activity or game.

Our parish priests put forth so much effort for us! They have a life of sacrifice, stress, and heartache with very little appreciation from we parishioners. We need to show these devout men that we are thankful for their sacrifice and living witness. How? Host a Card Shower! For those who don’t know what a card shower is… It’s when a large group of people join together to send cards to someone. Each individual should take a few minutes to send a store-bought card or a hand-made card to your parish rectory. Normally, the time frame for this would be over the course of a week or month. As the host, you simply need to get the word out!! I tried to get a Card Shower started for our parish priest. Of course, I had to recruit a few helpers. First I typed up, printed off, and cut out some slips of paper to distribute to parishioners. They looked like this: Then I gave a stack of them to a few people to pass out secretly after Masses with the hope that the papers would make it into the hands of parishioners who would send a card.  Distributing them can be a challenge if you are trying to surprise your priest, but that’s part of the reason I kept the fliers small! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ This is a perfect activity to do during February for St. Valentine’s day!!! After all, they don’t get a card from a wife! ~OR~ How about in June for Father’s Day!! We are all their children! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ My kids each made a card for our priest.A few years ago I was lucky enough to acquire some wallpaper samples. They worked well for this.They also used construction paper.Here are a few pictures: I helped my 3 and 4-year-old girls make these. We used wallpaper, old holy cards, and other pictures. Get the word out! Start a card shower for your parish priest! And tell your friends to host one for their priests! Let’s show them we care! God Bless! ~Jen-Marie

Thank you for all your prayers! The surgery went very well.  They had a hard time waking me up after the surgery. Then, I couldn’t keep anything I tried to eat down. So the first 24 hours were rough. I’m feeling much better now and I’m ready to go home!  Of course, I must consider that my belly will suddenly have a gigantic target on it when I see all my little darlings! You know how young children have a built-in sensor for an adult’s most tender spots, and then they have to pounce on it!! 😉 By God’s grace, I was able to keep my one ovary. So I won’t go through early menopause, I’m very happy about that!   Thanks again for all your prayers! And in a few weeks, I hope to be conquering the world….or at least my “Things I need to do” list! 😉  May God bless all of you for your kindness! ~Jennifer