Wreath II October 2014

Wow, another year is about to begin for our Little Flower Group!  Time seems to move so quickly.  We had to say "goodbye" to some very special Little Flowers this year but we have also welcomed some very special new Little Flowers to our group.  We begin our first class tomorrow with St. Faustina.  I can't wait to share Sister Faustina's story with our little group.

Tea Party and Badging Ceremony

 

We began with the St. Therese prayer then each girls was called upon to read a virtue and the memory verse that went with that virtue.  After reading their verse we lit a candle then the girls received their petals and a rose.  For the future I will make sure each girl knows ahead of time what verse they will be reading so they can practice at home.  The girls were a little nervous.  It was a great way to review all we learned this past year.  I am so proud of our Little Flowers!

 

Sacrifice beads.  A mother bought the beads in a variety pack, cord, a variety of crucifixes, and the Marian Medals for the Sacrifice Beads. The girls enjoyed creating their special beads.  Directions are in a previous post.

Our delicious food.  Each families was asked to bring an item to share.  We had no doubles of anything, the miracle of the Catholic potluck!

Making Sacred Heart or Immaculate Heart melty beads

 

Our Lady of the Visitation Little Flowers Club

Another phenomenal Little Flower blog!  Thank you Our Lady of the Visitation Little Flowers Club for posting such great activities!  You inspire us with your creativity for the learning about the Saints, Mary, and Jesus!

http://littleflowersofjesus.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2014-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2015-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=6

Little Ways website with Sacrifice Beads/Good Deed Beads!

We are also making sacrifice or good deed beads at our last Tea Party/Badging Ceremony.  Check out this great website for information and great ideas:

http://thelittleways.com/how-to-make-sacrifice-beads

Download Printable Instructions (PDF)

Sacred and Immaculate Hearts with Perler Beads

This is one of our projects for our final Tea Party/Badging ceremony of the year.  Thank you to Catholic Inspired website for the idea!  Please visit their website for more information:

http://www.catholicinspired.com/2013/05/sacred-and-immaculate-heart-perler.html

Here is an old favorite of mine....My kids and I made these last summer and I saved the pattern. I thought with the feast days of the Sacred Heart and Immaculate Heart coming in June it was time to share the pattern with all of you.

These are made with the Perler Beads which you can buy at your local craft store or click here. To make these, you will need the melting plates that are shaped like a heart and a six-pointed star. 

Start by making two hearts according to the patterns. Then make two flames. The flames should be basically the same but take out the cross when making the flame for the Immaculate Heart and fill the cross area with yellow. Different shades of yellow mixed together look nice. The sword is only for Our Lady’s heart. 

Melt the beads, which you placed on the melting plate, just as the bead package directs. Remove them from the plates just as you normally would. Then it's time to melt the flame to the heart: Place the correct flame over top and matching heart (as pictured). Sandwich the flame and heart between two melting/wax paper sheets and melt the two parts together with your iron; just as you would when you melt the beads. You may need to add more pressure on the iron to get them to help them to stick together. Do the same with the sword.  They will look a little squished on the backside where the two parts are fused together.

Because these will only look nice from one side, so be sure you melt them so the nicer sides are on the good side. 

St. Catherine Laboure

 

Our Little Flower Group had so much fun learning about St. Catherine Laboure and the virtue of Humility.  The girls had enjoyed creating their own Miraculous Medals from tin foil.  Our group leaders for the night came very prepared. Each girl received a foam envelope with pre-cut pieces of tin foil that matched their paper stencils of the front and back of the medal.  The girls then used dull colored pencils to trace the medal onto the tin foil using the foam as the backing as they traced, so they did not poke through the tin foil. 

 

 

 

 Once the girls had completely traced the medal onto the tin foil they filled in the outlines they made with colored Sharpie Markers. 

Once each side of the medal was traced on to the two separate pieces of tin foil we attached t

 

Each Little Flower was so happy to receive a blessed Miraculous Medal from our teachers tonight.  The family who hosted our night dedicated to St. Catherine Laboure had actually traveled to her shrine in Paris and bought the medals each Little Flower received this evening.  That is one of the benefits of being a Little Flower Girls Group on a military base, we have very well traveled members who are able to share so much of their Catholic faith from around the world!  What a special night!

So you want to start your own Little Flower Group?

This is my advice for starting your own Little Flowers Group.
1.  Ask your priest if it is alright with him if you start the group within your Parish or chapel community.
2.  Buy the starter kit from Behold Publishing.  (I suggest you start with Wreath I no matter the ages of the girls). I suggest the complete starter kit with Leaders Guide, CD, and Activity Book.
3.  Make copies of each Virtue Checklist in the appropriate color. For example Wreath I, St. Catherine of Siena, virtue faith, color yellow.  All checklist for St. Catherine of Siena are in bright yellow. 
4.  Purchase a large binder to hold all the colored checklist, corresponding saint coloring sheets, and memory verse for the Wreath you are working towards.  Separate each Saint and corresponding sheets with dividers for easy quick access especially as girls join the groups at different times or miss a class.
5.  Create a memory verse sheet for each saint to be studied.  Include a small colored picture of the saint and the complete memory verse from the song. These are very handy when you play and practice the saint song at each meeting.
5.  Create a sign up sheet for the first few classes that requires the parent to give their contact information. Creating sheets ahead of time looks more professional and help me to remember to ask for that information.  Communication is key to success.
6.  At the very first class: introduce yourself, establish a set meeting time (I suggest twice a month for one hour meetings) and the time allotted for each meeting (we kept our meetings to one hour which was excellent and parents appreciated we always kept things moving and productive.  BE FIRM about keeping all meetings with the set time limit).  BE UP FRONT WITH PARENTS AND EXPLAIN THEY MUST BE INVOLVED WITH THEIR DAUGHTER AT EACH MEETING. EACH PARENT AND DAUGHTER WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR TEACHING ABOUT A SAINT AND PROVIDING A CRAFT THE RELATES TO THE SAINT .  This is so important. Delegate responsibility not only because it takes pressure off the leader but because each girl and their parent take ownership of their faith and catechesis!
7.  Meeting Agenda:  Our meetings, begin with prayer, introduction to the saint, craft, snack, practice song, dismissal prayer.
8.  Second Meeting, model how you want the meetings to go by you volunteering to teach the first saint, activity, and bring snack.  At the end of this meeting, have each parents sign up to teach a saint and bring snack.  We found it was just easier if a family was responsible for everything for one night.  This worked out BEAUTIFULLY for us.  I was amazed at the ideas that came from each family for their saint activities!
9.  Plan out any service activities and big events you would like to see happen within the first 3 meetings.  Time moves very quickly when you are only meeting bi-monthly so stay on top of things. Sketch out the schedule for the year being careful to monitor holidays and days off of school.  We met on Monday evening even if the girls had a holiday from school, because we found it easier on the families to keep things consistent.  CONSISTENCY IS KEY!  If you are not consistent you look like you don't know what you are doing or that this is not an important group.
10.  Create a blog to share ideas, pictures, and information with not only your group but other Little Flower Groups from around the world. 
MOST IMPORTANTLY PRAY!  PRAY HARD, PRAY OFTEN, PRAY!  Many blessings.  Don't forget it isn't you doing all these things but the Holy Spirit working through you.  I have so enjoyed the time I spend with our Little Flower Group it has been much more spiritually uplifting than any other group I have been involved with.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini.  Our Little Flowers planted flower seeds to work on the virtue of industry.  We talked about how St. Frances Xavier Cabrini was the first canonized American Saint. She was a Saint who worked very hard opening hospitals, schools and orphanages all around the world.  The girls planted flower seeds and decorated their flower pots.  The leader explained that the flowers would only grow if the girls took care of them, watered their plants and placed them in the sun.  We tried to explain to the girls that the results would not happen over night but if their were industrious they would eventually see the fruits of the labor when their plants finally blossomed.  Leah, Jodi, and Audrey did an excellent job choosing this activity for our St. Frances Xavier Cabrini project!

 

 

 

 

Wreath I Posters

Our Little Flowers made these posters to represent the saints and virtues we studied this year.  We will hang our posters around the room on our last day, as we celebrate the petals earned at our Tea Party.  The girls had so much fun at our mid-year tea we have decided to end the year with a final tea party and craft day.  I am excited for the girls to receive the petals they have worked so hard to get these past nine months!

St. Bridget

 Our St. Bridget of Sweden class began with a quick reading of St. Bridget's biography, pictures of the Bridgettine Order that St. Bridget founded.  The Bridgettine Order wear a distinctive religious habit symbolizing the five wounds of Christ. 

Next the girls each received a 5 x 7 artist canvas with a Narcissus flower already outlined in pencil.  The girls then got to use watercolors to paint the area around their flower or in the middle of the flower. The color for the St. Bridget petal is light orange but the flower is the Narcissus which is white.  The color white is often associated with St. Bridget because of her purity of heart. 

The virtue for St. Bridget is truthfulness.  We ended our night practicing our bible verse: Sirach 6:5, "A kind mouth multiples friends, and gracious lips prompt friendly greetings."

Thank you to Evie and her mom for providing us with a special craft to keep in remembrance of St. Bridget and truthfulness.

Our Last Month!

We are in our final month before our Tea Party and badging ceremony.  The girls are working hard to earn their last few petals for Wreath I.  May 5th, Evie will present St. Bridget for the petal of truthfulness.  On May 15th, we will have our final Tea Party and petal presentation.  Work hard little flowers to earn all your petals!

St Joan of Arc Necklaces!

St. Joan of Arc

Virtue: Obedience

The girls enjoyed picking out the symbols and pictures for their own personalized necklace.  Each necklace had the words: immediately, without complaining, cheerfully, and completely to remind the girls that they must remember these things when they are being obedient. The necklaces were extra special since they resembled the dog tags many of the parents wear proudly to work everyday.

Little Flower Mardi Gras Fellowship!

 

In honor of the virtue, Love of Neighbor, our MAFB Little Flower Group hosted the Mardi Gras Fellowship for our Catholic Community.  Thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of our Little Flowers (and their mothers) we had a very successful fellowship with games, donuts, and coffee. 

Despite the lack of heat on a -40 degree day I would say we had a very fun time together.

 

The tables were set up in a large cross pattern to give the most room for people to sit and have access to the five activities.  The room was decorated with yellow, green, and purple table clothes, beads, and tissue paper pom poms.

                                     The mask making table with stickers, feathers, and ribbons.

Halo Saint game (thank you to other Little Flower Groups for the idea!).  A family used pool noodles and wrapped them in yellow duct tape so they would not break any windows or other children if they got tossed too hard.  The family used sand in used litter soda bottles and covered them with pictures of the saints.  Each child received one prize when they got a halo around the saint.

The fish game.  Two magnetic fish games were bought off amazon.com.  The children would use fishing poles to try and catch magnetic fish. If they "caught" a fish they received a small bag of goldfish for a prize.

The Saint Memory game.  Kids had fun trying to match all the adorable saints from Happy Saints.com.  As a prize each child who played got to take home a baggie with their own Saint Memory Game.

Knock Down the Sins Game.  Kids had fun throwing the balls to break down the sins. They had just as much fun stacking them up again.  As prize they received a small rubber ball with a scripture verse.

The donut table with coffee and juice.

Another view of our fellowship hall.  It shows that a lot can be done in a small space if things are organized well.

People enjoying the fish game. You can see our Little Flower manning the table.  We had each Little Flower sign up to oversee each activity.

Halo Toss in mid-throw!

Knocking down those sins!

Even the bigger kids got into the Saint Memory Game!

People enjoying the refreshments despite the frigid temperature inside the fellowship hall!

Notice the hats and coats still on people.

Little Flowers at work.

Mask making.