Palm Cross

Wow time flies by at the end of the year. I have been so busy. During Holy Week, my students made palm crosses.

First, we took one palm frond and folded it like so.

We took a second palm frond and folded it in thirds.

Overlap the two pieces

Finally, we stapled the pieces together. We were going to try to weave the pieces together, but this is much easier for Kindergarten students to do. The crosses looked beautiful and the students were so proud of them.

Holy Week

We did some awesome activities for Holy Week. I found some great ideas on the blogs called Catholic Icing and Catholic Inspired. For Palm Sunday, the kids made torn paper palm branches. I drew the outline of a palm branch on black paper and the kids tore pieces of green paper and glued them onto the black paper. 

We also did this stations of the cross activity from Catholic Inspired.

We made this Communion craft when we talked about the Last Supper.

We talked about Veronica's veil and then the kids made their own version on a 4"x4" piece of muslin cloth.

On Holy Thursday, we talked about the washing of the feet and created this craft. We used our fists and fingerprints to make small feet.

We also made Resurrection Rolls on Holy Thursday.

Throughout the week, we worked on Holy Week in Fingerprints which I adapted from this activity on the Catholic Icing Blog. It turned out to be a cute keepsake for the parents.

We also made this Golgotha Scene for our classroom. I had the kids gather rocks, dirt, and sticks and then we placed them inside a clay saucer.

This is the finished project. It is still at out religion center in our classroom.

It was a busy week, but the kids learned a lot about Jesus' last few days. 

Birthday Party Center

This is our birthday party center. The kids pretend that they are at a birthday party.

They have pretend gifts to wrap and give to each other.

There are cups, plates, and napkins to set the table for a party!

Degas Art

We have been learning about Edgar Degas for art masters. The students made these beautiful ballerinas. First, the kids sponge painted the white paper. Next, I traced a ballerina on their paper (the boys requested boy dancers). Finally, the kids used oil pastels to color the ballerina.

Here is one of my students' works of art.

Seven Sacraments

Last week, we learned about the seven sacraments. On Monday, we made a poster to remind us what each sacrament is.

On Tuesday, we sang a song called Children of God.

Children of God, in one Family.

Loved by God, in one Family.

And no matter what we do,

God loves me and God loves you.

On Wednesday, we did a sacraments collage. The kids color symbols for each sacrament. Then they cut out the pictures and glue them on a piece of white paper. Finally, the kids use liquid starch to glue tissue paper squares on top of the pictures.

When they are done their art work looks like a stained glass window.

Handwriting

We have finished our handwriting book. Now we are working on writing numbers on writing paper. The kids use markers and write which ever number we are working on. We write each number together and when they finish writing the number they hold their marker in the air so I know they are ready to move on.

We write each number together and when they finish writing the number they hold their marker in the air so I know they are ready to move on. 

They love using markers to do their work.

Lent Prayer Chain

I found this Lent prayer chain on Catholic Inspired. We remove one link from the chain each day after we do calendar. Each link has a prayer on it. I removed some of the prayer links that I thought would be difficult to explain to kindergarten children (for example, "say a prayer for those who are abused"). Since we are not at school on the weekends, I removed a link for each Saturday and Sunday during Lent and for Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

The link below says "Say an extra 'Glory Be' for religious teachers. May they teach the faith correctly."