One of the things I wanted to start doing this year in our school was to incorporate the celebration of the liturgical feasts and saints of the Church into our schedule. I have observed for years, many wonderful Catholic families embracing the richness of the tradition with crafts, meals, prayers, activities, and decorations. I truly yearned to be able to do it, but somehow I kept delaying it and pushing it for another season in our lives. Until this year, when I decided to just go for it, once and for all, and set it all in motion!
To begin, my first step was to craft my own Liturgical calendar; a visual that was interactive and simple enough for my kids to engage, as well as in the changing of the feasts and seasons.
Sometimes when you homeschool, it is easy to get overwhelmed and only focus on academics or sports, and it sounds too much to add on top of it all, the feasts of the Faith. But my yearning to start, and to truly commit to it, relied on the wish to create not just spaces of prayer and faith during our school year, but also beautiful memories and traditions for our family.
The feasts of the Church highlight a time and season of our Faith, full of stories and virtues. The celebration of the feasts and saints in our domestic church and homeschool not only breaks the routine of our schedule, but enriches it, by bringing together the whole family around a meal, snack, activity, or reading to ponder about the truths of our Faith, keeping God and the reminder of his mercies at the center. Once you start adopting the practice of celebrating the feast days of the liturgical year, it rapidly becomes a new tradition that kids will look forward to doing over and over again. Imprinting in their hearts beautiful and fun memories of family gatherings with purpose and deep meaning.
Liturgical celebrations can be as simple and/or as deep as you want. We began very simply, but plan to add more elements as we advance in the upcoming years. As I mentioned above, the first step I took was to have a visual calendar where I could keep a monthly view of the feasts and seasons at glance, that way I would no longer miss or skip important dates, and it will allow me to plan and prepare in advance the celebrations.
This homemade calendar is very easy to make, I am happy with the results!
First of all, it's very affordable. It has room to add as many elements as you want, it is a customizable option. I wanted it to be portable, kid-friendly, durable, and interchangeable, for that, I designed a "Perpetual Calendar" not only to make it essentially Catholic, haha but also to be able to modify it through the years.
For the layout, I used a dollar store poster. Is big enough and it can be displayed anywhere. For the calendar itself, I used paint chips! super fun and pretty; the perfect background to give a firm, colorful quality and consistency.
I labeled the days of the month with my label maker and used velcro dots to fasten the feast day cards from our curriculum resource: Saints and seasons by CHC.
To ensure durability, I laminated all the images and cards.
The calendar is located at the center of the poster and the layout fits almost perfectly, but I wanted to decorate the side panels too. I found 2 wonderful resources from other blogs that truly complemented the whole look and purpose of my "Perpetual Calendar".
First set by: Sanctus Simplicitus Blog, here I was able to add the liturgical year wheel and the mysteries of the rosary, the days of the week pockets with, yesterday, today, and tomorrow movable labels which allowed my little ones to interchange throughout the week along with the mystery of the rosary for that day.
MATERIALS
Poster
Paint Chips
Velcro dots
Glue
Scissors
Label machine *OPTIONAL
Laminating machine and pouches *OPTIONAL
Popsicle sticks
Small Ziploc bags
PRINTABLES
Once assembled the children were able to match the number of the day with the feast day and set the month card at the top. They located the day of the week we were on and placed the popsicle stick with today, yesterday, or tomorrow label right on the day pocket as well as the mystery of the rosary that belonged.
To store my printables and cards, I like to use small Ziploc bags to keep each month's cards separated. However, the monthly cards are stored in a binder along with the bags for further reference and use.
Finally, for our lenten season, I added to our 'Perpetual calendar" printables from the Shower of Roses Blog. This set provided a prayer intention for each day and beautiful traditional images and labels for the lenten season, plus the fish reminder for Fridays 🦈.
Remember, the Church divided the calendar into holy seasons to celebrate the history of our salvation! With each season they are days set aside to honor the memory of an event or the life of a saint.
Just ordinary people that loved God in an extraordinary way!
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven"
Ecclesiastes 3:1
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