Parade of Saints

We are continuing with our Parade of Saints this year. We have added a few already and have a few waiting in the wings (we ran out of laminating sheets). They boys are determined to fill the door from top to bottom. It could happen. As soon as we get them laminated, we will be adding St. Sebastian, St. Raphael, and St. Paul Chong Hasang. Honestly, I just love getting to know the saints!

Parade of Saints Summary

We had so much fun this month learning more about our friends, the saints! We spent a lot of time coloring pictures of saints, reading about saints, having wonderful discussions about saints, and watching a few videos about them as well. I have put together this final blog post to share the wonderful resources that we use this month.

Resources:

The original idea for a "parade of saints" came from the Under Her Starry Mantle blog.

Some of the fantastic, free, and really beautiful coloring pages that we used came from the Waltzing Matilda blog.

The Paper Dali blog also has some amazing paper doll saints to color.

We listened to the Saint of the Day at americancatholic.org .

Apostleship of Prayer has nice videos to go with many saints- they are more like slide shows with an audio. They are very well done, interesting and just a few minutes long. The only disclaimer that I offer is that they were not made specifically for children. When I searched a video of a certain saint who had suffer a rather horrific incident, I found the video a bit too blunt in its information to share with my children. Fortunately, these videos are short enough to quickly preview before watching.

Some information on specific saints that we found very helpful and enjoyable.

Blessed Miguel Pro (my boys' favorite saint!)
Kateri Tekakwitha from the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Church Website
Kateri Tekakwitha - video found at CatholicMom.com
Mother Josephine Bakhita - from Vatican: the Holy See
Blessed Father Damien- from EWTN
Joan of Arc - from Garden of Praise


The Stories of the Saints reading comprehension books by Catholic Heritage Curricula have well written saint's stories that really hold my boys' interest. These are by far their favorite of all the saints books that we own. We don't use the reading comprehension portion-- just the stories.


Other saints books that we own and use frequently are:

Saints for Young Readers Volume 1 and Volume 2. These have a saint (or more) for each day of the year.

The Saint Joseph Picture Books Gift set- Book of Saints Vol. 1-12. These books feature a full page picture of each saint and one page of information. Just right for a nice introduction to a saint.

Similar to the above St. Joseph saints books, but are individual titles that feature just one saint per book. Kateri Tekakwitha is one (we own several) that we used. There are many in the series and they are very affordable at about $1.50 each.

Encounter the Saints series- we have a just a few of these short chapter books, but have found the ones we own to be very interesting and informative.

This post explains how this all started:
Our Original Parade of Saints Post

This is picture of our completed (for now) saint pictures:
Our Final Parade of Saints

The links to products I have featured here are chosen in this order--
1. a company that I highly value
2. if that company does not feature the item or has it listed in a way that I find complicated, I try and find another company I have used or recognize.
3. if all else fails, I just try to find the product and link it.

Our Final Line Up

After a month of coloring (not as often as we had hoped) we have a nice collection of saints to use to decorate for All Saint's Day next year, and we have all learned quite a bit!!

Today the boys regaled their brother-in-law with stories of Blessed Miguel Pro, Blessed Mother Theresa and St. Damien of Molokai.

Hopefully, we'll add to our line up throughout the year on various feast days. It has been a great month of learning and having fun with the saints. :)

 

Thank you to Erin (16yo) for taking the pictures. :)

Two More...

We are still working on our Month of Saints!

As I anticipated, life got crazy (school, colds, grandbaby being born...) and we skipped a few days. We were back at it today with St. Joseph the Worker (colored by James) and St. Martin of Tours (by Paul), whose feast day is tomorrow. Mark is also working a Saint Michael picture, but it is a bit more detailed- it will have to be a two day-er!

I had several pictures for the boys to choose from to color. Usually, they pick at least one of the saints that I have something prepared for-- either to watch or read about. This time, those were not the pages that motivated them. None the less, we watched the two videos that I had ready to go and we will color the saints from those stories another day! I was able to find information about St. Patrick and Blessed Kateri that the boys found very interesting! We did read just a page about St. Martin of Tours from the Book of Saints Part 6 by Father Lovasik, S.V.D. Tomorrow, on St. Martin's feast day, we'll listen Franciscan Radio's Saint of the Day audio (just over a minute long) to learn more about him.

New Additions

Our line up for today (left to right) Mother Teresa of Calcutta (colored by Paul), Saint John Capistrano (by Mark), St. John Vianney (me :)), and Blessed Juan Diego (James- and I think he did an amazing job!).

We read about Blessed Mother Teresa from this little book by Rev. Jude Winkler OFM Conv. and listened to some online audios found on Youtube by apostleshipofprayer (click "uploads" to view the many choices available or search by name). The boys were very impressed that she cared for those with leprosy as well (we just read about Fr. Damien). She is also very real to the boys as she died just the year before Paul was born. It really brings the idea of sainthood in to the context of today!

More Saints!

Today I came across this beautiful lady (Saint Maria Goretti) in an old coloring book that was colored about 10 years ago by Michelle (now a college student). We are adding it to our "saints parade" and the boys are excited to see if Michelle notices her art work hanging with their pictures. :)

Our featured saint's feast day today in our Saints for Young Readers book that we read each morning (well, most mornings ;)) was Saint Martin de Porres. We also listened about him on Franciscan Radio (about a 90 second blurb). I found this cool slideshow later in the day at the apostleshipofprayer site. We'll watch that tomorrow.

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In the meantime, while the boys colored, I read some excerpts from Saint Maximillian Kolbe: Mary's Knight. I read just a page from the book about his childhood and then the very end when Fr. Kolbe offers his life in exchange for another. Very compelling, inspiring reading!!

And then, finally, St. Francis and Blessed Miguel Pro. The boys have always been inspired by Miguel Pro. It is a story of true adventure and heroism that any boy can appreciate! Paul (11yo) has decided to choose him for his confirmation saint when the time comes. :)

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Our bedtime conversation tonight was about the heroism of saints- one of the boys mentioned that a particular saint was heroic. Paul gave a rather snippy "well, most saints are heroic" (kind of in a no-duh tone of voice). Rather than getting snippy back (yes, I was tempted), we had a fun discussion about the ways that different saints are heroic. Some are less obvious, so it was an interesting!

**if anyone is tempted to point out that not all clothing is accurate in color, I deferred to each artist's opinion when coloring his saint picture. I did try and point it out and was told (with great conviction) that it looks nice this way. :)

Month of Saints

Parade of Saints

November beginning with All Saint's Day inspired us to begin a serious saint overview this month. Stealing (well, borrowing might be a nicer way to put it) a few ideas from other blogs and people we know, we began today.

We are using this idea from Under Her Starry Mantle to make a "parade of saints". We are using these coloring pages from the Waltzing Matilda blog- scroll down and you will see the complete list of available pages on the right.

My friend, Tamara, is also doing a saint project. She is letting each of her children choose a saint trading card each day, reading the information on the back of each card and then delving in to one of the saints a bit deeper. The children can then report (share :)) to dad that evening what they have learned.

 
As a take of on that, I read about one of the saints while my boys colored saints pictures today (they have a longer attention span for coloring if I read to them). I read about Father Damien of Molokai from one of the Stories of the Saints books offered at Catholic Heritage Curricula. The boys actually had a great time sharing with dad this evening- even James (6yo) remembered much of the story and was excited to share. He was also my most enthusiastic artist-- coloring both Fr. Damien and St. Bruno!

These are our saints for today. I know that realistically we won't be able to do this every day this month, but I am hoping for 2 or 3 times a week.

If you don't have a saints book on hand or information about the saint you are looking for, you can look for a saint by name and listen to a nice story at Franciscan Radio . My boys enjoy listening to these short stories.

***Paperdali blog is also a great resource that I just discovered for coloring pages and more!!