Words to Remember: Chapter 11

Parish: A community of believers who worship God together. Our parish is OLDP.

Pastor: A priest who leads the parish in worship, prayer and teaching. Our pastor is Fr. Mike.

Deacon: A man ordained by the bishop who helps the priest and parish by preaching, baptizing, and other things. Our deacons are Deacon Fred Memleb and Deacon Roberto

Words to Remember: Chapter 10

Prayer: Listening and talking to God

Synagogue: The gathering place where Jewish people pray and learn about God.

Litugy: The official public prayer of the Church.

Pilgrimages: Journeys to holy places.

Chapter 9: Words to Remember

Apostle's Creed: A prayer written by the early Church that tells our main beliefs.

Justice: Treating everyone fairly.

Epiphany

Hope you enjoy the cookies. If you missed class and are reading this, hope you had a great Christmas. For Epiphany, try this simple house blessing.

Domestic Church is a Catholic site and includes a house blessing. Catholic Mom.com has puzzles, games, a coloring sheet and more. Catholic Culture suggests a family play to go with the house blessing. Domestic Church has even more ideas. ABC Teachhas a coloring sheet of the Three Kings. They also have a rebus that kids may enjoy decoding. Want to throw an Epiphany party? About.com has coloring sheets too. DLTK has some Epiphany crafts and a cute song to sing. More coloring pages! Put together an on-line puzzle of the three kings. If you'd rather color on-line, try this.

Remember to review those words to remember on earlier posts.

See you next week!

Words to Remember: Chapter 13

Advent: The season in which we get ready for Christmas. The word means "coming".

Advent Activites for Families

We are now in the season of Advent, when we prepare for Christmas. Below are some links to help you and your family remember the reason for the season.

Catechetical Resources has activities for all grade levels, including instructions for making Advent Wreaths, coloring sheets and study guides.


Sadlier, publisher of our We Believe religion series has Advent activities for all ages.

CatholicMom.com has art projects, coloring sheets, games and even some recipes. They have more under lesson plans.

Catholic Advent is an old site and most of the links are bad, so skip them, but try the activities.

This site, filled with preschool activities, gives instructions for an Advent Wreath craft and lesson.

Here is another Advent Wreath craft, with prayers, and here are different directions for a traditional Advent Wreath.

Catholic Cuisine blog has recipes that help you celebrate the church liturgical year. See what they are cooking up for Advent.

Here is a beautiful Jesse Tree. It is the one my family and I are using this year.
Here are Advent prayers for children.

Family Advent activities.

Holy Heroes will send you an email every day with Advent Activities.

Don't forget the weekly mass readings. The publishers of the Faith First religion texts have weekly summaries, discussion topics and activities based on the readings. Sadlier has a similar site. Catholic Mom.com has coloring pages, worksheets, lesson plans, and more for each week. Open Wednesday has a variety of activities as well.

What is in the Church

During our church tour we talked about many of the things we see every week. When we enter the church, we use Holy Water from the Baptismal Font to bless ourselves and to remember our baptism, when we became members of the Church and were freed from Original Sin.



Just inside the church are the votive candles. When we light one to pray for someone, we remember that Jesus is the Light of the World.



In the sanctuary we see the tabernacle where the consecrated hosts, Jesus' Body are kept. When we see the red candle lit it reminds us that Jesus is truly present in the Tabernacle. We genuflect to the tabernacle when we enter the church. God's word is read at the Ambo at mass. Father showed us the Book of the Gospels and the Lectionary too. The table where Father offers God bread and wine and where that bread and wine become Jesus' body and blood is called the Altar.


Our church has many things in it to remind us of Jesus and his friends. The crucifix reminds us of Jesus and how he died for us. We have statues of Jesus, Mary, Joesph and others. On the wall are the Stations of the Cross which remind us of how much Jesus loved us to suffer such an awful death for us.

When we go to church, we need a place to sit, and so we have pews.