Coloring Pages and Binding Booklets

Since my young son is in love with coloring, I’ve been super busy creating coloring books for his Kindergarten year. We have been using our Proclick Binder for different coloring pages. It’s been a good investment and I keep finding other reasons to use it.

A few coloring pages that we have bound:

• The first is our Liturgical Calendar Coloring Book by Mary MacArthur. For a busy or tired mom, this is the perfect answer to having all the liturgical feasts ready a month in advance. The ProClick allows me to add and remove what we want.
• The second daily booklet is from Pondered in My Heart. Writing the ABCs on Little Hearts series drawn by Lydia are such sweet pages!

We have not put these in a binder, but our history will have more coloring, using Mary Daly’s First Timeline.

For my older son, I’m trying to compile some pertinent articles arranged by month from the old Catholic comic books “Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact”. There are two online archives, http://www.aladin0.wrlc.org/gsdl/collect/treasure/treasure.shtml by subject, issue, title, etc. and Catholic University by issue up to 1972.

For example, October is the month of the Rosary, and searching for rosary in the subject there is St. Dominic and the Rosary, The History of the Rosary, and The Mysteries of the Rosary. They print nicely, but of course they do use toner, so I don’t print the whole issue, only the pertinent articles I want to present. 4Real Forums has compiled Liturgical year Planning Threads and my friend Mary has tried to find the Treasure Box articles pertinent for each month.

And I’m trying to get keep my life in order while I’m juggling all these tests and doctors’ appointments and binding the lesson plans and such makes it easy to pass off assignments. Loose papers get bent and lost so easily!

I need to order some more of the smaller size spines, but it’s fine using bigger and grow into the booklets.

It’s a handy tool. The original outlay was a bit much, but the binder and the laminator have become indispensable organization tools in our house.

I am excited that I can finally use coloring pages in our learning again.

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The links provided are affiliate links to Amazon. Purchasing through will give a few pennies, perhaps enough to buy a book in one year, but usually not much.

Coloring the Saints

Thank you so much for your kind comments and prayers. My recovery is coming slowly. I’m still out of breath and tired, but I’m making small progress every day.

I’m squeezing this review in between rests.

For my oldest son, coloring pages were a waste of time. He wasn’t interested. I have printed out so many over the years, bookmarked sites, bought coloring books, but I couldn’t seem to ignite any interest.

But my younger son, age 5, is a coloring phenomenon. He is just so happy and calmer if he has coloring in his day. So now it’s not a waste of time or money to spend on coloring pages. The other bonus is younger son’s coloring inspires his older brother!

I signed up for the Liturgical Year coloring Book by Mary MacArthur. The cost is $29, but she is drawing a coloring page for every feast day on the US General Roman Calendar, and also is adding a few Anglican saints.

The pictures are delightful. You can preview some of the pages on her website. Today we listened to the readings of the day from the podcast of USCCB during breakfast and colored St. Paul afterwards. For January there were 21 pages we had to color, all truly delightful.

Mary sends a .pdf file at the beginning of the month to print all the pages. To make things easier, she will only send subscriptions at the beginning of the month, so if you sign up in January, your first month will be February. See more details here.

I’m a fan of all the free coloring pages I can find and I like to add to the variety (and Charlotte’s are one of my favorites), but for ease of use and organization (of which I lack here) and pages for every feast, I’m so happy to have this resource!

Mini 3-D Virtual St. Joseph Altar

Evann is creating more goodies for St. Joseph’s Day!

I already mentioned her Virtual St. Joseph Altar. Now she has shared a .pdf file to make a mini 3-D Virtual St. Joseph Altar! No one should be intimidated by a St. Joseph Altar anymore!

And this has gotten my wheels turning. After a cardstock Table, maybe next year we can make some Altar offerings out of marzipan or clay?

Thanks, Evann!

End of the Church Year

Christ the King

The Liturgical Year is coming to a close, with Sunday being the last Sunday in Ordinary Time (the BIG Ordinary Time, my son calls it).

Alas, I don’t have time to put much celebration into one of my favorite saints, Saint Cecilia, Patroness of music. I’ll have to mark it in small ways, because my focus is getting ready for Sunday and Advent. I wrote a few posts with some of our celebrations and plans:

Food Fit for THE King at Catholic Cuisine.

For Christ the King at O Night Divine

Celebrating the Solemnity of Christ the King includes a prayer, craft, and sheet music for this day.

ETA: We listen to “For Christ the King” from Non Nobis Domine cd, the Seton choir, put together by my mother a few years ago. My son learned the song after hearing it a few times. It’s fun to sing!

And Advent is almost here. I received some of our new calendars, as I mentioned in this post. We’re also preparing our New Year and Advent resolutions, and getting our house ready for the change of Liturgical seasons (and year). I hope to get some simple New Year party favors for next Sunday’s meal.

Dh and I are really looking for ways to do Christian charity. If you haven’t seen Advent Giving and Help Is On Its Way for some ideas on how to help some families. But I’m also looking for some tangible ways my son can get involved. It will just be little, but he needs some outside focus on giving the gift of love to others, and see how others don’t have all the blessings he does. So I’m seeking some local ideas this week.

I’m on the mend from mastitis, recovering from travel 3 out of the last 4 weekends, so I’m hunkering down and focusing inward.

Feast of the Archangels’ Afterglow

What a day! I have to thank Mother Church for providing such a feast for mothers of boys. My son is in boy heaven. We really didn’t do anything elaborate, or spend all day on the archangels, but what we did captured his imagination.

Lunch we had a peanut butter and blackberry jelly sandwich, to incorporate the blackberries. It seems silly to have a picture of my son eating a sandwich, but that’s just the point. This is a picture of his first PB&J sandwich, actually his first sandwich ever. The picture is from last week. We have gradually added peanuts to his diet without reaction, and our grocery store offered a sliced rice bread that has no wheat, eggs, or milk, but it’s still decent tasting and good texture. He enjoyed the story about the devil spitting on the blackberries.

I have a hard time encouraging my son to color. So I’m really grateful to Ana for this great little angel craft. I think anything that will require cutting and pasting and into 3-D things make it more appealing to a 5 year old boy.

Raphael, Michael and Gabriel

And after gaining confidence in our finished angels, we moved onto Charlotte’s St. Michael image.

For reading we used My Jesus and I including the Wall Chart to have beautiful visuals of the archangels.

The other book we read is a small booklet that I cannot find another copy anywhere. It’s entitled Saint Michael God’s Warrior Angel by Caroline Peters, illustrated by June Roberts. It was printed by Saint Anthony Guild Press, copyright 1963. The booklet starts with the story of Mont Sant’ Angelo, and then retraces the story of St. Michael from creation, through the Bible, to modern day. Because it is written in story form with multiple two-color illustrations of St. Michael in full armour, my son found it very captivating.

We prayed the Angelus and St. Michael prayer together.

I served broiled chicken for dinner because of the “wings” of angels, and carrots for Raphael, patron saint of eyesight. But dessert was a big hit. I made double chocolate muffins (shhh, it’s an allergy box mix, and I called it devil’s food) and added frosting, and we all used cocktail swords to stab the devil’s food cake.

And since we just celebrated a birthday with a knights’ theme, the armor, shields, and swords were put into action to re-enact that heavenly battle of good versus bad angels.

Even though tomorrow is St. Jerome, I have a feeling we’re going to continue the Archangels theme for a few days. It’s just a hunch…

August 8, Memorial of St. Dominic

I posted our dinner plans at Catholic Cuisine for St. Dominic’s feast day.

See also:
A Coloring Page

4Real on St. Dominic ideas

My original food post for this feast.

August 10, Feast of St. Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr

(Also spelled Laurence)

I’m breaking my personal rule of posting about an upcoming saint’s day that won’t be observed this year because it falls on a Sunday. I plan on discussing and sharing some activities with my son either Saturday or Monday. Last year I briefly told him about St. Lawrence and showed him a depiction of Titian’s The Martyrdom of St. Laurence. It was just a brief, unplanned moment, and I really didn’t think it made much of an impression.

But it did make a lasting impression. It’s been a year, but in our night prayers St. Lawrence is invoked every once in a while, and he’s asked to see the picture (found in our copy of One Hundred Saints, which, by the way, is a wonderful book to have for the saints, and used copies are quite reasonable for these full-color coffee table book) many times. (Here are more examples of St. Lawrence in art Masterpieces.)

So there were some areas I wanted to cover, to continue learning about St. Lawrence. I will continue with the story of his life, including his martyrdom  on the gridiron, which is always exciting for boys who love fire.

I will look over my previous musings from 2006 and use them to to focus on Lawrence as one of the first deacons of the Church. I love his quote when he was told to surrender the treasures of the church, he rounded up sick and poor and presented them, saying “Here are the treasures of the Church!”

His role as deacon, ministering to the physical needs of the faithful, is a perfect role model of living the Corporal Works of Mercy

To feed the hungry;
To give drink to the thirsty;
To clothe the naked;
To shelter the homeless;
To visit the sick;
To visit the imprisoned;
To bury the dead.

So I plan on explaining in more detail on how we can follow Jesus’ instructions, and imitating St. Lawrence.

What opportunities will we have to practice these? This month has given us ample opportunities within our extended family to practice some of these works of mercy. We have a new baby cousin coming tomorrow and a loss of another baby cousin in a late miscarriage. We are helping by feeding, visiting, and tending to the needs of these families.

I’m looking for more tangible ways our family can practice these works of mercy. Our parish reinstated Brown Bag Sunday, so I’ll make a concerted effort to have my son help me with that.

For fun, we’re serving waffles for breakfast (just the frozen allergy free kind) and maybe grill for dinner. There are two schools of thought, stay away from all heated foods, or incorporate foods that remind us of grilling or gridiron marks.

This year it seems the “Tears of St. Lawrence” or Perseids will be around August 12.

Lastly, I have a very simple coloring page: St. Lawrence Coloring Page. My son doesn’t color all the time, but when there’s fun things like FIRE, I think he will enjoy the simplicity and freedom of the page.

Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6

Happy Feast of the Transfiguration!

August is such a busy family time of year for us, as there are lots of anniversaries and birthdays this month. And having these feasts help me focus on the Liturgical Calendar.

How so? There are many family days that coincide with the August feast days. We usually try to go to Mass for family members on their special days, so that really puts an emphasis on the feast of the day. It’s so nice to pray for my sister and her husband on this feast day, their anniversary. When I think of the Transfiguration I pray for their marriage. And when I think of their wedding, I also remember the feast of the Transfiguration. It goes both ways, and it’s a small way in living the liturgical year. The Church’s family feasts and our family feasts become seamless.

We also have birthdays that have fallen on great feast days. St. Dominic marks the birthday and anniversary of two other family members. The Solemnity of the Assumption is of course being commemorated, but also marks a special birthday of a nephew. And I haven’t even scratched the surface.

So while thinking of this upcoming feast, I put a <a href=”https://familyfeastandferia.wordpress.com/living-the-liturgical-year-at-home/feast-of-the-transfiguration-august-6/”>page together</a> with some quotes and coloring pages. Enjoy!

Solemnity of Christ the King

Today marks the closing of Ordinary Time of the Liturgical Year, celebrated with the solemnity of Christ the King. Next week is the beginning of Advent.

Mary Ellen has a wonderful summary about this feast, with ideas to celebrate at O Night Divine blog.

I’m in minimalist mode in preparing for the baby. But while straightening up some things in the basement I came across a simple Christ the King image/activity I scanned and we’re using today. Enjoy.