Enjoy Simple Eats with Our Lady of Lourdes

French toast is super easy to make - even if your gluten-free like some of us. So, it has become one of our go-to's for celebrating the liturgical year at home on Feburary 11, the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes.

Why French toast? Because Our Lady appeared in Lourdes, France.

And, of course, one of our toppings is always Our Lady's blue(berries).

We also sometimes serve something yellow - such as defrosted frozen mango chunks or chunked pineapple to remind us of the yellow roses at the feet of the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes.

And to drink? Water, of course, which reminds us of the miraculous and healing spring in Lourdes.

For decoration at the table, we typically put out our Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette peg dolls from our Marian apparation set.

{Some links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.}

Then, if our day is not too jam-packed, besides praying and recalling the story of Our Lady of Lourdes, we revisit a variety of stories or movies, which include:

The Saints Chronicles, Collection 3

Source: Amazon

Bernadette: Our Lady's Little Servant.

Source: Amazon

 Saint Bernadette Soubirous: And Our Lady of Lourdes.

Source: Amazon

Saint Bernadette: the Little Girl of Lourdes.  

Source: Amazon

Our Lady of Lourdes Coloring Book

Source: Amazon

Bernadette, Princess of Lourdes

The Song of Bernadette

If you're celebrating, too, you might consider having an Our Lady of Lourdes Poet-Tea like we did in the past.

Source: Training Happy Hearts

Some years, we even get fancier with our eats, such as they year we hosted an Our Lady of Lourdes Poet-Tea.

We also sometimes play our All Saints Day Build-a-Grotto for Mary game!

Always, we are blessed by our simple eats with the saints.

Perhaps you can enjoy similar simple eats and blessings!

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us!

Enjoy an Our Lady of Lourdes Poet-Tea

Our Lady of Lourdes feast day is February 11. Have you already decided how you might live this liturgical celebration with your children? 

Perhaps taking a peek at how my children and I enjoyed an Our Lady of Lourdes Poet-Tea with friends last year might help.

All you really need for a tea are some symbolic eats and a copy of the Lourdes Poem - A Holy Place.   However, since my children are a part of an AMP club we run at our home, we did things up a bit more.
 
"AMP"ing Up the Liturgical Year

As background, let me explain that 2015-2016 school year brought a new initiative to our family and some friends: We decided to begin an A.M.P. It Up club to "amp up" our regular focus on art, music, and poetry in our lives, which we have continued through this year.

For "AMP", as we have come to call our club, three families gather at my home once or twice each month so the children can:

• recite (and sometimes write verses of) poetry
• be introduced to famous composers and their compositions
• and experiment with different styles of artwork, sometimes after completing quick picture studies.

Since all of the families in our AMP club share our Catholic faith, together, we decided that we'd tie our club activities to the liturgical year on occasion.  This means that, sometimes, we based entire meetings on a specific liturgical celebration (such as what we did for our Our Lady of Sorrows and Candlemas Poet-Teas), while, at other times, we dedicate only a portion of our gathering to directly honoring a particular saint or liturgical season.

Our Poet-Tea for Our Lady of Lourdes was in the latter style. We started with full focus on the story of Our Lady of Lourdes and, then, only loosely tied back to it as our gathering progressed.
 
The Setting

{Disclosure: Some links which follow are affiliate ones.}

As friends arrived, they found the table set with:

• a lacy, white tablecloth (white to remind us of Our Lady's purity and lace to make us think of French lace since Lourdes is in France)
• white and blue candles for Our Lady of Lourdes colors
• a Mary statue with a Rosary in honor of Our Lady
• a globe (so we could could find France, where Our Lady appeared and, Germany, where our composer-of-the-gathering was from)
• Prayers to My Favorite Saints (which have sold used at Amazon for just a penny before!)
• Prayers to the Saints (which sells used at Amazon for just 15 cents right now!)
• apple cider juice wigglers to remind us of the mud that became a spring 
• and some molasses candy the kids made on fresh snow that they wanted to put out as "a muddy spring/river"
  
  

  

Friends also brought vanilla yogurt (again to remind us of Our Lady and her purity) and granola and one other dish, which, unfortunately, I cannot recall and do not have clearly pictured

An Our Lady of Lourdes Poet-Tea

To begin our Poet-Tea, we prayed grace and the prayers in Prayers to My Favorite Saints and Prayers to the Saints. Then, we used the food on our table as symbols for chatting about what the children already knew about St. Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes.

As the children ate the symbolic food items and drank water (for the spring at Lourdes) or tea, I read them the Lourdes Poem - A Holy Place.

After I read the poem, I asked the children how it differed from other poems that we had read and recited at prior meetings.  Of course, they mentioned the length of the Lourdes Poem and how it tells a story.  With that lead in, I explained that the poem is a narrative poem and asked  if the children could name any other narrative poems.

Then, the children offered poetry recitations on self-selected poems about such topics as snow, rain, Our Lady, and sorrow.

Composer Study and Music Appreciation with a Loose Tie-In to Our Lady of Lourdes

Once the children had finished eating and we had cleared the table, the music portion or our meeting commenced. 

Using the globe on the table, the children found France, where Lourdes is.  Then, they found Germany, where our composer of the meeting - Wagner - was from.

Together, we recalled that in our music "spine", The Story of the Orchestra, we had previously been introduced to the ornate, full Baroque era of music and the simpler, more thoughtful Classical era and chatted about how we were moving on to the Romantic era, which we actually touched on during our first meet up and, again, when we focused on Tchaikovsky during Advent.

We talked about how the Romantic era was filled with passion and drama and how music was composed to overwhelm listeners with emotion, immerse them in magical fantasies, or sweep them away with pieces about love and heartbreak. We reiterate that during the Romantic period, composers became popular celebrities of sorts. 

Then, I handed out notebooking sheets and asked the children to draw or write notes while I played a Richard Wagner medley in the background and introduced Richard Wagner by reading 24-25 of The Story of he Orchestra.

As I read, I pointed out that Wagner was a troubled person of questionable character – and is, perhaps, now one of those suffering souls that Our Lady asks us to pray for – but that, despite his personal flaws, he had made a huge mark on culture with his music. I pointed out how Wagner was led to make his mark when passion for one thing opened a door to a passion for another and asked how God gifts and guides us through our own passions.

I also played  a clip of the Bridal Chorus and one of Ride of the Valkyries and had the children get up to “march” to the first and to  “strong arm” to the latter as a movement break.

As we often do at the end of the music portion of our club gatherings, the children then were given a few minutes to share one fact they thought was interesting or one thing they took notes about.

Some of the children's notes included:

loud music with horns and the opera with dwarfs that steal gold...

more about the opera...

castles, loud music, and a disturbed composer...

plus, a fantastic quick portrait sketches...

As is typical with our group, more children sketched their notes than wrote them in words, but some did write a word here and there. 

The youngest participating child, though, just went to town with doodled notes!

Art Time!

As the music portion of our meeting concluded, I asked the children to recall, once more, the story of Our Lady of Lourdes and how she appeared more than once, offering more details each time she came. We also recalled how the music we had just heard seemed to get more complex as it went at times.   We, then, connected these thoughts to art.

Artists often use outline shapes and, put together, those shapes create more complex images.  As an example, we studied the art work by Edgar Degas on p. 25 of Artistic Pursuits, which is one of our group's art "spines". 

After studying the Degas artwork, we recalled how we'd made orange art for a prior gathering focused on Our Lady of Altagracia by, first, drawing outlines or oranges, and, then, mixing oil pastels to color in our oranges and give them depth and shape. Connected to this, I  explained that our goal for the day was to explore how to do similarly with chalk/soft pastels.

Since the pastels are so soft, mixing colors requires only layering them and you have to be careful about inadvertently smudging your work while completing it.  Thus, backgrounds should be colored last.

We, then, continued on with the project: You Use Soft Pastels from Artistic Pursuits by using pictures of Our Lady of Lourdes and/or photographs of animals as inspiration to create art works on colored paper, which we meant to “set” pastels with hair spray, but, never did as none of us remembered to purchase cheap hairspray.  (Ooops.)

I did get photos of most of the artworks created in case they smudged later:

As you can see, most of the crowd went rogue from Our Lady of Lourdes art, and even from animal art. We were okay with that, though, as exploring soft pastels in conjunction with pencil, if desired, was our main goal for the art portion.

During discussions and teas, the children had already focused a lot on Our Lady of Lourdes.

Final Thoughts with More Poet-Teas and Our Lady of Lourdes

As you can see, Our Lady of Lourdes Poet-Tea was not 100% focused on the honoring the feast day.  Rather, like life itself, the Poet-tea became combination of focus on the miraculous and on the mundane, with faith woven into everything in one way or another.

As I mentioned previously, other Poet-Teas we have hosted have been more directly related to particular feast days straight from the tea through the poetry, music, and art.  Howe we proceed all depends on how life and lessons are flowing in a given month and how the Spirit leads me as I plan.

Of course, we have also learned about celebrated other Our Lady of Lourdes at other times, including with a quick white-and-blue breakfast with stories before heading out for an Eco-Science animal tracking walk on the day of this AMP meeting, making candles after Adoration, meeting engineering challenges at parties and having a just-us tea in the middle of a snow storm.

Tracy, at A Slice of Smith Life, who often inspires me with wonderful examples of how to live the liturgical year with children, has some great Our Lady of Lourdes ideas, too.

St. Bernadette and Our Lady, pray for us.

Begin a Children's Adoration Hour (More than Once if Need Be!)

Several years ago, a Catholic homeschool group I was in approached a local priest about leading a monthly series of formal Holy Hours for children.  He kindly agreed and the initiative kicked off. 

Although I am a "cradle Catholic", I was new to such experiences and was grateful to the organizing mom and agreeable priest for introducing my children and I to children's Adoration.  Unfortunately, though, the introduction was short-lived.
 
You Never Know if You Don't Try...
 If I recall correctly, the format used for the first Holy Hours my children and I experienced was that of the World Apostolate of Fatima.  This format offered a beautiful, formal, and traditional Holy Hour approach, which worked best for families with older (or more sedate!) children.

During the Holy Hours, the presiding priest stayed on the altar, leading the service and offering a thoughtful homily.  The children sat in pews with their families, ideally, listening, praying, adoring, and taking turns leading decades of the rosary.  In reality, though, some children (like mine!) tried to escape the pews, got super wiggly, and, at times, even needed to be taken to the back of the church.

Luckily for we moms with "busy children", the mom who organized the Holy Hours also invited everyone to enjoy a snack, a meaningful, hands-on activity and some fellowship after the prayer time each month.  It was the snack and the engaging additional activities that helped me keep my children coming back each month.  For, in all honesty, at my children's young ages and with their wiggly ways, they just did not get much out of the Holy Hour portion of the monthly initiative.

I dare say, the same was true for some other children, because, unfortunately, attendance at the monthly Holy Hours began to dwindle, and, before too many months passed, the initiative ceased.

Although managing my children at the Holy Hours was often a challenge, I was sad to see the program peter out.  I had hoped that in experiencing it on a regular basis, and in witnessing the example of older children, my children would come to love Adoration.

Going It Alone

With no group option for children's adoration, I began making time for my husband or me to take our children to adoration on our own.  Our efforts to do so were not always met with welcome by our children, but, eventually, were met with a genuine plea of, "I want to go to Adoration." 

Unfortunately, due to changes in work schedules, my husband and I allowed something not-so-great to happen:  new work hours did not match well with Adoration chapel hours in the next town over, so, as much as I hate to admit it, we stopped prioritizing getting ourselves to adoration regularly.

Granted, we did get to the chapel occasionally, and I was able to participate in occasional Holy Hours at our parish, but as our own weekly commitments to Adoration weakened, so did our children's experience of frequent, fruitful quiet time with Jesus.

Renewing Regularity through a Group Children's Adoration Hour

About a year and a half ago, after a new local Catholic homeschooling group began, another mom and I began chatting about our desire for a regular group adoration hour.  I told her about a website I had found, Children of Hope, and she agreed that the format it described seemed like an appropriate one for our children, formal, yet interactive and with opportunities for children to move, also something we could lead on our own, or that could be led by a priest if we were blessed enough to find one who could offer our group his time. 

Thus, my friend and I began praying over beginning a children's adoration hour and, sensing it was meant to happen, began making inquiries.  I reached out to some priests I know, but their churches did not have regular Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and their schedules were unable to accommodate exposing the Holy Eucharist for our group.  My friend reached out to some she knows and got permission for us to bring a group of children to an existing adoration time.  However, she was told that it must be a completely silent adoration.  We did not feel our children were ready for that.

So, another mom got permission for our group to gather for a private hour of Adoration, where we could speak some and guide the children, at a church near her.  Unfortunately, the hour was quite an early one and the location a bit far for many in our group. 

With so many roadblocks, my friend and began to wonder if our idea of a group children's adoration hour was really "meant" to happen.  Unsure, we stopped pursuing it actively and just left it to prayer and the Spirit's work.

Well, the Spirit did work!  About a month ago, a priest that my friend had contacted some time back got in touch with her, told her a new Adoration chapel had been built at his parish, and that he would welcome our group.

Wow!  We were thrilled!

My friend immediately got word out and a surprisingly amount of families from our group signed up for the first children's hour.  Then... snow!  Inches and inches of snow. A blizzard buried our plans.

Doubt crept in, but did not last. We decided to have my friend ask the priest if we could simply reschedule for another day this month.  He said, "of course."  She got word out, and four families ended up joining in for our group's first children's Adoration hour.

It went beautifully!

The wonderful parish priest met us in the chapel and led our group in praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.  Before praying each decade, he led the children in a discussion which engaged all but the youngest of our children.  (And, as moms of crawling children tried to corral their wee ones, the priest simply smiled and said, "Let them be."  It was so beautiful witness the mix of formal prayer, yet the encouragement of free movement for those young children that truly needed it!)

Then, when the priest had to leave us to attend to parish business, we invited all the children to move from pews to the space in front of the altar.  There, we began a modified version of the sample format for children's adoration as described at Children of Hope.  My favorite parts of that experience was witnessing the children earnestly praying in silence for a few moments, as well as hearing them share prayer intentions with one another.  Children praying, in silence and aloud, while visiting Jesus is simply precious.

After our Adoration time concluded, we moved to a meeting room to enjoy some liturgical year activities.

Because our initial meet up day fell close to Candlemas, two of our activities were making candles and prayer cards based on the Presentation of Jesus.   

Because our rescheduled meet up day fell close to Our Lady of Lourdes feast day, we also had children make candles and paper mosaic grottoes of Our Lady of Lourdes.

The children were also given an opportunity to revisit a game we played at our last All Saints day party and to bless themselves with Holy Water from Lourdes.

As our meeting time concluded, the priest was able to come back to see us and kindly blessed our candles.
 

Then, we concluded with a group prayer.

Start Your Own Children's Adoration HourWhat a wonderful experience our recent children's adoration hour and liturgical year celebration was!  I look forward to meeting again next month and encourage others to start similar initiatives.

You can find many resources for children's adoration hours at:

• Children of Hope
• Children of the Eucharist
• Guided Children's Adoration

I am sure there are more sites and sources out there for children's adoration, too.  If you know of a great one, please do share about in a comment.

3 All Saints Day Game Challenges {with FREE PRINTABLE!}

Last year, when I was planning our  Little Way Home Educators first annual All Saints Day party, inspiration struck:  I could use a delightful little book I love as inspiration for all the games.

(Note:  Among the links provided for your convenience below are affiliate ones.  As is stated in our full disclosure, if you click on one and make a purchase, we may receive compensation.) 

My Inspiration

 
Prayers to My Favorite Saints (St. Joseph Picture Books) is a beautiful, inexpensive softcover book that contains full-page color images and original prayers to 15 saints, along with simple facts and information about each of its featured saints.  As inspiration struck, I decided I would create one game challenge for each of the saints featured in the book and, then, order enough copies of the book for each family at our party to go home with one.  

In reality, the former happened, but the latter did not.  I simply did not get things together quickly enough to order copies of the book in time for them to arrive by our party date.  So, instead, I brought my copy of Prayers to My Favorite Saints to the party, explained the connection between it and the game challenges I had put together for the children to enjoy, suggested that families might page through my copy to pray a few of the prayers within it, and explained that the book often sells for just $1.50 or less online, and, so, is a title that makes a wallet-friendly addition to a home collection of picture books on saints.

Our All Saints Day Game Challenges

Today, I am sharing a FREE PRINTABLE that includes three of the fifteen game challenge sheets that I created.

Each game challenge was brainstormed with six parameters in mind:

• Challenges would highlight a saint from Prayers to My Favorite Saints.

• They would require only materials I had on hand or ones that are easily and inexpensively attained.

• Some would be simple enough for young children.  Others would test the skills of older children.

• All could be played independently or with only simple, brief guidance from adults.

• As many as possible would highlight sensory skills that my child and some of the other children in our group benefit from as a part of daily sensory diet activities.

• Finally, of course, games should be fun!

I must have done well with my planning, because the children all seemed to enjoy themselves at the game stations, and those that took time to pray along with Prayers to My Favorite Saints commented on what a delightful book it is. So, this year, as I pull together some repeat games for our upcoming second annual All Saints Day party, I thought I would share each of the games that I created last year so that you might enjoy creating similar faith-based fun for your home, homeschool group, or parish!

Up today:

Pin the Crown on Mary

Somehow, I missed snapping photographs of the Pin the Crown on Mary challenge at last year's party.  However, since the set up for this game was quite simple and the play traditional, I am sure you can imagine both how to set up and play this easy game that uses the vestibular sense while highlighting the fact that Mary is the Queen of All Saints.

To set up the game, post a poster of Saint Mary on the wall.  Next to it, post the challenge sheet. Near these, on the floor or on a chair, place a blind fold and some crowns cut from 3 x 5 inch sticky notes.  (Construction paper crowns with tape can work, too, but I find that sticky note ones are gentler on the Mary poster.)

To play, children come to the game area, put the blindfold on, take a sticky crown, turn around three times, attempt to crown Mary, take the blindfold off, and see how they did.  Easy peasy and fun for all ages.

Balance St. Thomas Aquinas' Books 

This game was a surprising favorite that appealed to kids of all ages, including some of our more "sensory kids" in the group.  What a delight it was for me to see such children in full concentration, books balanced happily on their heads, as they exercised their proprioceptive senses, remembering how St. Thomas Aquinas is the patron saint of Catholic schools and wrote many books on the teachings of the church.

The set up for this game was simple: a piece of wood on the floor, the challenge sheet taped to a chair back, and some saint books and children's bibles of various sizes and weights on the chair.  For those who don't want to lug a board to a playing space, though, a masking tape line on the floor or a small balance beam could work just as well.
 
Build a Grotto Like the One in which St. Bernadette Saw Our Lady

This game challenge recalled how St. Bernadette saw a vision of our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in a grotto at Lourdes, France and was more difficult than it appeared.  Stacking small stones to make a grotto shape was do-able, but certainly not something that took little effort.
 

The set up for this game station was easy, though.  A dollar store cookie tray with a pile of rocks and a small doll were placed next to a challenge sheet on a table.  Since all of my Mary figurines were breakable ones, I used a Melissa & Doug Wooden Doll dressed in Mary's symbolic colors for this game last year.  This year, I plan to use an Immaculate Heart of Mary Statue Favor (even if it should be an Immaculate Conception one), since I have some of these miniature unbreakable figurines from when we made Mini-Mary Gardens to celebrate Our Lady of Fatima and St. Isadore the Farmer earlier this year.
 

What I especially loved about the way the children enjoyed our grotto-building challenge station was the teamwork they used at it.  While some of the games at our party were competitive ones and others challenged children's individual skills, this one unexpectedly inspired children to work together.  What fun it was to see small groups of children coming together to meet success at this station!

Free Printable Game Challenge Sheets

On each game challenge sheet, I included a title for the game, a saint image from Wikimedia common (some of which my own children later used for picture study), a brief fact about the saint, and a short description of the challenge.  Since I have no laminator, I simply placed the sheets in page protectors to keep them from getting wrinkled or ripped as the children made their way through each station at the party.

Children were encouraged to pair up as they went around from station to station so that strong readers were with developing readers, enabling all the children to play the games with little adult help.  This method worked well for us.  Perhaps it can for you, too.  Enjoy using our game challenge sheets!

I hope to share the remaining 12 games that I created with you over the course of the next few days.  However, we all know how life goes, so I am not making any promises.  I will get them up eventually though, so do check back!

EDITED:  All 12 games are up now.  Find the rest by clicking through the links below:


3 More All Saints Day Party ideas with FREE PRINTABLE Game Challenge Sheets.

2 All Saints Day Craft Challenges and a Physical One {with FREE PRINTABLE Challenge Sheets}

3 Skills-Based Game Challenges for All Saints Day

The Final 3 All Saints Day Game Challenges

Will you be celebrating All Saints Day with a party this year?  What are some of your favorite games, activities, and foods for it?