Keeping the Lord's Day Holy: 20+ Simple and Free Ideas for Family Dates

More than a month ago, I realized that my family had somehow been letting too much of regular life creep back into our Sundays. As a result, Our Lord's Day was no longer consistently being set apart and kept Holy as the Catechism explains it should be.

Sure, my family was still participating in Mass each Sunday, but, pre- and post-Mass, work, errands, chores, and the like were spilling over from the rest of our week.

More and more, we were failing to ensure "sufficient rest and leisure to cultivate (our) familial, cultural, social, and religious lives."
This was not good, I knew. We needed to amend our ways. and return to keeping Sabbath on the Lord's Day.

Re-instituting a family tradition of family dates on Sundays became one of our first steps towards reclaiming the Holy Day in our family.

This tradition is simple:

On Sundays when we do not have a pre-planned engagement, we set aside two or more hours of time for a family date.

Each week, we rotate through who in our family gets to decide what we do for the date, and, we encourage one another to keep our dates cost-free and focused on some combination of faith, family, friendship, beauty, nature, connection, charity, and relationship.

Family dates are that simple!

How we fell away from the tradition, I am not sure, but I am certainly happy we've re-embraced it! 
If you'd like to initiate a Sunday Family Dates tradition with your family, too, here are some ideas for simple dates that we've enjoyed in the past:

1. Go on a picnic.
2. Invite friends for a walk in the woods.
3. Get together with others for a cook out.
4. Enjoy a family read aloud while having treats.
5. Host a meal for friends or family.

6. Nibble on popcorn with a movie time at home.
7. Build a fire and experiment with camp cooking.
8. Visit friends and family.
9. Play board games and cards.

10. Take a hike.

11. Create art together.

12. Volunteer together.
13. Enjoy outdoor living history, community, and nature events.
14. Cook and bake together.

15. Build a fort or hut.

16. Go for a bike ride.
17. Play catch.
18. Head to the beach

19. Have a cook-off.

20. Enjoy a playground.
21. Or, as we did today, support one another's hobbies, while spending time with friends.

Yep, we went to see Daddy join a friend from church in playing out. 

Have a blessed and happy Holy Day!

Learn about 18th-20th Century American Art and Create Your Own Artwork with ARTistic Pursuits!

If you're looking for quality homeschool art lessons that include picture study, too, take a look at ARTistic Pursuits Inc.

My children and I are long time fans of ARTistic Pursuits Inc. and have just had an opportunity to review another book from their K-3rd Grade Level, Volumes 1-8 series: Art in America, K-3 Vol. 8. (We previously reviewed  Volume 4.)  As we expected, it's another fantastic homeschool art curriculum book!

What is Art in America? 

Art in America is Volume 8 of a grades K-3 art curriculum that comes as a beautiful 64-page, hardcover book with two pockets in the inside front cover to house a DVD and a Blu-Ray disc with video lessons on them.  

The book contains 18 lessons that feature master works in 12 text lessons and 6 video lessons.  It also includes:

• a recommended list of all materials that you will need for included projects - which is super short: a Prismacolor® colored pencil set, Ebony® pencil, an eraser, a drawing paper pad, a ruler, a compass with pencil, a pencil sharpener, and construction paper  (unlisted, but also helpful, as per a tip in a video is a scrap piece of denim fabric)

• some words about "Teaching Simply", which this book truly allows parents - even parents without an art background - to do

• a brief introduction to Art in America and the way American artists have used line and color and those using the book will, too
• full color samples of art projects 
• full color student art samples
• large, full color reproductions of works for picture study.

• clearly written objectives for each lesson
• a bibliograpy and art credits for those who would like to dig deeper
  
  
  
  
  

Artists featured in the book are:

• George Bellows
• John Singleton Copley
• Arthur Davies
• Rembrandt Peale
• John James Audubon
• Winslow Homer
• Robert Henri
• Max Weber
• John Frederick Peto
• Charles Demuth
• Charles Burchfield
  
  
  
  
  

Art skills practiced include:

• making round and straight lines
• drawing edges of a figure that you look at
• focusing on where to start and end lines - and what path to take with them - to draw an object you look at
• using shapes to layout the location of parts of a drawing
• shading to identify dark areas
• filling shapes with lines to describe a form
• using colored pencils
• using pressure to create light and dark colors
• identifying and using colors that make other colors standout
• drawing a figure and shadow
• using light colors to stand out against dark backgrounds
• exploring patterns
• layering colors
• overlapping within a colored pencil work
• drawing lighter an darker sides of objects
• creating abstract art with rulers, compasses, an colors
• using straight lines to add interest in design to a work of art
• drawing natural objects working from photographs or real objects

Throughout Art in America, teachers Ariel Holcomb and Brenda Ellis guide children (and parents!) in both text and video lessons to handle art media, study art masters and their artworks from 18th-20th century America, and get creative making original artworks using established graphite and color pencil techniques.

In the video lessons, Ariel Holcomb, an engaging video host, helps draw students into each project, while Brenda Ellis' hands are shown demonstrating techniques and creating art.

Together, the text and video serve as a complete art curriculum which includes:

• art history
• picture study
• colorful illustrations
• artworks by 18th-20th century American artiste
• visual instruction for projects - either on the DVD/Blue-Ray discs or with text and images in the book
• and, best of all, ease and engagement!  

Seriously, I am not art-gifted and this curriculum makes teaching and learning art alongside my children so easy!

How We Used Art in America

One reason I appreciated Art in America was because I recently underwent a surgery and was, therefore, needing something that my children could learn from and enjoy equally well on their own, with me, or with Grammy and Grampy. Art in America proved perfect for all this.

I could pack paper, pencils, and the book in an overnight bag for Grammy and Grampy's and have them do lessons there without any extra explanations or materials needed while I was in surgery.  Then, I could easily convalesce on the couch watching the video and doing art lessons alongside my children or ask my children to enjoy lessons on their own as I rested.

It was that easy to use the book and DVD!

Picture study, inherent history, art techniques, and creating artworks all happened simply and enjoyably!

For one child, grabbing the book or DVD to review topics and be inspired to create extra artworks did, too!

What My Children Thought

My 13 year old said:

I learned how to use pressure when coloring to make multiple colors.

My 8 year old said:

I like how it told us about shading, and I liked the video teaching. I also liked making the bread and a pear - the straight and round objects.

My 11 year old said:

I liked it!  I was able to make a lot of different art based off the lessons. 

I liked how she taught me not to press hard on drawing paper if you want to put more layers on.  She also taught us how you can use denim to make it so your erasers work better. 

I like this book even more than I thought I would!  It inspired me to do even more than just the projects in it!

So as you can see, all three of my children and I learned from and like Art in America!

Would I Recommend Art in America?

Without question, I would recommend Art in America as a well-balanced all-in-one homeschool art curriculum for anyone looking for beginning instruction in graphite and color pencil techniques and those studying 18th-20th century America. The resource brings art, picture study, techniques, and history together while encouraging students to apply understanding to their own ideas and interests while creating original works of art!

The only caution I would offer is to be careful with the discs.

Since I review Volume 4 of this series there has been no redesign of the way the plastic disc pockets on the inside cover are designed and, so, again, we have found that when we are carrying the book from one place to another, the top disc falls out. Worried that the falling disc would be ruined, we try to make sure, then, to keep the Blu-ray one there since we have no way to play that and wish to keep the DVD disc safe and sound for use!
Doing so is especially important to us as a friend of ours has already been eyeing our copy of Art in America, and asking if we will be pulling ideas from it for future Art-Music-Poetry club meetings. (No doubt we will, just as we have with our Vol. 4 book!)

We love the quality and instruction in the ARTistic Pursuits Inc. curricula and continue to use and re-use these resources ourselves and to recommend them to others as stand-alone art curriculum or as excellent, hands-on supplements to history studies!

Learn More

Follow ARTistic Pursuits Inc. on Facebook and on Twitter (@ARTisticPursui1) and Instagram (@artisticpursuitsinc).

Find all the reviews!

You can also learn more about all eight volumes in the K-3rd Grade Level, Volumes 1-8 series by reading reviews from 55 Homeschool Review Crew families!

You may also enjoy seeing how we have liked other ARTistic Pursuits Inc. resources:

Create (and Study!) Art Based with Inspiration from the Italian Renaissance! {A Review}

Sculpture Made Easy

One Resource that Will Help You Enjoy Art Anywhere {A Review}

An Open-and-Go Art Curriculum We're Thoroughly Enjoying {A Review}

4 Easy Steps to Planning a St. Joseph's Day Feast

I was asked recently for a step-by-step of how I organize liturgical year gatherings. So, today, I am sharing the simple process that friends and I went through to pull together what turned out to be a fun and faith-filled St. Joseph's Table last year.

The Solemnity of St. Joseph is coming up on March 19 - a perfect day for getting together with friends to pray, eat, and observe this special day of the liturgical year through enjoying a St. Joseph Table - and a time you don't need to sweat the prep.

Trust me on this!  

You can delight in a fabulous feast day celebration as a family or with friends with very little advanced planning. 

In fact, last year, friends and I put together our St. Joseph table with but 24 hours advanced notice!

Three tiers represent the trinity.

A white tablecloth represents the pure love of God

Fish remind us of the apostles.

Fruits and vegetables remind us of the abundant harvest that was shared after a drought when the first St Joseph table happened.

Pasta with "sawdust" reminds us of St.  Joseph and
beans recall the fava beans that people ate during the period of having no food before they prayed for St. Joseph to intercede and the rains and harvest came.

Cupcakes bring cheer with their special toppers.

Flowers should be lilies for St. Joseph, but, instead, are just what we had.

Cookies and fruit make a flowering St. Joseph staff of St. Joseph.

More pastries and savory dishes were added as more families arrived.

How did we do it?

We used four easy steps you can follow:

1 - Get Word Out that You'd Like to Enjoy a St. Joseph Table

Of course, if you plan to celebrate St. Joseph's day as a family only, you can skip this step.  However, if you'd like to enjoy a St. Joseph Table with friends, getting word out is your first step.

In the past, I have personally invited friends to my home or secured a host family and planned a group St. Joseph Table with plenty of advanced notice.  That is, until last year, when I found myself posting the following in a local Catholic Facebook group on March 18:

LAST-MINUTE ST. JOSEPH'S TABLE GATHERING ANYONE: I got behind in life and failed to suggest this earlier, but am throwing it out today in case anyone would be up for an impromptu gathering.

Tomorrow is St. Joseph's Feast day. Would anyone like to host a POTLUCK St. Joseph's feast day table anytime from 4 p.m. forward? If so, give a shout here in a comment with time and location, and others who'd like to go, comment with what you'll bring.

I can provide the a white table cloth and 3 tiers for the table, a candle, a gluten-free, casein-free "sawdust pasta" dish inspired by tradition as well as some sort of "flowering staff" (though not my usual one as I could not find the cookies this year) and perhaps some other things. I just cannot manage to provide the hosting location right now. 

 

Within an hour, someone responded with an offer to host!

You could do similarly - getting word out via Facebook, texts, phone calls, emails, or just chatting with friends.

2 - Set a Time and Location, Making It an Official Event for Your St. Joseph Table

Once we had a host location and time, we made our St Joseph Table event "official" by creating a Facebook event page and inviting all the local Catholic homeschoolers we knew.

If you do not use Facebook, you could use a free planning tool such as Perfect Potluck or just go with good old fashioned phone calls and face-to-face chats to make official invitations.

3 - Share Ideas and Resources to Get Guests Excited and Thinking about What They Might Add to the Feast

While some of our invited guests were already familiar with St. Joseph Tables from past celebrations, others were brand new to the idea.  So, my next step was to shard the following ideas and links with our guests.

(Note: The photos were not part of what I shared as ideas and links, but, rather, examples of how people responded.  Each photo is something that was brought to lay on our table. Yum!)

Find pictures, explanations and links of some of our past St. Joseph Tables at our 1st St. Joseph's Table, Our 2nd and 3rd, our 4th, and our 5th.

If you do not know much about St. Joseph's Tables, here is a great explanation! 

A Slice of Smith Life has shared about her beautiful table, which is inspiring! 

Catholic Cuisine offers wonderful recipes and more! 

Some things that could flesh our our table if you'd like to bring them are:

• flowers, particular lilies
• a St. Joseph statue or peg doll
• oranges (traditionally given to children on this day)

 

• St. Joseph prayer cards (mine are missing)
• any great St. Joseph story you have 

• traditional breads (or cut outs of fig newtons or gluten-free tortillas) in symbolic shapes, such as lilies, sandals, ladders, saws, hammers, nails, beards, ladders, canes or staffs of St. Joseph, crosses, palms, wreaths symbolizing Jesus, artichokes, grapes, and twists

 

• grapes or other fruit and vegetables, symbolic of an abundant harvest shared

 

• beans (Fava beans are traditional, but any can do!) 

 

• 12 whole fish (to represent the twelve apostles or the miracle of loaves and fishes; or one, if that's all you can manage: tuna, sardines, white fish, whatever....shellfish and seafood, particularly Baked Red Snapper are often traditional)

 

• pastries, and possibly symbolic pastries with fig in the following shapes: Monstrance, chalice, cross, dove, lambs, fish, Bible, and hearts. (GFCF fig newton-like cookies are an easy one to shape!)

 

• Pupaculova: bread baked with dyed Easter eggs reminding of the close approach of Easter (or just any festive pastry)

 

• grapes, olive oil,olive salad, and dried figs: which are reminders of vineyards and orchards of Sicily
• Pignolatti: fried pastry in pine cone shapes, reminders of the pine cones Jesus played with as a child. 

 

• Mudica: Pasta Milanese with browned and seasoned bread crumbs sprinkled on top to represent the sawdust of St. Joseph, the carpenter - or a GF version

 

• a fruit or veggie Italian flag (green-white-red) 

• fruit in a serving dish (to remind us that saying "yes" like St. Joseph brings fruit to our lives

• wine (traditional and reminds us of the Miracle of Cana) 

• no meat 

As you can see from the photos above, the ideas shared offered plenty of visuals, background information, and recipes for each participating family to be able to think of something to gather, make, or buy to bring to our table.

Feel free to simply copy and paste this idea list for your guests!

4 - Leave the Rest to the Holy Spirit 

Once the ideas were shared, we left the rest of our planning up to how the Holy Spirit moved each family and simply trusted that those who were able to make it would bring enough food for a beautiful and filling table and that we would all be blessed by a time filled with faith, friendship, fun, and, of course, feasting.  

We were not disappointed!

We actually ended up with more food than the table we had set up could hold...

... and learning more about the feast day.

Granted, as the person leading the "teaching" portion of our celebration, I had forgotten to get my favorite St. Joseph book - Joseph's Story by Patricia Pingry  - out of our library in time, and also was not able to unbury both of our copies of Prayers to My Favorite Saints and Prayers to the Saints before we left for the gathering, but I was still able to use print outs from some of the links above, a saint book, and the children's background knowledge - plus God's grace! -  to offer a decent chat anyway.

Everyone, then, was able to focus on praying and a chat about St. Joseph and the history and traditions of his feast day.

Then, the children enacted Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the saints, and angels coming to the table...

...before digging in!

Then, everyone chatted and played right through when it was past-time to go home.

Truly, our St.Joseph's Table gathering was a blessed and beautiful time - all coming together in 24 hours.

If you'd like to put together a St. Joseph Table this year, then, take our testimony as proof: Enjoying a St. Joseph Table with friends does not have to be a huge, time-consuming undertaking.  It can come together quickly and meaningfully.

We encourage you to give it a try!

Need More Ideas and Inspiration for Celebrating St. Joseph's Feast Day?

This year will mark the sixth anniversary of when my children and I began partaking in the tradition of a St. Joseph Table.

In the past, I have shared about each of our tables, including pictures of what we ate, descriptions of our activities, and links to specific books, prayers, and resources.

Come now, and take a walk with us down Memory Lane...

Our First St. Joseph's Table

Our first St. Joseph Table was super simple - and super fun to share with friends.  It included coloring and a construction-themed playdate!

Our 2nd and 3rd St. Joseph Tables

Our second St. Joseph table was even simpler and celebrated as a family breakfast while our third began to get a little bigger and included a playdate with prayer, drawing, crafting, and more.

Our 4th Included Prayers, Crafts, and More

Our fourth was one of my favorites! A friend hosted it, and we were able to involve whole families - even Dad's - in plenty of prayer, crafting, and eating!

Our 5th Brought Fond Memories, Too

Our fifth was filled with delightful dishes and good company! 

And, our sixth, as I already explained was a fine example of the Holy Spirit helping last-minute preparation turn into a lovely time honoring the Solemnity of St. Joseph with friends.

We hope this walk down memory lane provides you with plenty of inspiration for beginning, reviving, or sustaining your own St. Joseph Table traditions.  

St. Joseph, pray for us!