Child-Friendly All Purpose Cleaning Spray -- Printable Children's Recipe Cards

Ages ago, I shared Crock Pot Applesauce Printable Children's Recipe Cards and hoped to offer at least one more set of printable recipe cards here each month.  However, between computer woes and life having other plans, I never got around to posting any further children's recipe cards.  That is, until now...

Cue the drum roll, please.

After far too long a pause, I am finally making headway on my children's recipe card project and would like to share it with you.  Please enjoy our:

Child-Friendly All-Purpose Cleaning Spray Recipe Cards

Last Tuesday, I found our Child-Friendly All-Purpose Cleaning Spray gone.  So, first thing in the morning, I tasked the kids to make more.  While I reminded them of the easy recipe that we use to make our cleaning spray, they took turns between putting ingredients into a spray bottle and playing paparazzi with me.  Then, last night, while the kiddoes slept, I turned our Tuesday morning efforts into a printable for you and yours to share.

Feel free to download our Child Friendly All-Purpose Cleaning Spray Children's Recipe Cards here.  With them, your child can follow simple, step-by-step, photo and text cues to make cleaning spray for your home or classroom.

Do you have other household cleaning or GFCF food children's recipe cards that you'd like to see as free printables?  Does the 4x6 inch size of our All-Purpose Cleaning Spray Children's Recipe Cards work for you or would you rather another size?  I welcome your input in a comment as I decide which cards to tackle next.  

Inspiration for these cards came from Montessori sources.  To be inspired by others' Montessori ideas and work, click on over to Montessori Monday, where this post is being linked.

Our Lady of Altagracias Saint Day Tea Menu

This past week, we had planned to celebrate an Our Lady of Altagracia tea and activities on Tuesday morning with a small homeschooling playgroup we get together with each week.  Snow and sickness (on another family's part) changed the plan.  But, all things worked together for fun!

About to dig in to our Lady of Altagracia Tea...

Instead, Luke, Nina, Jack and me enjoyed a tea and sledding at our house with some other homeschooling friends.  We kept things simple and were blessed by fellowship and fun!

Once our friend's arrived, we read A Gift of Gracias and looked up the Dominican Republic in the Not For Parents Travel Book, which one of the older boys who was visiting later perused for quite a long time.

Then, all the children clamored to the table to join in prayer before we dined (or, should I say devoured?) the tea fare.

Some of the menu items were:

oranges (and, post-picture, clementines)

a large "orange" juice wiggler made from knox and 100% fruit juice

a GFCF, grain-free orange cake, which tasted SO much better than it looked

banana-orange cookie bites with fresh orange juice frosting (because bananas are an export of the Dominican Republic, where Our Lady of Altagracia is celebrated)

sausage, spinach, mixed greens and carrots "orange grove"

We also had orange juice, tea and ham roll ups.
(If you'd like any of the recipes, just leave a comment and I will post them soon. )

Finally, the kids played in Luke and Jack's bedroom and then, went out sledding.

It was a simple, but fun celebration with friends.  We hope to have more in the coming months.

Have you been enjoying fellowship, food and fun, too?

 

(If you receive this post via email and cannot see the linky, be sure to actually click over to the blog to read browse the rich catalog of ideas there.)

Please note: Links to Amazon within this post and others are affiliate ones. Should you choose to click through one to make an Amazon purchase, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. This does not cost you anything, but is a choice we thank you for making. Anything we earn from Amazon goes straight back into training up our children and to much of what we share with you here. Thank you for supporting us in this way or through a PayPal donation if you feel so moved. (See "Donation" button in the right column.)

D.I.Y. Montessori-Inspired Verb Cup and Variations for Play

When something takes very little time and money to make, and provides literally hours of learning and fun over the course of less than 24 hours, I think it's worth pausing my plans for the day to share about it!  So, that's what I am doing.

Simple is best!  This D.I.Y. Montessori-Inspired Verb Cup has been such a hit!

Two Needs, One Solution

Need One
A tutoring student of mine needed a new physical warm up to begin our sessions. She is a motor-driven gal whose academic progress parallels opportunities to move, so I begin each of our meetings with a body and brain warm up. 

Need Two
My five year old daughter has been displaying “page-fright”. That is, although she can decode simple phonetic words, she becomes anxious when she is asked to read from a written page, even if there is but one word a page. So, I’ve been seeking paper-free reading exercises for her. 

An Easy Solution
Enter my Montessori-Inspired Verb Cup – a small twist on traditional Montessori Command Cards.  Not only did it bring smiles to my tutoring student, my daughter and me yesterday, but Luke, Nina, Jack and I have used it in various ways already today.

Make Your Own Montessori-Inspired Verb Cup

Nina reaching in for her next command.

You will need:

•  craft sticks (We got 300 for less than $3 with a 50% off coupon at our local Jo-ann fabrics.)
• a red marker (You can actually use a different color.  I chose red, because it is the color used for verbs when introducing Montessori grammar, and although I did not tell my children that all of the words in the cup are verbs, by using red I feel I am encouraging an indirect connection for later grammar studies.)
• a cup (I used a tall, plastic container we received take out in one day.  It fit all the sticks perfectly and had a lid for easy travel in my tutoring bag.)

Preparation:

1. Brainstorm 30 or more phonetic verbs or verb phrases that your child knows the meaning of, such as sit, stand, hop and jump.
2.  Write one on each craft stick.
3. Place 30 sticks in the cup and set the rest aside to be rotated into the cup at a later point. 

Basic Activity

No "page fright" here.  Just a happy girl intent on decoding.

When your child is watching. Inspect the cup with curiosity. Take a stick out. Read the word or phrase on the stick to yourself. Do what it says (or pantomime what it says, if it says something like mop.) Put the stick back in. Pull another one out... Continue until you are satisfied that your child understands what to do. 

Leave the Verb Cup out as an invitation for your child to read and act upon. 

Variations and Extensions

When playing Kaboom, Nina asked us, "Can I have another turn?" while showing us the stick she pulled out.

Kaboom (A fun game that we played this morning.)
For a  fun, yet not so Montessori, competitive game, add several sticks that say “Kaboom” into the cup. Player 1 pulls out a stick, reads it and acts out the command on it silently or out loud (whichever the player is most comfortable with.) If other players agree that the command was acted out correctly, Player 1 keeps the stick. Then, Player 2 goes. Play continues until a “Kaboom” stick is drawn. 

Whoever draws the “Kaboom” stick has to put all of his or her other sticks back in the cup, keeping only the “Kaboom” stick. When there are no more sticks in the cup, whoever has the most sticks wins. 

Hide, Seek and Act (Nina inspired this one by hiding the sticks so jack could find them and she could read them.)
Hide the sticks around the room. On "go” have child(ren) search for them. In order to place a stick back in the cup, the child(ren) have to enact the command written on it.

Charades 
Player 1 draws a stick, reads it and acts out the command on it. Others guess the command. Then, other players takes turns.

Simon Says
Play like a regular game of Simon Says, except after saying, “Simon says,” draw a stick and show it, having the players read it. 

ABC Order
After acting out the commands on the sticks, lay the sticks down in alphabetical order. Begin by including just two sticks, then three, then more in the ABC order challenge. 

Practice, Assessment and Sensory Opportunities

Stopping to read between acting out the different commands helped Luke practice control of movement.

• Reading (de-coding) 
• Imagination (pantomiming actions)
• Motor Skills 
• Proprioception
• Vestibular Input
• Control of movement.

 We hope you enjoy learning and playing with your own D.I.Y Verb Cup as much as we have been doing with ours.

What traditional Montessori activities have you adapted as a solution to a child's needs?

Want to be inspired with others' Montessori-inspired ideas and work?  Click on over to Montessori Monday and enjoy.

Homeschool Mother's Journal: Week 3, 2013

In my life this (past) week…

I experienced a repeat realization this last week.  Something that I have recognized before, but, then, neglected to adhere to:  My children do best when I take no more than 5-10 minutes on the computer at a time once all three of them are awake.  For even when the kids don’t “need” my direct interaction, their behavior and displayed emotions indicate that they do best when I am more fully present with them than I am when I am working on documents or online. 

So, it is that I have started disciplining myself (again!) not to be on the computer for long periods during the day when all three of my child are awake – a boon for parenting, homeschooling and the happy-peaceful atmosphere I seek for our home, but, perhaps, a hindrance to the pace at which I’ll be blogging.  (If this post is anything to go by, it will be, at least.  For, I started this post before the kids woke up Friday morning and am just NOW posting it!)

In our homeschool this (past) week…

Nina thoroughly enjoyed our penny experiments.

We experienced the benefits of “strewing”, of direct focused lessons and of freedom to enjoy experiences that we might not if the children drove away on the big yellow bus each day.

Strewing is an unschooling term that refers to the art of allowing your children to discover things that you casually leave out, almost like seeds, which help a child’s  curiosity, joy and enthusiasm germinate and grow.  Although we don’t unschool here on a regular basis, we have been through some “unschoolish” periods and continue to value the learning that happens spontaneously in the rich soil of unscheduled, yet well-seeded time.

Beautiful moments that have sprouted due to strewing last week included:

-          Luke pouring over Story of the Orchestra book during every free moment he had one morning and singing “Tchaikovsky wrote a great ballet...” to himself and us as he went about his play (a tune he learned from The Story of Swan Lake).

-          Luke beginning to learn about playing the piano again and spending a lot of time one day playing Jack’s little electric keyboard.  Nina asking Daddy to re-string her kids’ guitar and, then, all the children and Daddy dreaming up a future family band. 

-          the children “reading” to each other in precious moment after precious moment about ancient Egypt, their imagined space wars, changes in time throughout history.  The book A Street Through Time particularly fascinated Luke and ignited all of the children’s imaginations.

Focused lesson fun and success has included:

-          games!  Learning games focused on specific standards-based goals.  A large chalkboard has become the  game board for Nina’s phonics and early reading lessons, Luke’s “flip the sound” strategy practice, reading numerals up to 100 and counting by 5’s...  A calendar became a game board to bring Nina one step closer to mastering counting and reading numbers through 31 – a goal she is almost at.  Cut up papers have become handwriting practice and, then, cards for Slap!, Go Fish and Concentration while studying both phonics and sight words.  Focused lessons has been fun around here this week!

-          math challenges!  There is just something about calling addition work, number work and other skills-based math exercises “challenges” that makes doing otherwise rote tasks so much more appealing to our children.

-          post-dinner science experiments.  Exploring acidity and experimenting with how common kitchen products make old pennies shiny again was a huge hit for all three children.

-          Daily Five time – formal and child-driven.  Afternoons, when we are home, the kids are getting into a  routine of The Daily Five time.  First thing in the mornings and late in the afternoons, they often choose to engage in informal sessions of it, too.  I just LOVE hearing them “read” to one another or seeing them hanging out in comfortable places reading to themselves.

-         Jack joining in at the beginning of our Drama Kids lesson this week (since Daddy was a few minutes late).  It was so precious to see him jumping right in with all the “big kids”.  Then, after he left the class, Luke finally figured out the difference between projection and shouting and Nina delighted in delivering a line of our scene in an expressive, loud voice front and center stage.

Freedom borne from homeschooling has afforded us opportunities to:

-          make snowmen, snowwomen and snowdogs while the snow was perfect for it.  As I shoveled the driveway so we could get out to a medical appointment for Jack, all three kids played and sculpted in the snow.  Later in the day – and week – they repeated their snow breaks often.

-          enjoy mid-day skating.  A local homeschooling group has organized the best deal with a local skating rink, so every few weeks, we get to go skating around lunchtime ultra-affordable.  Jack tried skating the first week, but now prefers to watch and then take his nap in my arms.  Nina and Luke, though, wow!  With persistence and joy they are teaching themselves to skate.  Nina made such great strides – or rather slides – this week with thanks to another homeschool mom, Kristen’s, help.  Seeing Nina smile as she skated across the rink and back was awesome.

-         spend an entire day between two libraries and a playground, enjoying a fabulous music and movement class that a friend led, meeting a craft challenge in preparation for a feast day next week, playing educational computer games, playing board games, zooming wooden trains, swinging, enjoying dramatic play and slipping in some more academic, formal lessons.

-         visit a homeschool friend’s house so Mommy could plan for our spring co-op while my children were fully and graciously entertained by their friends.  I just love witnessing the multi-age interaction that homeschooling affords and how development is evidenced and encouraged as older children excitedly engage younger children and vice versa.

Yep.  It’s been a good week!

Helpful homeschooling tips to share…

The kids were so happy to finally use the snowman kit that Auntie got Jack for Christmas.  I was equally delighted to recall that enjoying the snow in the morning when it is expected to melt by afternoon is a benefit of our chosen lifestyle.

Comparison, doubt, worry, have to’s, should do’s and all the rest of the things that snuff the joy right out of homeschooling creep up so surreptitiously.  Then, darkness falls. 

Pause, prayer, love, acceptance, hope, perspective...  All of these things spark smiles once more.  After being beleaguered by dark and doubt at times two weeks ago, I am glad last week found us on fire again here and am hoping to keep feeding the flame even as darkness keeps creeping back into my brain.  To this end, I am recording a little tip for myself to look back on and remember for when things inevitably sputter:

Do it their way, your way and His way.  When I refocus on following my children’s lead, accepting embracing my style and making a greater effort to see, feel and live with the Spirit working in our home and homeschool, things get so much better.  Attitude, authenticity and a strong portion of grace can be the difference between a “good” homeschool experience and a “bad” one.  I just wish I could remember that 24-7, because lately I have forgotten it for at least a few hours a day.

 

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…

Besides the things I already wrote about as part of our homeschool review, and a family nature walk we enjoyed on the Sabbath, the biggest highlight of the week – which was a rather quiet and reflective one – was that both Mike and I got to be present at Adoration this week.

I encouraged Mike to go Adoration two weeks ago and was surprised when he took me up on a suggestion that I could get the kids to bed after I came home from work if he would like to pop on over to  nearby Adoration chapel for some quiet time.  I was even more amazed when Mike asked if he might go back to the chapel the following night. 

Unfortunately, prior plans did not allow for Mike to make it to Adoration on two nights in a row, but we were able to rearrange it so Mike could go to Adoration again that week, and, now, we think we have our schedules figured out in a way that will allow him to enjoy at least one weekly Adoration hour.

And, bonus, we might be able to work in time for me to go as well.  In fact, this past week, I was able to spend some quiet time with Jesus at the chapel after work one night,  I didn’t know how much I needed that!

I hope this trend continues.

My favorite things this (past) week were…

-          hearing my kids develop their “peacekeepers” and “attackers” story.  They have been making up a saga inspired by Star Wars for months now, and, this week, they have sat with books a number of times, using the illustrations to inspire new chapters of their collective imaginary adventure.

-          daily evidence of the will to serve others in each of my children.  Nina takes the lead in displaying generosity and kindness.  Jack models after it well.  Luke even bandwagons at times.  Well, that is when he isn’t saying, “If Nina’s too generous, she’ll give herself out of house and home one day.”  The boy cracks me up.

My kiddos favorite thing this (past) week was…

"Ryan and Katelyn!"  Nina danced about saying as she related that our weekly homeschool playdate was among her favorite things this week.  “And computer time past when you’re supposed to be to bed,” she continued.  I guess I know what the kids and Daddy did while I was at work and Adoration.

"Video golfing last night on your computer," Luke chimed in.  Yep, it is confirmed.  Daddy treated the kids last night.

"Seeing Tucker," Jack recalled.  “I build tree with Tucker.”  Actually, I helped Jack build a tree as a part of our craft challenge at a playdate this week, but our friend Tucker was there, too, and, boy, don’t our kids love Tucker and his family.

Things I’m working on…

If I can find balance and joy in life like Nina finally did on the ice this past week, I will be golden.

...some of the same things as last week:  circle time plans, blog drafts, home organization, healthy eating, balanced living, daily five reading time, Morning Basket retreat time, etc.  More than that, though, I am working on mindset -- keeping priorities in focus, trusting baby steps and focusing on nourishment, rest and rejoicing are vital for me right now.  As I already mentioned, I keep slipping into dark moods these days.  I am not sure why.  But, I keep getting discouraged, doubtful, down right grumpy.  Hopefully, I can continue offset these times with greater periods of pleasantness.  Life is  good.  My attitude just isn’t sometimes.  (Prayers and grace, do your thing!)

I’m cooking…

...with groceries that are killing our budget.  I really must find a balance between how we eat and how much we spend on it

I’m grateful for…

...opportunities to work to help supplement our family’s income.  I have a lot of independent contracts scheduled from now through May and am going to be leaning hard on the Holy Spirit to let the work work for us and not offset the balance of life too much. 

I struggle with our daily rhythm a lot anyway and now, adding more to it, I am a tad concerned about total disharmony.

I’m praying for…

...the openness and discipline to better listen to the Spirit, among other things, and the strength of character to live as salt and light even when life starts seeming tasteless and dark.

A photo to share... 

After one of those frightening moments when you thank your child's guardian angel for breaking a fall that no one saw coming, Jack wanted only a hug from his brother and his sister, who were delighted to comply.  I;d gladly do without a repeat of the scare, but will always smile when my three kiddoes seek comfort and love within one another's arms.

Please note: Links to Amazon within this post and others are affiliate ones. Should you choose to click through one to make an Amazon purchase, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. This does not cost you anything, but is a choice we thank you for making. Anything we make here goes straight back into training up our children and to much of what we share with you here. Thank you!

This post is will be shared at the next  Homeschool Mother's Journal. since I missed last week’s.

A GFCF St. Nina's Feast Day Tea

Please forgive the haziness of the photos in the post.  Between the poor quality of our camera and the smoke created when cooking corn cakes on the griddle between coming home from one activity and running out to work, the photos of our tea came out poorly.  They will, still, offer inspiration, I hope.

Another of our name days crept up on me this past week, and since I am re-committed to celebrating all of our family Name Days , I spent early Monday morning before the kids were awake gathering information to inspire a menu for a St. Nina tea.  This was not an easy task.  

 

I found no information online about how St. Nina’s day is traditionally celebrated and even discovered that, January 15, the date I had noted on my calendar as St. Nina’s feast day may or may not be correct.  But, more on the date question later.  First, let me share ideas for celebrating a St. Nina Feast Day Tea so others may enjoy doing so next year (or even later this year, depending on which of the many possible dates for celebrating St. Nina you would like to do so on.)

Decoration

Icon images on candles the color of St. Nina's clothing

• Print out favorite images of St. Nina to frame or put on glass candle holders, as we did.
• Since St. Nina is often depicted with a grapevine cross an a scroll, decorate the table with a cross made of twigs and a scroll of paper.
• Light a candle, since St. Nina spread the light and love of the Gospel.

GFCF Tea Time Fare

Ready to feast!

Any Georgian recipe will work, since St. Nina is patron to the country of Georgia. 

After researching Georgian fare, which I was hitherto unfamiliar with, my mouth watered and I decided that we will be adding Georgian foods to our meal rotation for a while since I want to explore many of the delicious-looking recipe that I found. 

For our tea this past week, which we had planned as a “lunner” tea (late lunch, early dinner), I decided on:

• grapes, since one of St. Nina’s symbols is a grapevine cross.

grapes left on their vines

• grape juice, for similar reasons.
• pomegranate juice, because pomegranates seem to be a part of some Georgian recipes.
• a quickie adaptation of honey candied walnuts, because Gregorian churkkhela looks far too complicated to make, but caught the kids’ eyes when they awoke while I was planning the tea and a quickie version of Gozinaki seemed much easier.

These were quick, easy and delicious.

• pomegranate seeds (for produce power, as pomegranate seemed to play into Georgian recipe fare.)

Oh, to find an easy way to get these out!

• Georgian Salad with Walnut Dressing from the Blissful Beet, which we did because we like to be plant-strong here.

It tastes far better than it looks.

• Mchadi corn cakes (because Luke always wants “a starch” and this one was an easy Georgian one to make, even if it was a bit dry.

I don't advise rushing these and cooking them on a cast iron griddle.  Smoke WILL happen.  Oops!

• Soki from the Georgia Georgian site, which we easily adapted to casein-free.

Again, it tasted so much better than it looked.

• chocolate almond milk (because no no "tea" in our home is complete without it according to our kids)
• GFCF toast (because the kids were still hungry)
• blueberries (for one of St, Nina's apparent colors), tomatoes and cucumbers (because the kids don't like dressed salads)

for the picky eaters

Other good options might be:

• this kidney bean dish.
• GFCF adaptations of any of the traditional Georgian foods listed on Wikipedia, such as Dolma or Lobio, both of which I would like to try sometime.
• Chicken Satsivi, as found on Nami-Nami, which looks delicious.
• Vegetarian Pkhali from the Traveler’s Lunchbox.

Prayer

Nina also gave thanks for grapes, which were here favorite part of our tea menu.

• Pray for the people of Georgia, who St. Nina is patron to.
• Pray to St. Nina, perhaps with the brief prayer shown at Come and See Icons.

Possible Activities

 

 
• Read the Hymn of Praise and watch the youtube video featuring images of St. Nina at Mystagogy, an Orthodox website.
• With older children or younger children who can handle it, watch the trailer to St. Nino, a movie that is in the works (or maybe already produced.  I am trying to figure that out still.)  (My kids actually wanted to watch this and liked it.  I just had them turn away during certain part.)
• Craft stick or twig crosses with the horizontal piece pointing down modeled after St. Nina’s grapevine cross, which is depicted and described at Wikipedia.  (Nina and I made twig crosses without pointed down cross bars, using twigs and floss.)
• Paint or color images of St. Nina based on the many icons for her.  (We did not do this this year since we had a busy day.)
• Since Georgia is the country that St. Nina is patron to, look the country of Georgia up on a map and, then search online or in a book for interesting facts about the country.  (My son’s favorite book for looking up country’s lately is the Not For Parents Travel Book, which he got from his godmother for his birthday.  It has some “gross” facts, but Mike and I enjoy reading it to Luke and his sibling anyway.)
• Do copywork of some of the verses said to have been on St. Nina’s scroll and then roll the papers into scrolls.  (We did not do this either, but I plan to next year.)
• Listen to a Gregorain Chant while viewing images of St. Nina and the countryside on YouTube.  (We did this in the morning, not at the tea.)
• Explore icon colors.  St. Nina is often depicted in red and blue.  (Nina not only asked me why Nina wears these colors, but if she could wear the colors for the day, too.  It led us into researching a bit about iconography and the meanings of colors.  If anyone knows of a trusted resource for exploring iconography and the meanings of colors used for St. Nina and other saints, I would appreciate it.  Please leave the name or link in the comments.)

 

Date Question

Jack doesn't care when we celebrate the day.  He just liked the corn cakes slathered with GFCF "butter".

St. Nina is honored in the Orthodox tradition for converting much of the country of Georgia to Christianity.  One Orthodox organization I found offered a thorough biography of St. Nina and listed her feast day as January 14.  Another, which offered a briefer bio, seconded that date.  However, then a site I stumbled into called Mystagogy stated that the Orthodox church in Georgia marks St.  Nina’s feast day “twice a year:  on June 1 – the Entrance of St. Nina to Georgia and on January 27 – the day of her passing away.”  Hmm... I decided to try searching “Catholic” and “St. Nina” instead of just “St. Nina” to see if I could discern a more “correct” date to celebrate my little girl’s namesake.

 

Doing so, I found Saints.SQPN,  a Catholic site which listed St. Nina’s feast days as January 14 and 27, much like Mystagogy did and Catholic Online, which went the non-commital route and simply listed St. Nina’s feast day as “January”.

 

Oddly, I also found information about St. Nina’s Feast Day date at Yeah Baby.  There, there were  a variety of Name Day dates based on what country the saint is celebrated in, but none for American Catholics.  (For the record, after viewing the list, I was tempted to delay our celebration until July 12, since that is when St. Nina’s feast day is celebrated in Slovakia and since one of the reasons we chose the name Nina for our little girl is because it is a saint’s name, a Slovak name – which would honor part  Daddy’s heritage – and an Italian nickname – which would honor part of my heritage.  But, I had already mentioned to our Nina that her Name Day was coming up.

 

So, I turned to Wikipedia, which although hardly a definitive source, gave me some insight into both when to celebrate St. Nina and what the differences between the Roman Catholic view of St. Nina and the Orthodox one are.

 

Then, curious if I could find more about the Catholic take—or even a “correct” Catholic day for honoring St. Nina, I tried searching the Vatican website.  The only mention I was able to find about St. Nina was in the Address of John Paul II to Ilia II, Catholicos Patriarch of the Ancient Apolistic Church of Georgia.  It did not help me with the date question much, but it did corroborate the fact that St. Nina was a great evangelist.  (The mention was that, “In time of peace and in times of persecution alike your Church has born a faithful and exemplary witness to the Christian faith and the Christian sacraments, a witness borne by many holy men and martyrs from the days of St Nina onwards.”)

 

Perhaps with further research at the Vatican site and elsewhere I could determine the actual date on the Catholic calendar for celebrating St. Nina, but since I did not have time for that on Monday morning, I went with the 15^th for this year since that was what I had on the calendar and would welcome anyone who knows about St. Nina to leave me information about in a comment.  I want to know more about my little girl’s namesake.

 

Luke, too, preferred the corn cakes over everything... Well, everything except the juice and chocolate milk.  For our kiddoes, such sugary drinks are a favorite indulgence on feast days.

Do you celebrate Name Days in your house?  How?  Also, can you offer any insights about when to celebrate St. Nina or share stories and resources about her?  

 

(If you receive this post via email and cannot see the linky, be sure to actually click over to the blog to read browse the rich catalog of ideas there.)

Please note: Links to Amazon within this post and others are affiliate ones. Should you choose to click through one to make an Amazon purchase, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. This does not cost you anything, but is a choice we thank you for making. Anything we earn from Amazon goes straight back into training up our children and to much of what we share with you here. Thank you for supporting us in this way or through a PayPal donation if you feel so moved. (See "Donation" button in the right column.)