Toss Your Nets to the Other Side {Teaching tools for kids}

So we're still learning about tossing our nets to the other side. Here's a craft that goes with the bible story.

This craft is mostly pre-cut-out fun foam stickers on foam board. The little "net" (which is a piece of touile used to wrap wedding favors) sticks on with velcro and is removable. The little fishermen are also removable, and just stick into the slit in the boat. You gotta love interactive crafts! ;-)

Also, here's a great song that you can use to tech your children about the toss your nets to the other side bible story!

Toss Your Nets to the Other Side Song for Kids
(To the tune of 10 Little Indians)

Peter James and John in a sailboat,
Peter James and John in a sailboat,
Peter James and John in a sailboat,

Couldn't catch any fish!

Jesus appeared on the beach,
Jesus appeared on the beach,
Jesus appeared on the beach,
and told the apostles this:

"Cast your nets to the other side"
"Cast your nets to the other side"
"Cast your nets to the other side"
so the apostles did.

Now their nets were full of fish,
Now their nets were full of fish,
Now their nets were full of fish,
and they recognized the Lord!

This would be a great song for at home, for a CCD class, or a Sunday school class to teach this bible story to kids. My kids love it!

Remember the toss-your-nets snack that we made earlier this week with goldfish crackers? {You can find the directions here}

My kids also love this apostles play set! It's a great toy to go along with this bible story, and I like to keep ours in the "church toy bag". You can order your own Galilee Boat with Apostles Play Set here.

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He's Got the Whole World in His Hands Craft

Catholic ABC's Week: 27
Letter of the week: W w
Theme: World
Saint of the Week: St. William
Craft: He's got the Whole World in His Hands!

 

This lesson starts with singing! Sing He's Got the Whole World in His Hands with your kids, and talk to them about it! Don't forget the hand motions! ;-) This craft is super easy to make, and I'm willing to bet you have all the supplies you need already.

Materials needed to complete this craft:

• Blue and Green Markers
• Coffee Filters
• Glue Stick
• Paper 
• Paint

 Start by having your kids color 1 coffee filter each randomly with blue and green markers. Keep reminding them to "color where it's white". Otherwise they'll just keep coloring in one spot until they make a hold in the coffee filter.

This is the one I colored:

When you're finished coloring, lay them out on some newspaper and sprinkle them with some water. Less is more here- you just want enough water to make the colors spread. If you really drench it all the marker will wash off and leave it white. My kids and I flicked the water on with a toothbrush.

When it dries, it will have a great marbled look to it. 

If you're impatient, you can speed the process with a hair dryer.

Use a glue stick to attach to construction paper, and stamp

their hands on it with some paint. 

He's Got the Whole World in His Hands!

I just love how these came out! The results are great! Even the white parts just look like clouds. This would also be a great craft for Earth Day. 

Variations

In the classroom, you can glue them to black paper, and let the kids decorate them with cheapo foil star stickers. To avoid the mess of paint, just trace around their hands with white crayons! (A mom from our preschool class thought of using white crayons. Great idea, huh?) 

I originally wanted to cut out handprints, but honestly, that would be a LOT of cutting for a whole preschool class. However, if the kids you're working with are old enough to do their own cutting, of if you're only doing this for a few kids, it is cute:

If you don't glue it down to anything, it makes a great sun catcher!

Here's one where I folded the fingers to "hold" the world:

It also makes a great world sun catcher. 

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter W: (be sure to check out the Classroom Script for directions on using the grab bag.) world, wax, wolf, whale, wheel, whipped cream container, whiskers, whistle, whiteout, window, wig, wind chimes, windsock, plastic wine glass, wings, wizard, wood, wrapping paper, water color paints, water gun, walkie talkie, wallet, walnut, wand.

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter Ww. (Her Ww lesson is on Wedding at Cana.)

Catholic ABC's runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday with the new letter of the week. You can find the details of the program here.

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Craft for Catholic Kids - Make a Monstrance!

April is the month dedicated to the Holy Eucharist! We've been learning about the mass and Eucharist around here, plus I've been teaching my kids about adoration, so this is perfect for us! :-) My daughter has been pretty fascinated by monstrances ever since "M" week around here, so we recently crafted these monstrances.

What you need to make this Catholic Monstrance Craft:

• A Pool Noodle (yellow)
• Pipe Cleaners (yellow or gold)
• White Paper
• Popsicle Sticks
• Craft Glue
• Gold glitter and or glitter glue

This is so incredibly cheap and easy to do that it would be a great craft for a whole class of kids, like for instance a first communion class. I actually had enough pieces left over from our pool noodle rosary make several of these! This is also a good craft to do in preparation for adoration for kids. Here's what you do:

Before you begin, slice the pool noodle up. I got our pool noodle from the Dollar Tree, and it was flower shaped, but I have confidence that the craft would be cute with regular round pool noodles, too. I like to slice pool noodles with my bread knife- just be careful! You'll also need to make 2 cuts for inserting the popsicle stick. You can do this with scissors. Each monstrance you make will need one pool noodle to have a cut in the bottom, and the other one in the side. See the picture:

Each child will need 2 slices of pool noodle, and 1 Popsicle stick. (We happened to have yellow popsicle sticks, but a regular one would work, too. You could also color them yellow with a marker.)

You can cut the pipe cleaners in fourths with scissors. Have the children insert them around one pool noodle slice- they will stick right in. My 5 year old and 2 year old were both able to do this.

 Decorate with gold glitter and/or glitter glue. Lots and lots of glitter makes children very happy! Plus, monstrances are supposed to be special for Jesus. :-)

We also added jewels with red and green glitter glue. (You can get packages of gold, green, and red glitter and glitter glue at most Dollar Trees).

Put a little glue on the ends of the popsicle stick before inserting them into the pool noodle to keep them secure. Cut a white circle from paper and insert it in the middle for the "host". If you stick the popsicle stick all the way through, you should be able to glue it right onto the stick. Cover anything that's still visible in yet even more glitter. :-)

We made our top pipe cleaner piece into a cross with another section of pipe cleaner, because monstrances seem to have crosses on top. This was super fun and easy, plus they came out pretty cute. Even the one 2-year-old Julian made. :-)

If you're looking for something even easier, don't forget

about our Gold Doily Monstrances we made!

Happy Catholic Crafting, everyone!

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Catholic Craft for Kids- Make a Rosary Book!

I wanted to find a fun way to teach my kids about rosary. I also wanted to have some visuals to teach them about all the different mysteries of the rosary, so we came up with these paper bag books.

These were a lot of fun to make and I think they came out really cute! To make your own paper bag book, you just take paper lunch bags, fold them in half, and staple up the side. We used 4 bags for ours, faced all the open bag ends to one side, and folded them in half. I think it would also be cute to punch holes and tie the sides up with ribbon, but I couldn't find our hole puncher.

Your motivation to make the book out of paper bags rather than regular paper is to create little pockets in the pages so that you can add pull tabs like this:

We used 4 paper bags stacked together and folded in half so that we would have 4 pocket pages- one for each different set of the mysteries of the rosary. You just cut some square paper in the right size to fit inside the page, and then staple a piece of ribbon on for pulling it out.

We actually got stickers of all the mysteries of the rosary at the Dollar Tree! (They were with the Easter stuff. They're not labeled, so you have to know what you're looking at). If you don't have these stickers, you could just print images from online for each mystery. (Under Her Starry Mantle has 20 good size depictions of each mystery of the rosary from the great masters! Find them here!)

Lydia chose all different colored scrapbooking paper to make her mysteries of the rosary pages, and different colors of ribbon for each page. So cute!

I tried to match my papers to the feeling of each set of the mysteries. So I chose paper that seemed joyful, sorrowful, luminous, and glorious. Be sure to stagger your ribbons so they stick out at different places on the side of your book.

We wrote in the mysteries of the rosary on the pages where to pull tabs went. Here's one of Lydia's pages:

 

At the front of the book we wrote in our "Rosary Prayers". Here are the pictures from my book in order so you can just see what we put on each page. It would be a lot easier to print out the prayers and mysteries so you could just cut and glue them into your pages, but we wrote them out because my printer is broken. 

Each page from front to back:

(on the back)

I just absolutely love this rosary craft! If you'll see on the pages with the prayers, we cut out paper that looks like the beads that match our beginner rosaries. You could also pair these books with my easy rosary craft.

I just love how bright and cheery the colors of Lydia's rosary book are!

I am obsessed with this new idea of making paper bag books, so I'm sure you'll see some more here soon! I'm obsessed with our paper bag puppets, too. Apparently I have a thing for paper bags. ;-)

If you're wondering why there are about one million pictures of these books, it's because on Friday I lost my camera and yesterday I was able to get a new one, so I'm having fun with my new "toy". :-) I did loose a lot of pictures when I lost my camera, which is why there are no pictures of this craft "in progress", and is also why I haven't posted since last Thursday. I have several things left to re-photograph still! I'm hoping to find the time this week!

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