St. Joseph Free Printable Coloring Book!

Holy Heroes has an entire coloring book of St. Joseph's life available to print for free! These are really beautifully drawn coloring pages, too! There are actually 17 coloring sheets in this download, and they're all drawn by formerly Disney animators. Remember that St. Joseph's feast day is on March 19, but the whole month of March is actually dedicated to St. Joseph, so you can color these later this month when all the St. Patrick's day stuff has died down, too. :-)

Print your free St. Joseph Coloring Book here.

(Just click "Holy Heroes Coloring Page")

I have a post with more free St. Joseph printables here.

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Religious Shamrock Craft for St. Patrick's Day

Catholic ABC's Week: 24 
Letter of the week: T
Theme: Trinity
Saint of the Week: St. Therese
Craft: Trinity Shamrock Craft

This week we are learning about the letter "T", and what better time to learn about the Trinity than for St. Patrick's Day?! I just love when the whole world is celebrating Catholic feast days! :-)

For this craft, all you need is green fun foam, plastic craft string, and stickers. I actually got a whole package of shamrock shaped fun foam from the Dollar Tree- 8 of them for $1, and half of them were already glittery! (Although the stickers won't stick to the glittery ones). The plastic string is also available at most Dollar Trees, and certainly at craft stores. If you can't get shamrock shaped foam ready to go, you can cut them out yourself- just do a google search for a shamrock template. You can also print shamrock lacing cards for free from Chalk in My Pocket.

Once you have your shamrock, just punch holes around it with a regular hole puncher.

Give your kids some plastic string and let them lace their shamrock. You could also use yarn if you put some tape on the end or have a plastic needle for them to use. Lacing is good for their hand eye coordination and motor skills. It's also a lot of fun! ;-)

Once their shamrock is laced, have them add symbols of the Trinity. We used a heart to symbolize God the Father, a cross for God the Son, and a Dove for God the Holy Spirit. (The heart symbol was totally inspired by Karen's Adventures in Mommyland!) I actually got all the stickers from AC Moore- it was a package of stickers for Vacation Bible School. The whole book of them was $1.

These were easy to make and came out pretty cute!

This craft is another good match for my St. Patrick Trinity Song for kids! We also read our Catholic Children's Treasure Box Book 17, which is about the Trinity. Have you even heard of the Treasure Box Books? I need to type up a whole post about these books to I can rave on and on about how adorable they are!

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter T: (be sure to check out the Classroom Script for directions on using the grab bag.) Truck, Train, Tiger, Table (from a doll house), Tennis ball, Triangle, Tank, Tap shoe, Tape, Tea bag, Tea cup, Tie, Tissue, Tongue (from Mr. Potato Head), Tools, Toothbrush or Toothpaste, Top, Tractor, Turkey, Turtle, Tu-tu, Twisty tie, T-rex. (Avoid words that start with "Th" for new learners).

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter Tt. (Her Tt lesson is on the the Ten Commandments.)

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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St. Joseph Feast Day Celebration Ideas for your Home

St. Joseph's feast day is coming up on March 19, and it's actually a solemnity, which is a little higher ranking than a feast day. In other words- it's a fun and important day! :-) There are a lot of ways to celebrate the solemnity of St. Joseph at home. Last year, we made a St. Joseph altar for the first time, and it was a ton of fun! We're totally making another one this year, and I'll be linking it up at Evann's St. Joseph Altar Blog Fest 2011! All the coolest bloggers are going to be there. ;-)

If you're thinking that you have no idea of how to go about making a St. Joseph's Altar at your home, then you need to check out my post on St. Joseph Altar for Beginners, because that was soooo me last year! But I put everything you need to know in one easy-to-bite-off blog post. (And no, you don't need a super fancy St. Joseph statue to have your own altar- it's all in my beginners post!)

If you're looking for ideas of different foods and things to place on your St. Joseph Altar, check out last year's post about St. Joseph Altar ideas, including one of my favorite (and very easy projects) where you carve symbolic fig newtons!

If you're still feeling intimidated about putting together a St. Joseph altar, check out this cut and color version from the Virtual St. Joseph altar. Very easy and cute!

I also have a post with links to a bunch of different Saint Joseph printables. From paper dolls and prayer cards to coloring pages and lapbooks, there's a lot of free stuff available!

If you're not feeling up to anything complicated and your printer is out of ink, just serve some sloppy Joe's and tell your kids about how awesome Saint Joseph is! ;-) God bless! 

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Childrens Song for St. Patrick's Day

As some of ya'll already know, my 5 year old daughter loves to craft! But my 2 year old son... not so much, actually. However, I have found that he seems to respond really well to music! I've been trying to work more music into our activities, so we made up a little song for St. Patrick that goes with our Saint Patrick puppets. :-)

So, I tried to figure out a way to sing a children's song with a paper bag puppet on my hand in a you tube video without looking ridiculous, and basically determined there was no way around looking ridiculous... so I just went with it! ;-)



Lyrics to St. Patrick's Day Song: a song about the trinity for kids.
(Tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)
St. Patrick shows to you and me a shamrock for the trinity.
The Father and His only Son plus the Holy Spirit are 3 in 1...
St. Patrick shows to you and me a shamrock for the trinity.

This really was a fun song to sing with our puppets, and kids eat stuff like this up with a spoon! Happy almost St. Patrick's day everyone! :-)
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Saint Patrick Puppet Craft {And a Linky!}

Ya'll know I've been obsessed with making paper bag saint puppets, so today I bring you Saint Patrick! :-)

The one above is made with just a lunch sized paper bag, paper, glue, and googly eyes. I drew on the crosses with a marker. Here's a picture of the pieces before they went together:

His beard is shaped like a heart. 

I folded the paper in half and cut it out like this:

I also folded my paper to cut out my shamrock:

Then I assembled him like so with school glue:

Before I glued my pieces together, I let my daughter use the pieces I cut out to trace her own pieces so she could draw and cut them out herself. She just turned 5 last month, and she made this whole puppet by herself! I am so proud! 

 

I love how she glued the staff way up on his hand like he's balancing it! For her shamrock, she traced our shamrock shaped cookie cutter and cut it out. I tried to get her to use cotton balls for his beard, but Vee from Paper Dali has a St. Patrick coloring sheet where his beard is black, and well.... Vee is a lot smarter than Mommy. Lol! ;-)

Here's mine with a cotton ball beard:

The one above has a pipe cleaner staff, and the doily shamrocks I got at Michael's. I love them! :-) Wa also used some gold glitter glue to put the crosses on our shamrocks. Remember while you're doing this to explain to the kids how St. Patrick taught about the trinity using a shamrock.

 

I decided they were so cute that I wanted to display them on the mantle in our dining room! So I just opened up the paper bags and slipped them onto liquor bottles.

The cute banner came from the Dollar Tree.

I hope you enjoy this Catholic St. Patrick's Day craft- I know we did! These puppets are just too much fun to make with kids! Now I want to see what you've been doing to celebrate the feast of St. Patrick! If you have a post to share about St. Patrick's Day, please link it below! :-)

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St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Rosary for Kids- A Fun Craft!

When we were making our little rosaries the other week, we also made some trinity shamrock rosaries since St. Patrick's day is just around the corner! :-)

I also had some cute child-made ones, but my kids ran off with them. I'm having such a hard time photographing their crafts recently! Lol!

Aren't these shamrock doilies too cute?! I got them at Michael's, and overpaid. I think they were $2.50 a package. I have a serious thing for doilies. :-)

To make these, follow my directions for making one decade pipe cleaner rosaries, and then bend them into a shamrock shape. You can find directions for bending pipe-cleaners into shamrocks here. I would suggest green beads and pipe cleaners, but to each his own. :-) Teach your kids the story of St. Patrick while they're making their shamrock rosaries.

My kids watched Patrick, Brave Shepherd of the Emerald Isle while we made ours. This is such a cute movie for St. Patrick's Day! My kids really enjoy the CCC movies.

If you don't own this movie and the thought of spending lots of money on Catholic movies in this economy freaks you out, I'd like to introduce you to "Catholic Netflix". Ok, really, they're called Pius Media, but they really are just like Netflix for Catholics, and they have ALL the Catholic movies you could ever want to rent! If you're already a member, don't forget to add this movie to your current queue! :-)

Also, I'm going to be hosting a St. Patrick's Day liturgical link up later this week, so get your St. Patrick's Day posts ready! I love seeing all of your ideas!

Related Posts:

• Catholic St. Patrick's Day Ideas
• Saint Patrick Crafts
• Shamrock Trinity Craft
• St. Patrick Printables
• St. Patrick's Day- Fun Food!

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Annunciation Coloring Page

The feast of the Annunciation is coming up tomorrow, March 25. (Sorry about the short notice. Lol!) Anyways, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to share this AMAZING coloring page with you guys.

Link to Coloring Page

Post on the Annunciation from Familia Catolica.

Isn't it beautiful? I love it! Happy coloring :-)

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St. Joseph Altar For Beginners

I have a confession to make. Before this year, I didn't even really know what a St. Joseph Altar was. And I've never seen one in real life, nor had my own. (Part of me starting this blog was to encourage my own self to get more into the "Catholic Stuff" ;-) So I'm typing this post for beginners like me! Here's our completed altar:

What's with the weird "stair shape"? Well, St. Joseph Altars are generally in 3 'steps'. This symbolizes the trinity and also the holy family. I made mine by stacking boxes and covering it with a white rag:

What goes on top? St. Joseph of course! We only have such nice St. Joseph statues and pictures because he's my husband's confirmation saint, so they were presents. You can use any picture of St. Joseph- even a holy card. And don't tell me you don't have a St. Joseph statue because I KNOW you have a nativity set! Lol! It's also ok to put the entire holy family up there. If your nativity set is all packed away, check out my printable nativity and have your kids color the holy family today :-)

Ok, what else do I put on the altar? Traditionally you put bread, fancy pastries, fish, lilies, roses, candles, wine, all kinds of fruit, fava beans, and symbols of St. Joseph (like sawdust) on your altar. To learn more, check out this post at Catholic Cuisine.

How did this start? Once there was a famine in Sicily, and the people prayed to St. Joseph for relief. Their prayers were answered, and they made an altar and brought their bountiful food to offer. Then they distributed the food to the less fortunate. So it's also traditional to donate the food from your altar :-) You can read more about this history here.

What are 'fava beans'? They were food for cattle, but everyone was considered lucky to have them to eat during times of famine. Check out the "Fava" bean craft we made!

Like our "fancy pastries"? They're  made from fig newtons. See the post on how to make them yourself here!

Here are some more of my posts you might be interested in today:

St. Joseph Feast Day Fun!

Making St. Joseph's Altar at Home

PS. Couldn't help myself but to draw attention to this. Can you believe I had a bottle of wine with Mary and Jesus on it to put on our altar? Lucky! :-)

Don't forget to check out everyone's altars at
the St. Joseph Altar Blog Fest 2010! :-)
And you can link yours through the end of the month!

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St. Joseph's Altar Ideas

We're preparing our St. Joseph's Altar for tomorrow, and we've been working on something I'd like to share!

Traditionally on St. Joseph's Altar, there are symbolic pastries made in the shapes of crosses, ladders, staffs, sandals, doves, flowers, fish, and more! They're decorated with dry fig, and are not always eatable. Here is an example of the 'real thing' (You can find a recipe here)

So we made our own simple version using fig newtons :-)

Here's How:

Cut your symbol in with a little knife. (use caution

when working with knives)

Then pry out the unwanted area.

Keep picking out the remaining crumbs with the end of

the knife until leaving only the dark fig. Voila!

I made a cross, fish, monstrance, heart, and chalice.

If I were you I'd keep the designs simple. I don't think that little kids could do this, but older kids could.

Have you heard of fava beans? They were food for cattle, but in times of famine one was considered lucky to have them to eat. They're very traditional to have on St. Joseph's Altar. We don't actually have any real fava beans, but we did make this craft:

Great northern beans worked well because they're light in color. It would have been good to have something bigger. Suggestions? Be sure to use card stock because regular paper is really too flimsy. For younger kids, write "FAVA" in glue first and just let them stick on the beans.

Come back tomorrow to see our whole altar, or head over the Evann's St. Joseph's Altar Blog Fest tomorrow- we'll be there! :-)

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Catholic St. Patrick's Day Ideas

More St. Patrick's Day ideas, really? What can I say, guys. I just couldn't help myself! :-)

I am so in love with these Celtic Knot Cookies 

from Sprinkle Bakes. I might have to try these!

 Love this Irish vegetable platter from Waltzing Matilda!

Yay for finding cute food that's healthy! ;-)

Check out this craft from Karen in Mommyland.

Family Fun had the idea of celebrating another Irish saint on 

St. Patrick's Day- St. Bridgid! Don't miss this St. Brigid's Cross Craft!

This St. Patrick coloring sheet from Catholic Heritage was submited

by Jennnifer T. Thanks, Jennifer! I love it!!!

Here are some great directions for braiding this

Celtic Cross from cord.

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