Craft Religious Medals with Kids

This is so easy to do and my kids have been loving it! On May 1, Divine Mercy Sunday, Pope John Paul II is being beatified! :-) So this week, we've been making Divine Mercy medals and JPII crucifixes!

This is easier to do than it looks. All you need is polymer clay, and a few religious medals. You can get polymer clay (like sculpey or fimo) from a craft store, or even Wal-Mart, and it's not that expensive. You can either order some religious medals, or you can get them from your local Catholic shop. Every Catholic shop I've been in has a set of these drawers with cheap religious medals. (Be sure to also check the rosary pieces section, which is usually in a different place, for crucifixes).

To make our molds, I used scrap clay that had all the colors mixed up because it's basically useless for anything else. Just press your object in and remove it, then bake according to package directions.

After you've baked your mold, you're ready to go. To prevent the clay from sticking to our mold, I dusted a little bit of flour on with a paint brush. Have your kids stick the clay in, and pull it back out. Voila! Instant religious medal! I used the same kind of clay for both the mold and the 'medals', but I'm sure there are other materials that would work.

Just trim around the edges with a knife (a job for mom, not kids) and then bake according to package directions. Here is a picture of me indeed letting my 5 year old do her own cutting- lol!

Don't forget to poke a hole with a paper clip, or add a medal jewelry ring thingy before baking if you want to use it as a bead. Here are some different Divine Mercy Medals we made:

We started with solid colors, and we tried pressing in glass seed beads for the red and blue rays. Then we made "marbled" religious medals by mixing some of the colors together before pressing it into the mold. These were all fun experiments! I also made these multi colored ones with rays by rolling little bits of red and blue clay and sticking them into the mold first. See the pictures:

Alternately, you could paint your "medals" after they are baked with some acrylic craft paint. Lydia made her Divine Mercy "medals" purple. I try not to stifle her creativity. ;-)

You could do this with any religious medal your heart desires to make! When we were done, we made ours into Divine Mercy Chaplets. You can either make easy chaplets from pipe cleaners and pony beads, or you can get really crafty with your polymer clay and make your own beads! It's totally doable! :-)

You can find more Divine Mercy Crafts and links here, including praying the Divine Mercy chaplet in song!

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Christ the King Craft

Catholic ABC's Week: 16
Letter of the week: K
Theme: King (Jesus is King or Christ the King)
Saint of the Week: Blessed Kateri
Craft: Jesus is King

I knew I wanted to make "K" week about Jesus being king, but coming up with a craft was harder than I thought it would be! I wanted it to be a clearly religious king craft. There are already so many secular king crafts out there, so there's no need to waist my time re-creating the wheel, are you with me? Lol!

Materials Needed to Complete This Craft:

• Fun Foam (or substitute construction paper or card stock)
• Decorations for crown (Examples: glitter glue, stick on jewels, markers, stickers, etc. We used glitter glue)
• Hot Glue (grown up use only)
• Popsicle sticks
• School Glue
• Styrofoam Balls (or substitute pool noodles)

Start by cutting the foam or paper into a crown shape. You can cut a regular, flat crown shape, but if you curve the shape a little the crown will have a cuter shape when the craft is complete. Older kids should be able to do their own cutting.

Let the kids decorate the crowns however they like. I lightly drew a "K" on my daughter's crown and let her trace over it with glitter glue. She did a pretty good job! Mostly I let her free style it because she loves to be creative!

You need 2 popsicle sticks to make the cross. Shorten one of them with some scissors, and let the kids glue them together and decorate the crosses as well.

When your decorations dry, it's time to put it all together! Carefully saw a styrofoam ball in half with a sharp kitchen knife. Use your cool glue gun to attach the foam around the base of the ball. Then your kids can stick their cross in the middle of the crown!

If you're looking for a cheaper option, I found that a slice of pool noodle worked just as well as the styrofoam. The only difference is that you'll have to make a small slit with a sharp knife for inserting the cross- it won't work to just stick it straight in. You can get pool noodles for a dollar and get enough to make probably 75 of these, so the pool noodle option is infinitely cheaper. I can get sryrofoam balls at my Dollar Tree, but they are a pricey craft supply at special craft stores- up to several dollars each! Here's one we did with a pool noodle slice: 

FYI- you can also get packages of these for $1 at the Dollar Tree:

Thanks to everyone on Catholic Icing's facebook wall who bounced ideas with me about how to make these crosses stand up! You guys are a great crowd and I love talking to all of you!

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter K: (be sure to check out the Classroom Scriptfor directions on using the grab bag.) Kitten, Koala bear, Kangaroo, Ketchup packet, Knot, King, Key. (Avoid anything starting with "Kn" that doesn't make the classic "K" sound. That's confusing for kids.)

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter K. (Her K lesson is on King Solomon.)

Catholic ABC's runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday with the new letter of the week. You can get the details of this program by checking out the Classroom Script.

I'm very pleased with the results of this craft, and Lydia (my 4 year old) absolutely loved it!

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Cross Crafts for Kids

The feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (or Triumph of the cross) is coming up on September 14. So here's a round up of cross crafts for celebrating this day with your kids! :-)

Memories of a Catholic Wife and Mother has directions

for this Cross Craft they made for this day! Cute!

My daughter and I are going to try crafting these

Cross Necklaces this year. I'll let you know how it 

goes on my Catholic Icing Facebook Page.

I love these scrapwood crosses from 

The Willcutt Girls. So colorful! 

Find directions for crafting these 

beaded crosses with Kaboose.

Kaboose also has directions for making

this "Stained Glass" Cross.

And I love this Plastic Cross Bookmark Craft

from Kaboose, too. So much cute stuff!

Also, you can find a former Cross Craft post on Catholic Icing. :-)

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Know Your Catholic ABC's?

Find the Free Catholic Preschool Curriculum Here.

This year, I am teaching my son's class for our preschool co-op, and I'm really excited! You should be excited, too. Want to know why? Because I'm going to be posting it here for all of you. Want to follow along with your kids? You got it! The curriculum will be for preschoolers, but a lot of the crafts/food etc will be great for elementary aged kids as well.

Our curriculum will be covering numbers, then moving onto the alphabet- one letter per week. There will be a different craft for every number 1-5, then a craft for every letter of the alphabet. I'll be posting one themed craft each week on Wednesday, starting September 1st!

In celebration, we're kicking off this school year with this Catholic ABC themed muffin tin meal! A is for Angel, B is for bible, and C is for cross. (Second row- A is also for apple, B is for banana, and C is for carrot.)

The angel is made from a bugle, some pretzels, an oyster cracker, and a cheerio- all stuck together with cream cheese frosting. (I'll be posting some more detailed directions for these later this week).

The bibles are made from fig newtons. I got the idea to make books from fig newtons over on Shower of Roses. I'll be posting the full directions for making the bibles later this week as well.

So watch for Catholic Preschool A-Z starting here at Catholic Icing on September 1! 

Also, check out other alphabet themed muffin tin meals today over on Muffin Tin Mom! She's a good bloggy friend of mine. She's a Christian cancer survivor, and she posts lots of great food and craft ideas for kids :-)





*Updated in an Attempt to Clarify Some Questions*
I am going to be teaching my son's preschool for our co-op. His class is for ages 2 1/2 - 3 1/2. However, I really wanted my daughter to learn her letters this year, and she is 4. So the curriculum will be flexible for all preschoolers through kindergarten. The crafts will also be good for older kids- they will just need less help. I am going to post the whole curriculum, not just crafts. Class is exactly the same each week, but doing the same routine with the new letter. The craft each week will be different to coordinate with the letter (or number) and I will post the new craft each Wednesday. Each week will also have a coordinating bible verse OR prayer for them to learn, and may or may not include a snack idea, song, or coloring page. I am homeschooling both of my preschoolers this year in addition to teaching this co-op, but I will only be posting the Catholic stuff here.
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Easter Cross Crafts for Kids

That Artist Woman is probably my favorite art project site for kids! Her tutorials are amazing, and she does religious crafts because she's the art teacher at a Catholic school. All of the following cross projects come from her site and have great directions!

Make this egg shell mosaic cross.

I love this simple resist cross project.

Also, check out these salt dough crosses.

They're decorated with beads!

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