How to Choose Flowers for Your Mary Garden

I always thought that Mary gardens were just a garden that included a Mary statue. (Although you don't even need a Mary statue- check out these ideas for making a statueless Mary garden). Beyond the statue, there are certain kinds of flowers that go into the gardens that symbolize different aspects of Mary! There are literally hundreds (depending on your climate zone, etc) but being a beginner myself, I've put together a "beginner's list" of symbolic flowers for your Mary garden.

Marigolds are a very popular choice because there are 

legends associated with marigolds adorning Mary's garments. 

It's also said that marigolds are named for the 

"Golden Virgin Mary".

Blue and white flowers are very popular choices 

for Mary gardens because those are her colors! :-)

Roses are other good choice. They are associated with the rosary,

and are often depicted with Mary in artwork.

Rosemary has a legend associated with Mary's flight to Egypt.

It is said that she stopped to rest under a rosemary bush and spread

her cloak on it to dry- Then the blossoms changed from white to blue!

Another popular choice- the Madonna Lily.

They symbolize purity and virginity.

Anne from Under her Starry Mantel has a beautiful post

on the different types of flowers that go into a Mary garden

and what they symbolize. Well done, Anne!

If you're still looking for more ideas, check this site
for more Marian flower symbols. Hapy Mary gardening! :-)

Related Posts:

Our Lady and the Ladybug

Mary Garden Crafts and Ideas 

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Mary Craft for May Crownings

Catholic ABC's Week: 26
Letter of the week: V
Theme: Virgin Mary
Saint of the Week: St. Veronica
Craft: May Crowning Craft

It's been awhile since I've had a Preschool curriculum post, but I had to take some time off for Easter. I can only handle so much at once! ;-) We're getting close to the end of the alphabet, and that means coming up with stuff for the "weird letters", which I have been putting off. I'll admit that I would have rather done "Vestments" or "Vatican" for the letter V, but our preschool co-op has been doing "Virgin Mary" for years and this craft was designed by Denise who used to teach my class before me.


Supplies needed to Complete this Craft:
Printed out picture of Mary
Fun foam
Scissors
Sharpie Marker
Foam Stickers (optional)
Fake flowers on wire (look in the wedding section of your craft store)

Cut your foam sheets into a long rectangle with a hole for a door knob. You can actually buy pre-made door hanger foam things from the Dollar Tree 3 for $1 if you'd rather not cut them yourself. Print out Mary pictures for the kids, and trace around the outside with a sharpie. (This gives them a good line to cut on). Have them cut and glue Mary onto the foam, then take the wire flowers and poke them through the foam around Mary's head to crown her with flowers. Decorate with additional foam stickers, and write "Virgin Mary" on with a sharpie.

This is a craft that won't crowd your refrigerator, or your counter space because when kids are done with these, they can hang them on their door and always have Mary around!

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter V: (be sure to check out the Classroom Script for directions on using the grab bag.) St. Veronica holy card, violet, velvet, toy van, vanilla, vegetables, vitamins, valentine, vaseline, picture of Vatican City, veil, vest.

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter Vv. (Her Vv lesson is on Virtues.)

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.

On a totally different topic, I have a guest post on Many Little Blessings today about First Communion cards at the Dollar Tree! If you'd like to browse the cards with me, click on over! :-)


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How to Plan a May Crowning for Kids

Planning a Marian Coronation is not as hard as you might think, and a May crowing ceremony is a great way to recognize Mary as the Queen of Heaven and Earth! I'll start with the basics. The month of May is dedicated to Mary. It's traditional to have a May crowning on May 1 (also known as May Day) but you can do it any time during May.

The Essentials- A Mary Statue and a Crown

First, figure out what Mary statue you are going to be crowning. You can try calling your parish to arrange a crowning of the Mary statue there. You can also crown your own Mary statue in your garden, or even a little plastic statue inside-  just make sure you have or make a crown that will fit your particular statue. It's traditional to crown Mary with flowers of some kind. If you're looking for ideas on crafting a crown, check my May Crowning post from last year. Take the statue's placement into consideration when planning. If you're crowning the Mary statue at your church, you may need a step ladder to reach her head. If you're crowning a Mary statue at home, you may want to put together a simple May Altar.

Bring Flowers for Mary

You can ask all the families attending the May Crowning to bring flowers for Mary. These can be hand picked, store bought, or artificial- no pressure. Alternately, you could provide flowers there and give one to each child to offer to Our Lady. These flowers will be placed at Mary's feet. You can check out the Marian symbolism of different flowers here, but anything works, and you certainly can't go wrong with Our Lady's color- blue!

Plan for Procession

Usually there is a procession with the crown before it is placed on Mary's head. You can line up all the kids, and sing a song while you process with the crown. (For song ideas, scroll down). The children can all carry flowers to be placed at Mary's feet as they reach the statue. You can either provide a vase for these flowers, or just lay them individually at Mary's feet.

Prayers for May Crowning

After you've crowned Mary, it would be great to say some prayers! The Hail Mary and the Hail, Holy Queen would both be good choices. You could also pray a decade of the rosary depending on the age of the kids at the crowning.

May Crowning Songs- Marian Hymns

Who doesn't love to sing a Mary song? There are so many great choices! There's actually a song called Bring Flowers of the Rarest (Queen of May) and another called Tis the Month of Our Mother. Some other favorites include Hail Holy Queen, Immaculate Mary (Ave Maria), or Hail Mary (Gentle Woman).

Fun Food for your May Crowning

Check out these ideas for fun food you can serve for any Marian feast day! You could also try making some cute crown shaped snacks of some kind, like crown shaped cakes or these May Crowning cookies from Family at the Foot of the Cross. You could also make some fun edible rosaries! :-)

Crafts for your May Crowning- Extra Fun!

If you're looking for craft ideas for your May crowning, boy have you come to the right place! You can make Mary, Queen of Heaven Suncatchers, make my Hand and Footprint Queen Mary Craft, make a Paper Mary Statue, or check out this assortment of fun Mary Printables for kids!

May Crowning Dress

It's traditional for girls to wear their First Communion or Easter dresses for the May crowning, and for the boys to wear their Sunday best as well. You may or may not choose not to have the kids dress up for a casual May crowning at your home. 

Resources for a May Crowning with a Mass

If you're looking to plan a whole May crowning mass, Catholic Teacher Resources has an amazing printable May crowning layout for you! I also found a lovely May Crowning proposal from Little Flowers Girl's Club that you can send to your priest to have a May crowning during mass, along with plans.

You can find more resources for planning your May Crowning at the Catholic Toolbox, and at Catechist's Journey. 

I attended my first May Crowning last year with our preschool co-op. We're having another May Crowning with our preschool next week, and I was thinking about having a home May crowning here on Mother's day!
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Queenship of Mary Craft

Catholic ABC's Week: 22 
Letter of the week: Q
Theme: Queenship of Mary
Saint of the Week: Mary, Queen of the Saints
Craft: Queenship of Mary Sun catcher

I know that Catholic ABC's usually runs on Wednesday, but today I have this post ready and I won't have today's post ready until tomorrow.... so I switched them around. :-)

This adorable craft was actually developed by the lady who used to teach my preschool class before me. It's one of my favorites! I did change it up a little.

Materials Needed To Complete This Craft:

• Wax Paper
• Black Fabric Paint (glue mixed with paint*)
• Stained Glass Paint (or regular paint mixed with glue**)
• Colored paper
• Gold glitter glue
• Glue

 Start by drawing a very simple picture of Mary with a crown. I wanted to provide this for you, but I'm having scanner issues. Trust me- you can do this! When you have your sketch, tear off a piece of wax paper and lay it on top. Trace around your simple lines with black fabric paint. *I have read that you can open up some white glue and add a little black paint to it in substitution for fabric paint, but I haven't tried it. Let this dry. (These only took me about a minute each to outline once I had my sketch).

When it's dry, have the children paint in Mary with blue stained glass paint. **If you'd like to save yourself some money and a trip to the craft store, you can substitute this for a paint/glue mixture. This mixture needs to have more paint than glue. It's not quite as nice as the stained glass paint, but it works in a pinch (and it's what we used for ours).

After they paint all over their wax paper, you can wipe off the paint around Mary's dress and in her face with a paper towel. Then have them squirt gold glitter glue into Mary's crown. Again, you can wipe with paper towel if they make a mess.

Cut out a paper frame for your Mary and glue it on around the edge of the wax paper. We used colored poster board, but construction paper is just as good. We then glued on a scrap of our paper to make the frame a Q since "Q is for Queenship of Mary".

Last year the kids made them a little differently. Here are some more pictures:

I like these ones with the stars, but it's very time consuming to draw them all with the fabric paint, so I skipped them. They really do look really cute hanging up in the window!

Check out this post for an alternate Queenship of Mary Craft.

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter Q: (be sure to check out the Classroom Script for directions on using the grab bag.) Quilt (or quilted toilet paper), Quarts crystal, Q-tips, Quarter, Football player (Quarterback), Bee toy (for Queen bee), Quail, Quill (take any feather, cut the end off, and scribble on it with a sharpie), Queen, Quaker oatmeal.

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter Qq. (Her Qq lesson is on "Quail")

Catholic ABC's runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday (except for today when it ran on Tuesday) with the new letter of the week. You can find the details of the program here.

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Free Mary Printables for Kids

Here's a round up of Marian Printables. There's still some time in May (Our Lady's Month) to have fun with these, but really Mary stuff is fun year round ;-)

Check out these Mary Feast Days Coloring Sheets
from Friends of Jesus and Mary! There are 2 pages.

I love this Printable Mary Paper Doll!
Also from Friends of Jesus and Mary.

There are also 3 pages of coloring pages telling the
Story of Mary's Life at Friends of Jesus and Mary.

Here's and Adorable Printable Hail Mary page.

Actually, the Hail Mary Sheet is only one of
22 different Printable Mary Activities there!

You can print this Hail Mary Sheet from
The Catholic Toolbox. Scroll down to "Hail Mary Coloring".
I love the way this sheet breaks down the prayer for kids!

These free pintables will make everyone happy- until you drain your ink cartridge, that is!

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Food for Marian Feast Days

For any Mary feast day or occasion you're celebrating, you can't go wrong with blue- Our Lady's color! :-) Flowers are also a lovely choice for honoring Mary. So here are some ideas to help you out for the remainder of May (our Lady's month!). 

Head over to Savory Sweet Life for 

directions on piping these blue flower cupcakes.

Family at the Foot of the Cross made this

blue lemonade their May crowning. So cute!

Find the recipe for these buttery sprits cookies

on The Silicone Spatula.

Make blueberry muffins for Mary. Find a 

recipe on Boston Food & Wine.

I love the idea of this bunt cake with flowers. The cake itself is 

shaped like a crown, and then filled with flowers for Our Lady! 

I found this over on The Food Librarian.

Also, I just love these Mary cookies from Jamie Jo!

You can find them on Lord Make Me a Saint.

Here are some more blue foods to enjoy as eye candy ;-)
Click for directions on making the cupcakes, muffins, macaroons, or cake.

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Mary Art Project for Kids

My preschooler crafted Mary, Queen of Heaven, as a handprint project- and I'm very happy with the results! :-)  This would be a perfect craft for a May crowning, or just a fun art project for Catholic kids anytime! 

Completed Project

Start by having your child stamp his or her foot, hand, and fingers.

(There are 12 "star" fingerprints around Mary)

Read more about Mary's stars

I would suggest letting this dry before moving on.

1. *tip* When stamping your hand, you might not want to paint all the way up the fingers. I didn't.
2. Paint Mary's blue veil around her face.
3. Trace around the outside of Mary's crown with gold glitter glue, and add dotted jewels with red glitter glue.
4. Paint on Mary's face.

I then let my daughter decorate the stars with glitter glue. Older kids can draw asterisk shapes on top of the fingerprints with the glitter glue.

Here are some of my 4 year old's completed Mary trading cards. She is so proud of these- I'm not sure what she's going to think of mailing them away!

 The Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is coming up on May 31. Happy Catholic Crafting!
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Mary Kids Activities

I bumped my own post for today to run some things that readers submitted. You guys are too great with the stuff that you do and send me! Thanks for sharing with all of us! :-)

St. Brigid's Academy shares an entire
May Crowning Lesson with us!

{{squeel in delight!}} This includes opening songs, how to make Mary crowns for little girls (with free printables), instructions for making may baskets with doilies with a special Marian activity, Mary and rosary coloring sheets, this amazing printable Mary statue and more. Click over to see it all!

Family at the Foot of the Cross submitted these beautiful Mary prayer cards that are free to print from Catholic Modesty. I also love this May Magnificat Poem that Tiffany shares.  

And finally, Highland Dove has the most incredible list of Mary links that I have ever seen in one place, along with a bunch of pictures of Mary May baskets. Click over to see tons of fabulous stuff! 

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May Crowning Ideas for the Home

May is the month of Mary. It is a tradition in the Catholic church to crown Mary with flowers during the month of May. It can be done at any time during the month, but May 1 (also known as "May Day") is a very popular day for it ;-) You can use real flowers, or make a crown from fake flowers. Here are some ideas if you're looking to have a May crowning at home!

Here's a tutorial on making a crown from fake flowers

on One Hour Craft. Blue roses would be a great choice of flower!

 Find a great tutorial on making a crown from real flowers

on Project Wedding.

I love this idea for a May Crowning Snack! I found this 

over on Praying for Grace.

Collect what you need to make your own crown for Mary at 

The Dollar Tree with Family at the Foot of the Cross.

Under Her Starry Mantel shares how to make this May Crown.

Find a lot of beautiful May Crowning Ideas at

Under Her Starry Mantel.

Find a beautiful Home May Crowning on Wildflowers and Marbles.

Don't miss all these amazing May Crowing Resources

from The Catholic Toolbox! :-)

Lots of May Crowning Ideas over on Waltzing Matilda 

including this Mary punch :-)

Find a May Day Craft over on Cottage Blessings.

Find an interactive rosary activity to include in your May Crowning

over on Hang on Baby Jesus This is Gonna Get Bumpy.

And last but not least, check out these amazing cupcakes!
There are no directions about making them, but I thought they'd
be magnificent at a May Crowning! If any of you make them or
figure it out, let us know how to do it ourselves :-)
*Updated to say- Kate left us some directions in the comments!*

Another option is to bring flowers to a Mary statue at your church. This can be a really fun thing to do with the kids, especially if you pick the flowers yourselves first! :-)

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