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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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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Assumption of Mary Triptych Craft

The Feast of the Assumption of Mary is coming up on August 15. This is a Holy Day of Obligation, meaning you need to attend mass on this day. However, for 2010 it's falling on Sunday, so you'll already be at mass anyway :-)

I found this awesome idea from Nicole on 4 Real Forums to make an Assumption Triptych with the Immaculate Conception on the left, the Assumption of Mary in the middle, and Mary as Queen of heaven and earth on the right. What a great idea! And yes, Nicole posted complete directions for the Triptych Mary Craft! I also found some examples from others:

Check out this beautiful version on 

Homeschooling Down Under.

Here's another from 

Ten Kids and a Dog.

I love this idea and it's perfect for this month because the 'Queenship of Mary' Feast day is coming up later this month on August 22 :-)
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