Epistles, Feasts, Sacraments Parents' Guide: Overview/Schedule
EPISTLES, FEASTS, AND SACRAMENTS
PARENTS’ GUIDE
Each year we send home a parents’ guide to help you continue your children’s Christian education at home and to reinforce what is being taught in Church School. This gives each family with small children some ideas for exciting activities for you and your children to enjoy together; it is not meant to be comprehensive or exclusive. Use your creativity! If you know the topic of the week, you can also think up some wonderful ways to “bring it home” from Church. This can start as simply as reviewing the lesson of the week (Can the children tell you the story?) in the car on the way home from Church and continue through the week in your daily devotions and prayers. This year it will be especially important to hold things together since it is our “catch-all” year with each of the major feasts (taught right before the feast), the epistles, and the sacraments. On “feast weeks” focus on celebrating the up-coming feast, on “epistle weeks” on the stories of the author and on memorizing the verse, and on “sacrament weeks” on role-playing the order of the service and on their own baptism, chrismation, etc.
It is very important even for the very young child to have daily prayers (Do you have a family icon corner? What about setting up one in his room?) and Bible (or Bible story) reading, maybe right after dinner or at bedtime. Your “home altar” could include icons (Jesus, Mary, family saints?), incense, candles, Bible, a jar of holy water, matches or lighter, prayer book. How about tablecloths or placemats or a piece of fabric or felt of the Liturgical colors to switch out seasonally. And, of course, include displays of specific artwork done by your child during the year for specific feasts and saints.
Do you say grace after each meal? Each day they can practice crossing themselves, lighting candles, burning incense, etc. And on Saturday night, in preparation for Liturgy the next day, what about a time of private confession to the Lord? You could even “pray the hours” on days when you are home: 7 AM (First Hour) thanking God for His light, 9 AM (3rd Hour) thanking Him for His Holy Spirit, 12 Noon (6th Hour) thanking Him for His crucifixion, and 3 PM (9th Hour) praying with the wise thief, “Remember me, O Lord, in thy Kingdom.” Very little time spent, but a habit begun.
There will be some memory work for the year. During the Epistle lessons, any student memorizing his verse for the week and reciting it during opening exercises the next week will get a prize; ages 3-7 have the same verse, ages 9-middle school a different verse. The verses appear below so you can work on them at home or in the car, my own favorite memorization time. There is a word puzzle for each of the memory verses for the 8-10 class. There will also be two big memorization projects for the students. In September we will work on the books of the New Testament with the older children; for younger children, let them just know the names of the authors: St. Paul, St. Peter, St. James, St. John, and St. Jude. Then, in January, we will try to learn the names (and for older children, dates) of the 12 (actually 13, if you count Pascha, which is the Feast of Feasts) Major Feasts. These will be recited when ready during opening exercises and prizes given. This would be great memory work to do in the car on the way to Liturgy! Here's a bookmark with the memory work for easy review, just print and use.
THE GREAT FEASTS FRAMES PROJECT
Why not host, at the beginning of the Church School program year, a frame-making workshop for the children in the Sunday School? Simple ideas of mine or your own could make for some easy-to-do and decorate frames of the appropriate color for the liturgical color of the feast and provide a group of frames for each student to take home, putting the appropriate feast icon in the appropriate frame near each of the major feasts. Some ideas follow, along with small icons for each feast gleaned from the Internet that can be printed easily on cardstock and fitted into the frame. Size the icons according to the size of the opening on the frame once you’ve selected your frames.
While children love working with different mediums and types of framing material, you could also purchase a nice, matching set of wooden frames, 6/child, paint and decorate those. An amazing array of frames is available online; you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Foam frames, paper frames, wooden frames, papier mâché frames, ceramic frames – all with the stand in the back already attached. One catalog is Oriental Trading…but there are lots more.
BLUE: FEASTS OF THE THEOTOKOS
There are 4 feasts specially devoted to the Theotokos and, for which, the clergy wear their blue vestments. Can the children identify each?
- Nativity of the Theotokos
- Entrance of the Theotokos
- Annunciation
- Dormition
For feasts of Mary, we will do blue frames. Take a rectangle of blue foam and cut a 3x5 inch opening for the icon pictures or buy blue foam frames. Attach a frame back or piece of cardboard, leaving one side unglued to insert the pictures. Glue silk or foam flowers to decorate. Why flowers? Silk flowers will require hot glue after the children place them with glue dots; foam or sequin flowers can be glued with glue dots or plain white glue.
RED: NATIVITY OF JESUS
Each student will make a frame in red and receive an icon of the Nativity for his personal icon corner. Does he know the date of the feast – when to place it in his icon corner?
For Nativity, we will make a red frame. In this case we will take a wooden frame purchased or cut with a 3x5 opening for the icon. Spray paint the frame red ahead of time. Decorate it with red, black, and gold (mostly reds) mosaic tiles glued on. Grout can be used but is really unnecessary in this case. You can use real mosaic tiles, or paper or foam ones. Plain white glue works well with some time to dry.
GOLD: GENERAL FEASTS
Presentation of the Lord
Ascension
We will make a gold icon frame for the general feasts and for the rest of the liturgical year. Each student will receive a print of each of the icons to use in his icon corner at home. He can change the icon for the appropriate date; do the students know the date of each feast?
This frame will be made from craft sticks. The base is made with two sticks lined up parallel and a layer of sticks perpendicular to these forming a flat, square base. Then glue sticks across the corners of the base (which leaves an opening in which to insert an icon), then parallel to each side of the base, then corners, etc., each row a bit outside the previous for 3-4 rows, making an octagonal frame. After the frames dry, spray paint gold.
