Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Celebrating Mary

As I woke the children this morning so that we could zip out of the house to make 8:30am Mass, I told them that today we are celebrating Mary! Today we get to go to Mass to celebrate her being taken up into Heaven. I told them the Church would look beautiful and Father would be "dressed up." What a beautiful thing this Catholic faith is - that the Church is adorned and the priest wears special colors for such great Feasts as these.

After Mass, I read a short page out of a Tomie dePaola book and we set up our Mary statue. Then we had to mourn a bit. As we were setting things up, the book fell down and hit Mary. She fell to the floor with a crash. Oh, how sad it made me. I think I can glue most of her back together, but it was such a special statue that Brian and the children gave me for my birthday last year.


Using another statue, some flowers and our Mary books, we created a Feast day display on our new "altar." Recently, my sister passed on to me this lovely antique sideboard. It now holds our religious library and our religious articles. Right now I have the kids' Transfiguration pictures above it, but I am hoping to have some sort of religious artwork over it soon. I am excited to be able to use this sideboard to house all our religious displays throughout our liturgical year.


Once Michael was down for a nap, I told the children we could make a Mary picture. I had copied some pictures out of a coloring book to color, but instead of using crayons for the millionth time, I opted for paints. We haven't gotten the paints out in a while and even though they are messier, I knew the kids would love it. I almost talked myself out of it, thinking that the paints would only make messy, muddy pictures. But then I reminded myself, it's not always so important that they create great works of art. Sometimes they just need to have fun experimenting with color, etc. And so they did!

Here is Nicole painting (above) and her rendition (below).



Jacob working with his palette (above) and his finished masterpiece (below).


And last, but not least, diaper boy, Andrew (above) and his more abstract creation (below).

1 comment:

Jill said...

I love the idea of that 'altar' to display your religious artwork throughout the year. And precious artwork indeed- especially the abstract Andrew art!
I love all of the neat things you do with your kids.
I've enjoyed reading through all of your recent posts. I've missed you in the blogging world, but totally understand your short departure.