Preparation for Dormition

Dormition will always hold a special place in my heart.  It was on the Feast of Dormition two years ago that our family joined the Orthodox church.  Especially fitting for new converts still a bit uncomfortable with the Theotokos!  I've grown a lot since then!  

Fasting seasons are a bit harder to teach to my little ones since they don't observe the same fasting guidelines that Josh and I do.  They would rather not eat meat in the first place!  So when I saw this cute countdown board on Pinterest, I knew it would be a great way to show my kids that we are preparing for something really special.  Besides, who doesn't love a good countdown!?  

My original idea came from here, but of course, when I got to Michael's there were no felt pieces the size that I needed.  Since I had my 3 babies with me, I used my quick creative juices (complements of the two cups of coffee this morning) and came up with this idea.  The concept is to add a new flower to the board each day until Dormition.  The board is made of foam, which I taped to the wrong colored felt board I was going to use to make it stronger.  I took pipe cleaners cut to about an inch long and poked them through the foam (before I attached it to the felt board).  I curled them around so they would stay in place with the hopes that they would look like the center of a flower.  Each day we will stick a new flower on the board.  The foam flowers I found just happened to have a hole right in the middle, and they were also on sale, Win-Win!  As you can see, I also mounted a color print of the Icon of the Dormition as well as the Troparion.

On the back of the board I taped the Bible verses found on the above link.  There is a scripture to read for each day of the fast and the actual feast day as well.  This way, everyday when we put on our new flower, I can quickly reference the reading for the day.

We will also be doing some celebrating on the Feast.  I will blog about that as well (Lord willing), but just in case you want to prepare ahead of time....  We will be coloring icons of the feast, listening to our Theotokos songs from Gigi, making blue flowers from tissue paper for our icon corner, hopefully playing with some hand made manipulatives, and we will most definitely be feasting that evening to celebrate not only Dormition, but also our 2 year Orthoversary!

Feast of the Transfiguration

Training my children to know and fall in love with the Lord is my main goal in life.  There are many things that I want to teach them in this life, but if I fail in this area, I have failed completely.

Lately I have been collecting some resources and tools to help me in this lofty goal.  There are so many beautiful opportunities in the Orthodox faith, after two years, I am still learning how to take advantage of this in my home.

With no better time to start than the present, today we set out to fully celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration.  Yesterday I spent my day cutting and laminating this Liturgical timeline for our wall.  It has all of the major feasts and also the feasts that are important to our family (like our Patron Saints).  I really wish I could remember where I found the exact link to the pictures you see on my wall, but I can't remember where I found them, but you could always print some off from here.  Although, the cute ones I found have scripture for each Feast and an activity.  Google search, I bet you can find it ;)

Our timeline of the church year

So we started off our day by reading our daily Gospel from the Daily Reading App while eating breakfast. Of course it was the passage from the Transfiguration.  After I cleaned up the table, I made copies of the Icon of the Transfiguration from my new book A Way of Life:  Introducing Your Child to the Orthodox Faith (of which I can't seem to find a good link, unless you want to pay $125 on Amazon).  They also include a simplified version of the story that I read while they colored.  We also listened to the Transfiguration song from the CD Celebrate the Feasts by Gigi.  It's always nice to have a good song get stuck in your head for the rest of the day!

Our church celebrates most Feasts with a Divine Liturgy in anticipation the evening before (unless it's on the weekend).  So we snacked on some blessed grapes as we colored too!

Based on the suggestion from Following a Sacred Path by Elizabeth White, we took a walk outside around our neighborhood to find things that change to help us remember that Transfiguration means change.

A bird egg

A ripe tomato

Roses

more tomatoes

Flowering trees

Our raspberry bushes

And while I was Googleing around trying to find links for the timeline, I stumbled upon this great activity!  A Transfiguration Box!  This beauty will be great to pull out each year for the kids to play with.  My three oldest girls helped me work on this during nap time.  We have:  An icon of Moses and Elijah, a playdough Mt. Tabor, a cloud that reads "This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well please.", a ray of light, stick figures on Peter, James and John, the icon of the Transfiguration and the Troparion.  Makayla was very bothered that there was so stick Jesus, so if you want to make a Jesus, that probably wouldn't be a bad idea!

  And finally, once I thought I was done, the girls asked if they could paint. Since we had already made a big mess, I figured 'Why not?'  So here they are, painting.

 One out of three actually completed the icon.  Their friend came over while they were painting and Makayla was able to correctly explain to her about Transfiguration.  Success?  ABSOLUTELY!!!