Happy Saint Patrick's Day!! {LC}

Yup, I've gone green again for the day! It's Saint Patrick's Day!!! I love this day and look forward to it all year long. Other than Independence Day and Christmas it is perhaps my favorite holiday! And even though it is I have found that I own absolutely NO decorations for this holiday!! I'm not sure how that happened but I'll begin to rectify it next year.

We're Irish on both sides of the family, one side has a bit more than the other but that's OK. Plus, we're catholic so Saint Patrick is a wonderful topic to discuss.

Did you know that Saint Patrick used to explain the Trinity to people using the shamrock? We're talking the regular three leafed shamrocks you'll find growing at your feet, just as he found them. The top leaf is God, the leaves under it on each side are Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It made the concept of the Trinity more concrete for many people.

For Saint Patrick's day in our home we always eat corned beef and cabbage, which is a pretty traditional meal for the Irish especially on "Saint Paddy's Day". We usually leave out the seasonings that come with the brisket when you buy it as there's a few in there that we personally don't like and it takes to long to pick them out, besides we like the taste plain. I always add potatoes and carrots to our pot as it cooks, sometimes onions as well, and it makes for a wonderful one pot meal!

We usually talk about Leprechaun's and color a picture or two (which of course we did this year as usual). This year the campers each made rainbow leprechaun traps as well in the hopes of catching their very own leprechaun. There's a couple of four leaf clovers floating around for luck as well.

But as the children are a bit older this year and all of them are more interested in what each saint is about we've added a lot more to our homeschool schedule about Saint Patrick himself. We started on Sunday by making two pages of three leaf clovers. The one with several on the page also has an Irish blessing written above each one and the children all drew a picture that represented being held in God's hand at the bottom of the sheet.


The second page shows the Trinity using the three leaf clover and below that we wrote: Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me. Which is an Irish prayer that I thought was perfect during Lent.

Monday (today) we plan on talking a lot about Saint Patrick himself, perhaps watching a few videos on YouTube, and the Cracker Jack's will have some Saint Patrick's Day copy work to do. I've a good unit study we could have done had my printer not run out of ink! You can find it, and others, here . I'll be doing a lot of reading and discussion about Saint Patrick from the unit and we'll be sure to print it off next year!

I'll leave you with this wee prayer/blessing as I go:

May Christ give to you at this time

and for always,

His peace in your soul,

His presence in your heart, 

His power in your life.

Have a wonderful Saint Patrick's Day! Don't forget that on Wednesday (the 19th) it's Saint Joseph's Day.

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Saint Patrick's Day Ideas

Alright, so, Saint Patrick's Day is less than a week away and some of us still haven't figured out what we want to do in our houses or homeschool classrooms for it yet. Here's a few ideas I hope will help you out! *And, nope, I couldn't help doing this post in green!*

Number One: Follow this link HERE for a wonderful (and for a short time only *free*) unit study on Saint Patrick!!! I found this today myself and just had to get it!

Number Two: Follow this link right HERE for Saint Patrick's Day cards (both colored and black and white) and coloring pages (a lot to choose from). A discovery I made myself earlier this morning!!

Number Three: Head to your local library and read some books about Saint Patrick's day! They should still have a few on hand even to sit and read to your child there if you wish.

Number Four: Head on over to YouTube and watch THIS quick (we're talking 3 minutes here folks) Saint Patrick cartoon. There's also a few others including one by Veggie Tales. 

Number Five: While your at YouTube you may as well look up a few Saint Patrick documentaries. Watch out though, this is YouTube and some of these are not documentaries about the saint himself but rather the things folks do to celebrate the day (some have drinking just so that you are aware before you click on it and hadn't intended your child to see that).

Number Six: Find out for yourself more about Saint Patrick by either going here or here. The first link is one to an article about Saint Patrick by the History Channel and the second link is from Catholic.org.

Number Seven: Make plenty of shamrocks to decorate your home/classroom. You can either do these as purely decorations or to help explain the Trinity, as Saint Patrick himself did. Either way they're almost a must have for Saint Patrick's Day!

Number Eight: Make corned beef and cabbage for supper. We do this every year. It's a tradition in our family dating further back than I know, it started on my husband's side of the family several years back in history and I've simply continued the tradition. Although my family does claim some Irish roots, they had never done this when I was younger. It's a lovely tradition and a lovely meal.

Number Nine: Put on some good old Irish music and get up and "jig" with your kids! It'll be sure to put a smile on every one's faces!

Number Ten: Build leprechaun traps! (Just for the heck of it lol)

Now, I will leave you with four quotes associated with Saint Patrick:

When after the Winter alarmin',
The Spring steps in so charmin',
So fresh and arch
In the middle of March,
Wid her hand St. Patrick's arm on...
~Alfred Percival Graves

The list of Irish saints is past counting; but in it all no other figure is so human, friendly, and lovable as St. Patrick - who was an Irishman only by adoption.
~Stephen Gwynn

Saint Patrick was a gentleman
Who through strategy and stealth
Drove all the snakes from Ireland
Here's a drinkee to his health!
But not too many drinkees
Lest we lose ourselves and then...
Forget the good Saint Patrick
And see them snakes again!
~ Author Unknown

May your glass be ever full.
May the roof over your head be always strong.
And may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.
~Irish prayer

Linking this up today (3/11/2014) with:  

Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and 2014 Link Up Blitz

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Saint Valentine

We live in a world where the only thing most people think about when it comes to February 14th is candy and flowers, romantic dinners, and printed card stock with silly little sayings. And I'm not saying that all of these things don't have their places. I'm also not saying that we don't do these things ourselves. But, there is a deeper meaning to Saint Valentine's Day then most people seem to know about.

Saint Valentine was a Roman priest back when Claudius (who was the emperor back then) was persecuting the church. Claudius had made a ruling that it was illegal for young people to marry because he believed (probably falsely) that unmarried soldiers fought harder as they had nothing really to loose. Back then polygamy was still pretty popular, but a lot of folks were drawn to Christianity in spite of (and maybe partly because of) this. Or course the church believes in the sanctity of marriage and Valentine felt very strongly about the whole thing. So strongly in fact that he chose to marry young people in secret despite Claudius's ruling.

When Valentine was eventually caught he was charged, imprisoned, and tortured for basically doing his job even though Emperor Claudius the second had said that it was illegal to do so. A lot of legends surround what Valentine did while he was in prison back then.

In one of those legends he prayed over a blind child and she was healed, which caused the girls father to convert to Christianity. When, in 269 A.D., he was sentenced to a three part death to include beating, stoning, and decapitation he wrote his final letter to the child who's vision he'd prayed to have returned. He signed it: "from your Valentine".

There are many who do know the true story of Saint Valentine's Day and what he did for his beliefs about love and and marriage. These people make pilgrimages to one of the three churches to have a bit of the saint's remains, or pray to him as the patron saint of marriage, or tell his story to their children.

In our home we speak about the truth of Saint Valentine and what he gave up and endured because of his beliefs. We also make and send out valentines cards, eat conversation hearts, and attempt to have romantic dinners (if having a dinner with the children can ever be termed romantic). Love is talked about and celebrated in our home all the time, but it is given special attention the entire month of February and especially on Saint Valentine's Day.

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