Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus: Feast Day Oct. 1

Today as we celebrate Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, also known as Saint Therese of Lisieux, my family chose to focus on her beautiful title: “Saint Therese the Little Flower.” Even though she only lived a short life, Saint Therese’s book,“Story of a Soul,” and her concept of “The Little Way” have inspired many throughout the world; and she was declared a Doctor of the Church.

Activities and Crafts:

Focusing on the “flower theme” with my toddlers, we began our day by making paper flowers. Here is a great website (“First Palette”) with directions for folding Paper flowers . If your children are older, you can use these printable templates, from the same website, for younger children. After making paper flowers, we then learned about the parts of a flower using these worksheets from “Itsy Bitsy Fun” (scroll to the bottom of the page to click on worksheets for parts of a plant and parts of a plant diagram). This website Simply Kinder also provides another free downloadable parts of a plant worksheet. You can extend this activity by also discussing and completing the Life cycle of a plant worksheetsfrom SuperStar Worksheets.

Another activity we did today, was a modified flower counting math lesson from Montessori-inspired flower math activities . Instead of using flowers, we used dried beans, and I added subtraction to the activity as well as addition. I put the counting sheet in a page protector so my four year old could use dry-erase markers to write and re-write numbers.

The final activity we did was to create a “Little Way Prayer Book.” We printed a couple of Prayers written by Saint Therese and then I helped my children write one of their own. We then put them together in a construction paper book for them to keep on their nightstands for nighttime prayers.

The Little Flower Meal:

For lunch we served flower-shaped tuna fish sandwiches and tomato soup. We used this recipe from Kraft for decorating inspiration.

I hope you find these activities helpful for you and your family as you celebrate Saint Therese the Little Flower.

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