The purpose of this blog is two-fold:
For parents of the children in our program, a chance to review, go deeper, or see what you missed at GIFT.
For other Faith Formation professionals, a chance to share thoughts and ideas.
Please feel free to leave comments!
-Dez

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Last Supper Wheel

This is a project I used for children preparing for First Eucharist.  It goes together very quickly with just a little cutting and a brad.  I pre-punched the holes in each piece with a Crop-A-Dile tool before giving them to the kids.  They also had the option of coloring the top piece.

The top piece is supposed to look a little like a plate.  As you turn the wheel, information about different elements of the Last Supper show in the cut-out space.  The 4 sections of the bottom piece are: Eucharist, Passover, Upper Room, and "Only Human" (about Judas betraying Jesus, and Peter denying Him 3 times.)



Here are the links to the pattern pages:

Top Page

Bottom Page w/ Instructions

Family Creed Tiles

At our February GIFT Session, we learned about the Apostle's Creed.  We played a ball-toss game in which each group of 6-9 people attempted to toss multiple balls across a circle to each other.  Done randomly, this was quite a challenge.  But when we set some guidelines for everyone to follow - establish a pattern of who throws to whom, and say the person's name and make eye contact before tossing - the groups were able to get up to 3 balls sailing fairly smoothly through the air.  Then, we talked about how helpful it is for a group of people trying to accomplish a task together to have a strong foundation, or to all be on the same page about things.  In the case of the Church, we are trying to accomplish the mission of spreading the Gospel.  One of our shared foundations is the Creed, our statement of basic beliefs for everyone in the Church.

After taking a closer look at the text of the Creed, I shared with families a wall-hanging I had noticed at a friend's house that said, "In This House..." and went on to list things like "We do I'm sorry," "We do grace," and "We do loud really well."  The list reminded me of a creed.  So I asked our families to think about: What does your family believe in?  What's important to you?  How do you choose to live?  They took these ideas and made "Family Creed Tiles," using basic white 6x6-inch tiles and acrylic paint pens.  This was a very popular project, so I wanted to share it here.  Here are some samples I made for the class:





GIFT Families: If you missed this session and would like to pick up a tile and some paint pens, please contact Dez