October GIFT: Join the Crew!

Our theme for GIFT this year is "Family Faith Under Construction," and our October session is called "Join the Crew!"  As we gather for the first time this year, we focus on these points:

Ø  Our families help us put God first and build our faith

Ø  The Saints were people who put God first and built up the church

Ø  Families commit to building faith together

Each month, we will find a tool in our tool box that symbolizes our lesson for us.  This month, it's a ruler/tape measure.  This is a very important tool in construction - ask any carpenter, and they will tell you - "Measure twice, cut once."  When we are building our faith, we too need to consult our ruler - God!  Our Bible verse for this lesson is from Psalm 127: "Unless the Lord builds the house, the work of the builders is useless."

To get kids thinking about the session theme, we begin the lesson with this handout for parent/child pairs to work on together:

We talked about building strong families and about families building their faith together.  We also talked a little about the Saints - holy people who built both things we can see & touch (like schools and hospitals), as well as things we can't touch (like faith, hope, and charity).  Parents and children were asked to discuss what "untouchable" things they wanted to build on or "grow" in their families - things such as love, kindness, together time, being closer to God, and knowing more about their faith.  After sharing their ideas with other families and in the large group, we went on to discuss the "how" - what are the concrete things families can do to build up their family and their faith?  Some ideas were: going to Mass, reading Scripture, doing their GIFT textbook homework, praying together, and eating meals together.  They used those ideas to write a "Family Covenant" in the space at the bottom of the page.  Kids could choose to cut it out & glue it to card stock to make a bookmark keepsake to use this year:

Click here to download the My Family Rules page.

Progressive Craft:
Each year, I have a "progressive craft" for GIFT - this is something the kids make at the first session, and then they add on to it at future sessions.  This month, we made a tool box that will hold the things we make in future months (I can't tell yet what that will be - tune in in November!).  The toolbox comes out looking like this:

You can download the pattern and directions for the toolbox by clicking here.  Remember to print it on card stock to make it sturdy!

Thanks to all of our great GIFT families who made our first session of the year so much fun!