Well, I had our Little Flowers meeting scheduled for last week, but due to my miscarriage the week prior, I just wasn’t prepared, nor was I quite up for it… Soooooo, I postponed it a week, and we met last night.
At the last minute (well, not quite the last minute, but at 1:30 in the afternoon) I found out that the room, in the back of the local bookstore where we usually meet, was filled with boxes and not available, so plans changed and the meeting was now going to be at MY HOUSE!! Yikes!! Not only did I have to finish coming up with notebook page — I was having a hard time being creative and so I had put it off till the last minute, and when I was almost finished Microsoft Word decided to crash before I saved my document and I had to start over, which was fine cause I didn’t really like it at that point anyway, but still, totally annoying! — but now I also had to clean my house!! (picture a frantic mother running around cleaning, baking and crafting for 4 hours, while trying to take care of a five little children!) Nevertheless, everything turned out fine in the end and I actually really enjoyed hosting the meeting at my home. PLUS, hubby had the opportunity to take all his boys out to dinner! Thank you honey!! 🙂
Anyhow, here is an overview of our night:
As the girls arrived, I had them all start right in on their coloring. We used Waltzing Matilda’s beautiful St. Jane Frances de Chantal coloring page, of course! Thank you Charlotte, you amaze me!
We had a new addition this month as well…
After everyone arrived, we started the meeting with the prayer to St. Therese and the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love. We then continued with a review of last months virtue and saint. Beads went into the jar for all the completed assignments. Next I introduced the virtue we will be working on this month, Love of our Neighbor, and we read a short biography of the saint for this month, St. Jane Frances de Chantal.
Did you know that her feast day is actually December 12th, but (in the United States) it was moved to August 18th so that the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe could be celebrated? I didn’t until last night when we were reading about her!!
To further discuss Love of our Neighbor, I once again used the book Chat’s With God’s Little Ones. I highly recommend adding this book to your collections. I have used it for years with my little ones, and it has come in so handy the last couple months for Little Flowers too! It is perfect for the younger girls, and I love that it gets them thinking, and trying to answer the questions. This month I used the lesson on The Fifth Commandment: Chapter 10, Lesson 27:
The Fifth Commandment tells us to be kind. Can you say that? (Help the child to repeat the whole sentence. If necessary, break it up into phrases so that he may repeat a phase at a time. If time allows, also review what the first four Commandments tell us to do.) Do you know who God wants us to be kind to? (everyone). Do you think that includes ourselves? (yes). Do you think it is kind to ourselves or to others if we quarrel and get angry? (no). Do you think it is a sin to hit other children? (yes). If a child hits you once, you might offer it up for love of Jesus. But if someone keeps on hitting you or hurts you in some way, you should go right away and tell your parents of teacher (or babysitter). If a child does something bad to you, do you think that Jesus wants you to do something bad to them? (no). When Jesus was whipped and crowned with thorns and nailed on the cross, did He try to get even with the people who did that? (no). He showed us an example of what He wants us to do, didn’t He? (yes). Jesus also wants us to be a good example to everyone. Do you know what it means to be a good example? It means that if people see you doing good things, they will want to do good things too.
If someone sees you doing something bad, do you think they might start to do bad things too? (yes). So when we do something bad in front of someone else, do you think it might hurt their soul? (yes). But if we do good things, do you think we will be kind to their soul? (yes). Does Jesus want us to be kind to everyone, even bad people? (yes). We don’t have to make friends with bad people but we should pray for them and give them good example. Jesus said that whenever we do something bad to someone, we do something bad to Him. He also said that whenever we do something good to someone, we do something good to Him. Do we want to always do good things for Jesus? (yes).
I continued on with the following question to the girls: What do you think we could do this month for love of our neighbor, and for Jesus?
One of the little girls responded with “we could give food to the poor!!” Perfect!! It was just what I was hoping one of them would say, since that was going to be their extra credit project for the month. At that point I handed each girl a brown paper bag (thank you Marci for picking them up for me!!) and they glued their pictures of St. Jane to the front. Sometime during this month, each girl will fill the bag with food for the poor.
We then moved on to the craft, another page for our notebooks. I printed out an image of St. Jane, and typed up a few quotes for the girls to use, including the invocation to St. Jane, the memory verse of the month, a quote out of the Catholic Girl’s Guide, and a quote on the two great commandments. They also got a sheet of red card stock, some green construction paper, and a couple Martha Stewart dimensional rose stickers. (Here is the link to my document.)
Here is the page that I put together as a sample (which I finished minutes before the girls arrived… Whew!!) :
As usual, the girls all did such an amazing job!
This month I decided to add an extra craft. Since Saturday is the feast of St. Lucy, I thought it would be fun for all the girls to make Santa Lucia Crowns! I was hesitant though, about cutting out all the leaves and berries, until Marci offered to use her totally cool new machine
It was my month for snacks… Yes, I gave myself this month when I saw that the flower was the rose. 😉 And how perfect that the meeting ended up being on the eve of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe — another perfect feast for tying in Rosy treats! (and I had lots of leftovers!!) I served Rose Cupcakes with Rosy Punch. There was also a pot of coffee and brownies for us moms! I wish I would have had a chance to make the Santa Lucia’s Braided Bread, but we will be making it tonight, for tomorrow morning anyways!
While the girls had their cupcakes and punch, I read them a couple books. First we read Hanna’s Christmas
Wow!! This post sure got long!! I’ll end now with the group photo.
We sure missed all of you girls that weren’t able to make it this month!! I hope you all have a very Blessed Christmas and hopefully we will see you in January!
As in the visitation, help us to love our neighbor.
Saint Therese, the Little Flower, pray for us!
Great Little Flowers meeting Jessica! Looks like you all had a great time! Thanks for more wonderful ideas.
~Angela
You did a great job! And you can hold Mr. Man anytime you want to!
Look at those sweet little girls. Great job on those lessons.
Thank you for taking the time to post about your Little Flower Meetings. It is greatly appreciated!
I wish we could come to your Little Flowers meetings! They’re so fun.
I hope when my precious girl is old enough she can have a group like this! You could have a little flowers book, Jessica! I hope that I can find all of these posts and ideas in the future.
Holy cow, wow!
I look at your blog (& joyfilled family blog) for ALL of my Little Flowers Meetings! Just want to say "THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!"
I clicked on the link for the scrapbook page but it tells me it's private and can't be accessed.
I recently had to change the settings on my notebook page downloads to private following a request from the author of the Little Flowers Girls' Club® program… I did speak with the publisher and have decided to work with them to add the pages to the actual program. It shouldn't be too long before my notebook pages are available to download directly from Behold Publications. In the meantime, please send me your email address along with what page(s) you need for your upcoming meeting and I will forward it to you privately.