Last Thursday afternoon we had our 5th Little Flowers Girls’ Club meeting for Wreath IV, and first meeting since December!
I hadn’t intended on taking such a long baby break – just January and February – but March and April were filled with sickness for half the girls in my group, so our meeting kept getting postponed.
My girls (and their momma!) were so excited to finally have friends over again. The meeting began at 3:30, but we happily visited with guests until about 9pm, long after the meeting had ended. It was so nice!
This meeting focused on the gift of Fortitude and St. Joan of Arc. Despite the months I had to prepare, by Thursday morning I hadn’t done a thing to get ready, but thankfully everything fell into place. Here are a few highlights from our meeting:
- Review last month’s gift and add Mini Books that were completed at home
- Add Definition and Motto for the Gift of Fortitude
- Add the correct Jewel to the Treasure Box
- Complete the Saint Profile*
- Complete the Convert Profile*
- Research and Complete the Mini Book “Church Struggles from History that required Fortitude” to share at the next meeting*
For the notebook pages, I used the motto for fortitude, a quote from St. Joan of Arc, an image (in the public domain) of St. Joan of Arc, a definition on the gift of Fortitude from My Catholic Faith, along with a short prayer for Fortitude (St. Augustine) with an invocation to St. Joan of Arc.
You can download my document here.
(and cropped from the picture above):
Last summer, I had planned to order the Banner and Woven Cross Kits from Illuminated Ink for St. Joan of Arc and the Gift of Fortitude… Lena also shared an excellent craft for the gift of Fortitude, that I would have loved to try had our meeting taken place during Lent as we had originally planned. Instead I ended up using a craft that I purchased a few years ago, having the girls paint Stained Glass Cross Suncatchers. I’m pretty sure that I had purchased these at Walmart.
We hung them on the window to see how they’d look:
*my girls’ are missing from this picture, and currently hanging on their bedroom window.
We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.
Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.
One of the symbols for St. Joan of Arc is the Fleur-di-lis.
lovely meeting. i like the lap book.
Very timely, too–doing something on St. Joan of Arc. Did you know that this year is the 600th anniversary of St. Joan of Arc's birth? (The patron saint of our church is St. Joan of Arc, so we are having special masses and celebrations to remember her this year.)
I like the one scrapbook page that is so totally different from the others, hehe. My child would do that…just on principle.
What a wonderful post Jessica! It looks like such a fun group, how does one get started? Is there a book or something you use as a guideline? It must be lots of fun to be part of your house, you are always doing such fun and inspiring things!! Something I'm sure your kids will always remember!
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!
Beautiful crafts & lapbooks.
Beautiful food.
Beautiful girls. 🙂
Well done, Jessica!
Thank you, CeAnne!
I have an informational post here: Our Little Flowers Girls' Club – it includes information about the program we are using, as well as information on how I got our group started. It also includes the links for all of my planning, as well as links to all of our meetings! This is our 4th year and we are currently completing the 4th and final "Wreath" of the program.
I do use the Leader's Guide for part of my meetings, and the girls each have the Member's Guide, Sash, and earn Patches… You can find all that and more in the link above.
When I started my group, I came up with a Notebook/Scrapbook page idea for the girls in my group, as well as various snack ideas, expanding on the ideas offered through the program. All the links to my documents can be found in each meetings' post.
It has been a LOT of fun, but honestly I am looking forward to a break this coming year… Just two more meetings and our Mother/Daughter Tea and we will have completed the whole program!!! 🙂
No, I didn't know that! Thank you for sharing! We will be having our next meeting before her feast day, so I will have to share this with the girls when we do our review of this last meeting. 🙂
I know! I love it!! It looks like most of the girls used the sample page this month as a guide, but that is not always the case. I love seeing their different personalities shine through – by watching who has to do it exactly like mine, and those that make them as different as possible! For a couple years I had a girl that always turned her page sideways and created a landscape, rather than a portrait style, scrapbook page!
THANK YOU! As always my girls had an absolute blast. It was so wonderful to visit too. We need to do it more often!
May I ask what type of printer you have? Mine eats ink like crazy. Love printing the coloring pages, but wow! Even on a gray scale setting we go through ink quickly! Anyhow, love the coloring pages!
I had to teach our Little Flowers class this time around and we had Fortitude from the wreath III book. I used your hyacinth cupcake idea. Thanks for sharing!
We have this Canon PIXMA Inkjet Printer. I always set it to Grayscale and Fast when printing coloring pages. Still, with all the printing we do, between Little Flowers, Lap Books, and everything else, I purchase quite a bit of Ink each year.
Your blog is so inspiring! What a blessing! I would like to pass the "Versatile Blogger Award" on to you, if I may! The details for this award are here, at my blog –
http://www.academyofthegoodshepherd.blogspot.com/2012/05/my-first-blogger-award.html
Love the lapbook – so inspirational! Your posts and planning guidelines have been the only reason I could possibly have attempted to begin a program in our area…we are so grateful! We have had four meetings to date/Wreath I. I look forward to pulling up this post in the future for more help :).
I love how you organize/edit your photos. What do you use and how do you put multiple images together with borders?
God Bless you and thanks again!
I'm so glad that my posts have been helpful!
I really don't know much about editing photos… I use a Mac and download my pictures into iPhoto. The collages of pictures I make are actually just certain pictures made into a Photo Card in iPhoto and then I just take a screen shot (shift command 4) of the card… I'm sure there are much easier ways and better programs, but this works for me! 🙂