St. Francis and the Preschool Class

Whatever books and websites I find that I think might be interesting or helpful to you, I like to share with you. But you all know that I don't post about young children, right? After all, my youngest is a fourteen-year-old teen boy who looms over me. Well, this has changed. No, I didn't have a little one. (Yikes, what a thought for a woman in her fifties.). But yesterday I led a little preschool-kindergarten group for our homeschool co-op. I thought I would share with you what we did.

First we prayed a short prayer, thanking God and asking Him to help us to love him and to have fun. (Yep, I really did include that part about having fun.) Then I told them that it was the feast of St. Francis of Assisi and that he was very thankful to God for all the things He created. I said, "Do you know the most important thing that God created? You!" "So," I said, "I'm going to take your pictures today, and we're going to measure you to see how tall you are." Our hostess saw me measuring and brought me a bathroom scale! So we got them all photographed, weighed and measured. Then I read them a simple St. Francis book, encouraged them to draw things that God made, and gave them a picture of St. Francis and the animals to color.

Tonight I uploaded the pictures...too much sunlight on most of them; boy, was it bright and hot yesterday! But they will have to do, and at that tender age, hopefully they'll be happy with the pictures anyway (unlike teenagers would be). Next week I will bring the pictures back, affixed to a pretty sheet with a guardian angel looking down at them, along with their height and weight, and at the top, something like, "God made me," and "My Angel watches over me." That won't be our project for next week, just something for them to take home next week.

I hope you enjoyed my class. I can't share the pictures with you, of course, but let me tell you, these kids are SO cute.