Little Flowers, Wreath I, Love of God

In the Fall of 2010 - and I hesitate to even admit this! - a friend and I decided to create a Little Flowers club for our girls.  We had two meetings from the first Wreath, then went into a very long hibernation.  I was pregnant and constantly tired, they were busy, and it just didn't get on the calendar.  The girls were understanding but disappointed, and we decided to give it another try.  We started where we left off and met for our third meeting in January 2012.  This was a year late, but better late than never, right?

Our Talk


I briefly told the story of St. Agnes and invited the girls to do a picture study of The Miracle of St. Agnes.  From there I talked about Constantine's daughter who built a church in St. Agnes' honor, and showed pictures of the Basilica that replaced the original in the 600's.  I also showed a picture of the tomb of St. Agnes. We discussed the lambs that are blessed each year at this church and I showed pictures of this as well.  I had preloaded my iPad with all these images, and this was so helpful and engaging for the girls.

I used the theological virtues flower from Joy Filled Family to begin our discussion of the virtue of Love of God.  We talked about how St. Agnes exhibited this virtue and about how we can show our love for God too.  We briefly talked about the peony flower (again with pictures from my iPad, as none of the girls were familiar with this flower) and mentioned how big it is and how this relates to how much God loves us and how much we should love Him.

Our Crafts and Snack


I had used the notebooking page idea from Shower of Roses in our previous meetings, so I continued it for this one too.  For the notebooking page template I added a few quotes from my quotes from Saints file and gave the girls this template of a peony to cut out of construction paper (instead of felt, as the project was done originally).  The flowers looked lovely in construction paper too.  I was also inspired by the stained glass window of St. Agnes on the Joy Filled Family blog to create my own coloring page.  I've never done such a thing, but I think it turned out pretty well.  The younger kids enjoyed coloring it, and a smaller version of it was a nice addition to the older girls' notebooking page.

 For our snack and craft, I bought whole wheat dough and suggested the children make lambs, as St. Agnes is generally pictured with a lamb.  In Lithuania there is a custom that links St. Agnes with bread rolls, so there's another reason it is appropriate.  They made their lambs in a variety of different ways, and had so much fun handling the dough!  I had the older girls make their lambs first then as they moved onto their notebooking page, their siblings shaped their dough.  I baked the lambs while everyone colored, then the children quickly devoured their lamb rolls fresh from the oven.

It was a great meeting, and I'm glad we're doing it again!


My St. Agnes Coloring Page