Mark your calendar: On Wednesday, March 1, our class will be dismissing morning assembly by praying The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi over the student body. I would love for all students to participate so if you could mark your calendars to be sure to be on time on this date, that would be wonderful! We've been reciting this as a class since the beginning of the year so even if your student hasn't quite mastered reciting it individually, they will be fine with the rest of the class reciting with them. They still have until the end of the year to recite for our class individually.
**See notes below for more details on what Saint Francis of Assisi day entails!
Wednesday is a special day for the second grade! We'll keep our normal schedule for the morning and then after a quick spelling/grammar lesson, we'll spend the rest of the afternoon celebrating.
Saint Francis Day Activities:
Blessing of the Animals: Students may bring in their favorite stuffed animal (please keep the size to one that will fit in a backpack and an animal that actually exists in creation, i.e. not a stuffed pokemon or minecraft zombie) for our special ceremony. We'll discuss God's love of creation and what that looked like in Saint Francis' life, then say a special blessing over our stuffed animals. It sounds silly but it really tends to imprint Saint Francis's love of animals on the students' hearts.
Next we'll head to the kitchen to make birdseed cakes (for the actual birds!) Our recipe includes gelatine, birdseed, and water. They have to dry overnight so students will get to bring them home next week.
We'll do an art narration with a painting of Saint Francis by Giotto di Bondone. As part of the narration, we'll discuss the paint di Bondone used, which was made with egg yolks. We'll make our own egg yolk paint with brightly colored crushed chalk, yolk and water, then get a chance to try it out by painting our own canvasas.
