Thurs May 21 - Month of Mary

May is the Month of Mary. We as Catholics celebrate Mary because she is Jesus' mother. We believe she is an important figure and, like God is the father, we view Mary as our Mother. Traditionally we would have a celebration for Mary at school in May. We do this along side our Rosary Apostolate team. Each month since October a volunteer from our church community comes to our class and talks to the Children about praying the rosary. The students learn songs, the Joyful and Sorrowful mysteries and how to pray using a rosary. We all learned to begin by making the sign of the cross, touching the cross on your rosary to your head, heart and each shoulder. Then we learned to say the Hail Mary 3 times in a row. Since we cannot celebrate as a community, this week we are asking you to remember Mary and how special she is as Jesus' mother. You can plant a Mary Garden. This is a special little space where you can pray to the Mother of Jesus. You can make it as simple or elaborate as you wish. Perhaps you decide to plant a flower in a pot and place it in a special place in your home alongside a picture of Mary. Or you may wish to do something like we did.

Here we planted a flower in our garden. We found some rocks and placed them in front of the plant. We had this little figure that reminded us of Mary so we placed her on the rocks. We then got our rosary and said the following prayer. Sometimes when we pray we dedicate our prayers to special people in our lives. You can do this too, just like in school when we do special intentions.

Hail Mary

Hail Mary, full of grace

The Lord is with thee

Blessed art thou amongst women

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners

Now and at the hour of hour death.

Amen

Math- What is Under the Cup?

This game is a great way to help your child learn about part-part-whole relationships between numbers. They can explore both addition and subtraction. You will need a cup, counters (we used beans this time but my kids love using candy as well) paper to write on and something to write with. Please choose numbers that best suit your child's ability from 1-20.

1 - Say or show a number (in this case 7)

2 - Then have your child close their eyes. Place some of the counters under the cup.

3- When your child opens their eyes ask "How many under the cup?"

4- Your child will have different ways of figuring out how many are missing. They may see the 3 outside the cup and say "7 take away 3 is 4" or they may see 3 then count up to 7 using their fingers and then say 4.

5- Model writing the equations for your child.

6- take turns, allow your child to try to "trick" you.