Teach the Trinity with Candles

As promised, here is my craft to teach about The Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of our One God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  In March I saw this post by Vicky at Mess for Less about making decorative votive candle holders, and I thought: what a great idea for a lesson about the Trinity!  

We decorated each of three candles with a symbol for the Trinity: Father = heart, Son = cross, Holy Spirit = dove.  I chose the obvious symbols for the Son and Holy Spirit and my eight year old daughter decided that God the Father should be represented by a heart, because of His love for us.

Each candle represents one expression or person of God, distinct and separate from one another.  However, each flame of the candle is identical, representing the one God that is present in each of the three persons.  The Trinity is one of the deepest mysteries of our Catholic faith, so I hope that this craft helps my children understand how three persons are still one God.  The image below may remind you of the triangle that is often used to explain this doctrine.

I could not find inexpensive undecorated votive holders, so we decorated some candles from the dollar store.  My older daughter made the heart candle all by herself.  I cut the crosses for my four year old and she glued them on with help from her sister for the top layer of mod podge.  I made the dove candle using a coloring page of a dove as a template.  You can find the page at the website of the Eucharistic Youth Movement (in the Miscellanea category).

I also used some of the extra shapes we cut from tissue paper to make a fourth candle with all three symbols; to me this one represents the mystery of the Trinity the best.

This craft is one that can be done several different ways, so I encourage you to use your creativity.  For example, my daughter’s original thought was to cover the entire candle with a rectangle of tissue paper that had the symbol as a cut out.  I was hoping to put more of the symbols in different colors overlapping each other on each candle.  Although we had hoped to make the cross brown, when we couldn’t find brown tissue paper my children opted for yellow, which admittedly is much harder to see, even when the candle is lit.

Ultimately, I let my children decide what they wanted to do.  They wanted to put a few symbols on each candle, which worked out well since we were short on time that day.  However, I think we will visit this candle idea again later in the liturgical year.  We could make many more candles to decorate our tabletop shrine throughout the year.

Please visit my Trinity Link up for more teaching ideas and reflections about The Most Holy Trinity, or to link up your own posts.

Linking with: Catholic Bloggers Link up Blitz, Faith Formation in Young Children, After School Party, Kids Get Crafty, We Made That, Weekly Kids Co-op, For the Kids Friday, Hobbies and Handicrafts, Pinterest Party

Notice: This blog may contain advertising links to venders I have an affiliate relationship with.  This means that if you click on one of these links, a window to that vender’s website will open.  If you shop for products on the vender’s site and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission on what you buy, even if you purchase items during a later visit.  I appreciate your support of this blog.  You can read more about how I choose my affiliate relationships here.

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Trinity Link up Reopened

I have a great craft in mind for Trinity Sunday that I will post soon, but in the meantime I wanted to announce that I have reopened the link up I hosted last year for the feast of The Most Holy Trinity.  This link up contains some great ideas for teaching the Trinity to children, but there is always room for more ideas, including reflections and meditations, so please add your links at the bottom of this post.  The link up will remain open until June 8 so you have plenty of time to link up your posts written on Trinity Sunday or even after.  

You will notice a number of links below from Saint Patrick’s Day because he used a trefoil or shamrock to represent the mystery of our One God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  If your post about Saint Patrick also mentions the Trinity you are welcome to link below.

Last year we made a lapbook about the Trinity and some Trinity stick puppets; you can read that post here.

I am looking forward to reading your links!  Include the button or a text link so others can find the party.  Please share this link up with others who may be interested.

Linking with: Catholic Bloggers Link up Blitz, Faith Formation in Young Children, Weekly Kids Co-op, For the Kids Friday, New Evangelists Monthly

Notice: This blog may contain advertising links to venders I have an affiliate relationship with.  This means that if you click on one of these links, a window to that vender’s website will open.  If you shop for products on the vender’s site and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission on what you buy, even if you purchase items during a later visit.  I appreciate your support of this blog.  You can read more about how I choose my affiliate relationships here.

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Writing Project, Blogging, and All Saints

Have you wondered where I have been lately?  BUSY, BUSY.  I have so much I want to blog about, but very little time.  And now, I will be posting less often for a while.  Not sure how long this blogging slow down will be.  Here’s why: I have a new writing project!

Actually, it is an update to an old poetry manuscript.  You see, last week, I read at the Houston Poetry Fest.  I had a great time: listening to other poets, meeting those poets, reading my own work, and feeling like I was part of a poetry community again.  One of the poets I met there is an editor at a small independent Texas poetry press.  He has asked me to submit my full length poetry manuscript to him for publication consideration.

Have I mentioned before how nurturing, welcoming, and friendly small presses can be?  This is not the first time I have encountered a poetry editor who is willing to take a chance on my work and is offering a generous amount of time to read and consider my manuscript, knowing little or nothing about it.  I was fortunate enough to encounter the same generosity last year with Maria at Mouthfeel Press after a friend suggested I send a chapbook manuscript there.

You are probably wondering: Elisa, didn’t you just publish a book?  How did you find time to write another one already (you do have limited writing time after all)?  I did just publish a chapbook, which is a small book of poems, usually about 14 – 30 pages long, with a limited press run.  The editor I just met is interested in a full length volume of poetry, which is at a minimum 48 pages long, and usually has a larger print run (meaning the publisher prints more copies and keeps the book in stock for a longer time).  Often poets will include poems from their chapbooks in their full length books, so a chapbook is like a preview of a longer book.  You can learn more about chapbooks at my friend Katie’s blog, here.

So, I have not actually written a whole new manuscript.  I have an old manuscript that I started revising, updating, and reordering a few years ago.  But, I never finished doing that after I had my second child.  That is what I will be working on a few minutes at a time for the next couple of months.  When I put together the chapbook manuscript last year, I included some of the poems from this full length book, and some from a second full length book manuscript (still mostly unwritten, sigh).  I plan to use the moments I previously spent writing blog posts to work on this book so I can send it to the patiently waiting editor.

New Writing Project Means Fewer Blog Posts.

I hope you will also patiently wait for me to rev up the blogging again after I complete the manuscript.  I do plan to post now and then because I will need some time away from the book manuscript to gain perspective.  Also, I have promised to write about so many things.  For example, I really hope to write Part 2 of the Dual Language Learning post soon.  Plus, I’ll be reading and responding (although slowly) to your comments, and making a few tweaks to the sidebars.

In the meantime, I leave you the link to last year’s post about All Saints Day, where I describe an easy way to put together saint costumes, and different ways we have made saint images to learn and play with.  This year, we are working on costumes for Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, who was canonized today, and Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Read about how we put together saint costumes, and find links to other costume ideas and games here.   

You can see my other posts about saints here.

You will always find me linked at The Catholic Bloggers Network Monthly Round up.

Karri at My Life’s a Treasure hosts a weekly My Favorite Things Link up, and I am linking this post there.

Hazel at Tell Me a Story hosts a weekly True Stories Link up, so I am linking there too.