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

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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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The Most Holy Trinity: My First Link Up

As the Easter season comes to an end, the Church celebrates a number of special days the Sundays that follow.  The last Sunday of the Easter season commemorates Pentecost, the visitation of the Holy Spirit to Mary and the Apostles.  The next Sunday, which returns us to Ordinary Time on June 3^rd, is dedicated to The Most Holy Trinity, the mystery of our One God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

I have the honor of hosting the Link up for this feast as part of Familia Católica’s Liturgical Calendar Link up Party.  Here is the button to promote this event, my first button!  In the past few days, I have learned how to take an image from the web and turn it into a button, which is not so hard, but not so easy either.  Please hang the Link up button in your sidebar with a link to this post to help me promote this linky party.

You will find the icons to attach your post to the link up and the links that are already participating at the end of this post. 

The Trinity is one of the deepest mysteries of our faith; God is each of the three persons, but still one God.  Also, each of the three persons is not the other; they are distinct expressions of God.  I found a diagram that illustrates this and helps me grasp the concept visually.

Courtesy of the Boston Catholic Journal

Of course, a trefoil or shamrock is the most popular symbol of the Trinity and an easy way to teach this concept; however it lacks a visual representation of the difference between the three.  In any case, my children enjoy decorating shamrocks with the names of the Trinity.  Click on the picture below or the one in the link up to learn how to make these shamrocks.

My daughters and I have also been making other Trinity projects the last few weeks.  We used a coloring page from the Eucharistic Youth Movement to make a lapbook of the Trinity.  The coloring page is actually for the creation, but includes symbols representing each of God’s three persons.  You can find the coloring page here (in the Miscellanea category).  This is a close up of the lapbook’s cover.

My seven year old daughter drew pictures and symbols for God and each of His three persons inside the lapbook and wrote a paragraph about each.  By the way, you can make a lapbook using a file folder refolded to make a triptych, but we used a 9 x 12 envelope instead.  We just removed the brad, carefully separated the glued seams and cut off the sealing flap.  Whichever form you use, if you paste a full size picture on the front, you can cut it after gluing to have an even seam on the front that still shows your picture.

My three year old and I used part of the same coloring page, along with a dove image found in the same gallery (linked above), and some hand drawn symbols to make Trinity popsicle stick puppets.

I’m still thinking about other projects, so I may post more ideas later.  I’m wondering if I can write a poem about the Trinity, using tercets (three line stanzas), of course.  Maybe my seven year old will help me.  I have also been thinking about making a Trinity mobil.

I am very excited to see what you will post and link below.  Please use the button to link back here at the end of your post so your readers can see everyone’s ideas.  

This post will also be linked to the Catholic Bloggers Network Round up.  Remember to go visit the other links there and vote with your mouse for this month’s Big Clicks Award.

I have also listed this post in the Catho-link Library hosted by Monica at Equipping Catholic Families.  She has collected links ups for many different events, so her page is a great resource for the entire liturgical year.  Monica is also hosting an Extraordinary Ideas for Ordinary Time Link up.  Go see other great ideas for forming your children’s faith during Ordinary Time.

And, I am connecting with the First Friday Link up for June hosted by Lacy at Catholic Icing.  

Saint Patrick Holy Trinity Shamrocks

As I was thinking about what to do and whether to post for Saint Patrick’s Day, I found a post linked up at Lacy’s First Friday Link up for March that reminded me about an art project I did as a child.  Alicia at Through My “I”s posted about her crayon resist art project for Saint Valentine’s Day.  Thank you, Alicia, for inspiring my Holy Trinity Crayon Resist Art Shamrocks!

I thought crayon resist with watercolors would be a great way to highlight Saint Patrick’s metaphor for the Holy Trinity.  I used a fat white crayon to draw a shamrock on card stock, and a thin white crayon to write “God” (in Spanish) in the middle and each part of the Holy Trinity on the leaves.  My older daughter wrote the words herself, but I wrote them for my youngest.  She had so much fun watercolor painting and watching the letters appear!

An easy and quick way to do this is to use a wide brush and long strokes, but for kids who want to “find” the letters, painting little by little works too.  Who says shamrocks only come in green?

Another way to make a trinity shamrock that does not involve painting is to cut one out of green construction paper and write the words with a crayon or marker.  Here is the one we made last year.  I used a pencil to draw three hearts together with their points touching, added the stem and cut it out.

You can read about many more activities to teach The Most Holy Trinity at my Trinity Link up.

My daughters had so much fun with the watercolors that they wanted to watercolor Saint Patrick, too.  I printed the Saint Patrick coloring page drawn by Vee (Paper Dali) on cardstock, and they painted him yesterday.  Vee’s post also includes a Unit Study with other ideas for learning about Saint Patrick and additional Irish saints.

What have we done for Saint Patrick’s Day?  My Catholic Moms group made Lacy’s Saint Patrick puppet.  And, I printed a Saint Patrick’s Day Word Find from Sanctus Simplicitus that the girls are still working on.

We are also currently making an angel puppet to dramatize The Annunciation, so we used the crayon resist with watercolors technique to paint some angel wings, although we forgot to “resist” the angel’s gown.  Check back in a few days to see the results!  My girls are enjoying crayon resist, especially the water coloring part, so I’m thinking we’ll make some decorated Easter egg cards next month.  Did you know you can do crayon resist on actual boiled eggs and cascarones (egg shells) before painting them?  We like to write names on our cascarones; check back in a few weeks to find out why. 

In 2014, I am linking with: Welcome Home, Hearts for Home

 
In 2013 I linked with: Faith Formation in Young Children, What are you doing this Lent?, Making It Count, Tactile Tuesday, Kids Get Crafty, For the Kids Friday, Weekly Kids Co-op, Hobbies and Handicrafts, We Made That, New Evangelist Monthly

In 2012 I linked with: Saints Cele-linky, Catholic Bloggers Network, First Friday, Saint Patrick’s Day Journey.