Our Annual All Saint's Day Party

Last year, I felt like I didn't have enough games to keep the party moving and the older kids engaged.  I also felt that too many of the games were just for fun and didn't teach you anything about the saints.  Not that anything is wrong with fun, I wanted a better mix this year.  I did a little more planning ahead and planned some real thought-provoking and educational saintly games.  Another change we made was inviting a lot more of the neighborhood kids to join our co-op group.  It turned out well, but we had the opposite problem this year with too many games and not enough time!

First the children all played as the saints began to arrive.  We had a couple of duplicates (St. Michael and St. George,) but not many.  I tried to get individual pictures of everyone.

St. Catherine of Bologna

St. Elizabeth of Hungary

St. Rose of Lima

St. Mathilda

St. George

St. Martin of Toures

St. Anthony of Padua- I couldn't convince him that St. Anthony didn't have a sword, but always carried a child.  I told him I had dolls he could borrow.  :)

Mary, Queen of Saints

A saint who stripped his costume before he made it to our playset.  :)

St. Helen of the True Cross (She had an awesome cross too!)

St. Philomena

St. Brigid

St. Agnes, minus her lamb (He was napping.)

St. Cillian

St. George

St. Michael the Archangel

St. Cecilia

St. Michael the Archangel

Our Lady of the Snow

Then we had a procession, led by the Queen of Saints, while singing "Oh, When the Saints go Marching In" around the backyard ending in a circle-ish.  Each child had a turn to introduce themselves and give a fact about their saint if they could.  They did such a wonderful job!

Third on my agenda was to play "I Love all the Saints..." which is a spin off of "I love my Neighbor..."  or "I Love my Friends..."  The idea came from Shower of Roses.  The kids loved it, but several of them seemed to want to be caught in the middle which was funny.

Then we split into pairs.  I tried to get one older child with one younger child so that it would be even and the smarty pants didn't all team up.  We played Saintly Scattergories.  This idea also came from Shower of Roses.  I allowed them to come up with any words about God, the Church, the Bible, Mass, the saints to make it easier.  Thinking of multiple saints that begin with the same letter when you are timed is hard even for me.  I gave a prize to the winners of the first two games and then we went boys against girls (including adults,) and that was much more successful.  The girls won, of course.  :)

Teamwork!

Boys against girls

The last game that I, myself, planned also came from Shower of Roses.  It was a Saint Scavenger Hunt.  The one I used was here.  Some were quite challenging while some were easier.  Again we split into teams, but this time having 3 or 4 on a team.  The top two teams were given prizes.  I read the answers to everyone while they ate pizza.

We moved right into Sin Ball, a game we played last year.  Our friends led this game.  The children run with shields from one side of the yard to the other while dads try to hit them with wiffle balls labelled with sins of all kinds.  If hit, they must go to the "priest" (AKA another dad) for confession until the last "man" is standing.  The kids (and dads!) love this game, even though we had a few tears about dads throwing too hard.  In the end, the dads ran through and the children pelted them with sin balls to get them back.  All in good fun!

Then two other families led games, St. Therese's Little Flower Toss, St. Isadore's Vegetable Toss, and Shoot the Deadly Sins (with arrows).  There were more prizes too.

By this time everyone was starving and we busted into the pizza.  Soon we were saying our good-byes.  It was a fun and exhausting party.  I am not a loud enough person to have to talk over that many kids for that long.  Plus, I am an introvert, and, let's just say, it drains me to host parties.  All that said, it is so worth it to see these children having so much fun while learning about the saints.

Our two St. George boys!

2014 All Saint's Costumes

Here are some pictures from our dress rehearsal of Saint costumes before our annual All Saint's Day party.

Saint Michael the Archangel

My St. Michael the Archangel

On Isaac's St. Michael the Archangel costume.  I bought the wings for $7 on Amazon Prime.  I made the sword one evening out of cardboard and duct tape.  I sewed a regular skirt with a wide elastic band for the waist out of the bottom half of an old extra large white t-shirt.  Then I got duct tape crazy.  I made the leather bands on the skirt by just taping starting on the inside of the elastic band and going past the edge of the skirt.  Then I folded it over leaving an overhang of non sticky gold duct tape.  For the tunic, I just took an old tank top of  mine and put the gold duct tape all the way around the collar.  I added two rectangles of the tape where the tape met funny in the front middle and the back middle.  Then I fashioned a sheath out of sticking duct tape together to hide sticky part or by folding the tape in half length-wise to made the skinnier shoulder strap.  I attached it with more duct tape at the to of the shoulder.  For the shoulder leather flaps, I did a long piece of duct tape folded over to make the overhang (bigger overhang than on the kilt,) repeated this three times on each shoulder, and then made slits in the overhanging pieces until I got to the fabric part.

Saint Philomena, patron saint of children.

My sweet Saint Philomena

Since she closed her eyes in every single dress rehearsal picture.  I included one from the party here too.

For Genna's St. Philomena's costume.  I really went quick and dirty, maybe a little too quick and dirty since in the end it was a little snug to get on over her shoulders.  However, I was thinking of making a tutorial for this when I get a chance.  I am just really behind on my blogging lately, and I knew I'd get even further behind if I tried right now.  I am saving it for a future post.

St. George, patron saint of the Boy Scouts

My Little Saint George

Photo bombed by a baby!

I found this cape later and switched it out.

For Drew's St. George costume, I already had the green undershirt with slitted sleeves and the gray tunic with the felt cross appliqued on from when Isaac was St. George.  I made the duct tape and cardboard sword at the same time as Isaac's.  We had the cape already.  I also made the kilt the same way as Isaac's with a green t-shirt, wide elastic, and gold duct tape.  I had to buy some more duct tape, but other than that it was free as well.  We couldn't find our knight shield and completely forgot about the helmet.  It wouldn't have mattered because come time for the party, he kept asking to take it off anyway.  He wore it maybe thirty minutes.  Glad it din't take long to make!

St. Agnes, patron saint of purity and chastity

Saint Agnes without her lamb

Speaking of not taking long to make, Hannah's St. Agnes costume takes the cake there!  As you may know she has an insane sensitivity to clothes of all kinds, so I am perpetually frustrated by trying to make her clothes and costumes that she will wear and not cry about.  This year she said she wanted to use one of her comfy dresses that she claims looks like a tunic.  I already had the shawl from Genna's St. Anne costume.  So the only thing I did for her costume was make the lamb for her to hold.

The type of lamb of which I based Judah's costume, black ears and legs.

He is wearing a black turtle neck onesie, a pair of black cotton pants, and a white onesie (that was Hannah's if you can believe it! 5 babies it's been through!)  on top.  I ordered a white tie Hanna Andersson hat that I can reuse for $14 on Amazon and safety pinned two cut out felt lambs ears onto the hat.  Perfect lamb, and he even kept it on the whole night of the party and trick-or-treating.  Pretty good deal, right?  I had trouble finding and lamb costumes for boys.  Most were very pink and had bows.  I found one, but it wasn't cheap so I just went with creativity and thriftiness much to the delight of my husband!  After ordering the hat, I found one at a thrift store for the same price as the hat, but it was too late.  I like hand-made costumes so much better anyway!

Check out our All Saint's costumes from years past here.

Judah: Growing Up Fast

Judah seems to have made some big leaps in development this past week.  He's walking better, signing a little, and saying new words.  His understanding and ability to answer us is what has made the biggest impression though.  If we ask his where his belly or belly button is, he'll lift up his shirt or touch his tummy. He can also show me my nose, his head, hair, and his feet.  He can follow simple directions pretty well and is imitating our behavior a lot more.

Judah's new thing is putting small things down his shirt.  A couple mornings I have picked him up from his crib to find all of his pacifiers stuck way down in his footed jammies.

He gets comments on his big baby blue eyes all the time.

Judah's eating some homemade berry applesauce.

Here he is hugging a bear when I asked him to do so.

Signs:

thank you

more

duck

banana

please

Can't get enough of this belly and these pictures of him in his birthday suit!

This is Drew's new camping chair, but Judah really loves it.

New Words:

hot dog

please

yay