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This year, we painted on food coloring before baking. Give it a try!  POEM Lady Sarakosti, is a custom from long ago, Our yiayias (grandmothers) used to make her, out of flour and H 2 O. She wears a modest nun’s dress, with a cross upon her head, silently without a mouth she prays, to fast with fruits, nuts and bread. Her feet teach us how to count, the weeks of Lent are seven, we cut one off each Saturday, until Pascha and the Resurrection to heaven. **If you make a better translation of the original Greek poem, please share it! This is also my version of a more Monastic Lady Sarakosti drawing with a prayer rope in hand and head veil** Lady Sarakosti Recipe 2-2 1/2 cups flour 1/2 cup salt 2-2 1/2 tsp. cinnamon                              water (as much as needed)          * Not to be eaten! * Combine flour, salt and cinnamon in a medium sized bowl and gradually add enough water to form a stiff, but flexible dough. Roll dough out to 1/2" thickn

For those interested, I'm re-posting a lesson plan chart and soon to follow workbook pages for Great Lent. The lessons are designed for each Sunday leading up to Holy Week, for a brief 1/2 hour immediately after the Divine Liturgy. Since other adults will be present to help in our situation, we're teaching the same lesson to kids ranging from 2 to 10 years of age.      Each session will include either a craft, coloring page, memory words, activity or hymn to chant. Every child will create necklace name tags on the first day, and decorate folders with fasteners inside that will become their workbooks. They only take home their craft each Sunday, as I will hold on to their folders until the end and add pages for Holy Week with Pascha.       So far, I'm really looking forward to creating the "Family Icon Tree's" and Mummy Wraps with toilet paper for the raising of Saint Lazarus! If you have other ideas I can include, please pass them along! I'll be convert

The time has come for Great Lent  - here are some extra resources to challenge your young ones! We have compiled a printable PDF workbook available for free at this Scribd link. It contains coloring icons, games and craft activities to accompany the Sundays during Lent as well as Lazarus Saturday and Holy Week. Please do not reproduce or sell this for profit in any way - it is simply available for parish and home use only. To purchase other fantastic resources available in many languages visit http://orthodoxchildrensbooks.com . Potamitis Publishing has extremely reasonable prices which include even the cost of shipping! They have informed me that the workbooks have nice explanations on each page in both Greek and English for example. I wish you all a fruitful journey this year, with many blessings and illumination for a glorious Pascha celebration!

Introducing a fun way to get your youth involved in service projects. On this BINGO card are listed 20 ideas for Great Lent that will enhance your spiritual journey to Pascha. Mix up the squares and distribute, or have each child draw from a bag to play. There are various ways to adjust this game, but the main idea is to establish 5 goals with your children to accomplish over the period of 40 plus days. Here is the file posted on Scribd. If you would like the Word document to mix up the squares for different BINGO cards, just email me at eleniemarie@gmail.com. Ask the students to complete their BINGO boards through activities outside of church, in daily life, and return their completed sheet to you for a "spiritual prize" I like to give Orthodox CD's, books, magnets, etc Have fun, and please share other ideas for the squares by posting a comment.

Click on the image to view and print this month's activity Search horizontal, vertical, and diagonal to find all the words related to Great Lent and Holy Pascha. ~ Enjoy ~

This year for the Publican and Pharisee Sunday lesson, here's an idea to get your kids and teens active. Meet outside and introduce the story with two balls. Make your kids observe them, feel them, and throw them around to each other in a circle facing each other. Ask them to articulate just how different these two balls are. The beach ball is puffed up, displaying an array of colors in a fancy design for all to see. It is like eye-candy. When attempting to fly, especially upwards to heavens, it is tossed to and fro by the waves of air, pushing it in several directions without ever arriving at the destination. It is weightless. It is too plastic, and possibly too perfect. Worse yet, when the air is let out and deflated......there's nothing left. (A balloon also works great and can be blown up gradually in front of the kids as you give "prideful" examples, being the best soccer player, the faster runner, the best singer, first at spelling bee, etc) The tennis ball i

Clean Monday is the very first Monday which begins Great Lent, and it is a quite somber day on the spiritual calendar. In Greece, it is customary for young and old to fly kites. We have been encouraged to give this activity a bit more meaning for the soul here in America, possibly the day or two beforehand, with the following activity. On the Sunday evening before we begin Great Lent, there is always held the Vespers of Forgiveness where each parishioner asks the priest and one another for forgiveness. It marks the beginning of a great journey in which we embark to clean our souls of the darkness built up from our sins. Consider gathering your youth (ages 2-18) and even their parents earlier that day, or the day before to set aside for Confession and Kite Flying! The younger children can prepare and experience Confession as a group with the priest, who can speak with them openly about the topic of sin and all can kneel under the "epitrahelion" for the final absolution to conc

** We have available to us the holy words from the Lenten Triodion online in English.** What sweetness to pierce our souls! Visit this link to copy and paste the canons for use in your personal daily prayers. Triodion Online Keep this link as well for many liturgical texts Anastasis.org Made possible by the ** Community of the Holy Myrrhbearers ** R.D. 2, Box 188, Otego, New York, 13825 (607) 432-3179 MRaphaela@aol.com Mother Raphaela has given her blessing to distribute the texts for personal and church use but not for any kind of commercial use. Parts of the Triodion are available in book form: The Lenten Triodion by Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware Faber and Faber, London 1978 Sold many places One Link to Purchase It The Lord consecrated and sanctified these Forty Days of the Fast by fasting Himself for forty days. Having entered into them, brethren, let us cry aloud: Blessing and exalting Christ forever!

Kali Fotisi / Καλή φώτιση ~ Wishes to you for a "Good Enlightenment" on the holy Feast of Theophany, or Ephiphany. If you are looking for a lesson, try splitting apart the icon, and using it as a beginning. We color and create puppets to retell the story of Christ, St John the Baptist, the Angels, another for the waters, and especially the Dove or Holy Spirit.  Here are some talking points: In this feast, we find each person of the Holy Trinity fully present and our God is revealed to us. Can you find the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? (The Father's voice is heard, the Son is seen as perfect man, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit is witnessed as a fluttering light, much like that which resembles a dove) The light has appeared to all men ! We learn that baptism is not only necessary for the cleansing of our sins, but for the regeneration of our souls and for a life in communion with the fullness of the Holy Trinity. We are sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit