Little Flowers ~ Wreath One ~ Love of Neighbor

Tonight was our fourth Little Flowers club meeting.  We had two girls out sick tonight so it was a cozy number of five for our Love of Neighbor/Saint Valentine meeting.  We began the meeting working on a coloring sheet of St. Jane Frances de Chantal from Charlotte over at Waltzing Matilda.  The girls really seem to enjoy coloring these sheets and I think it is so nice of these women to share their gift of drawing with us.  So, here's to you - Thanks to Charlotte over at Waltzing Matilda.

After coloring time, we sat in a circle and I reviewed our three prior virtues of Faith, Hope and Love of God. We then went into our virtue for this month which is Love of Neighbor.  Drawing upon a blog post over at Shower of Roses, I wrote up a sheet about Jesus' model of loving everyone and treating everyone with kindness.  I actually created my very own virtue page this month for the girls to use to scrapbook their page for their Little Flower notebooks.  I had been relying on the generousity of Jessica and her wonderful pages.  However, I really wanted a few roses on the sheet and found these graphics to use that were free.  I am happy with the way the sheet turned out.  You can download the pdf here.

Because the virtue Love of Neighbor fell in February, we decided to celebrate with Valentines or "Love notes" to each other and bring something to swap or share with our friends.  The girls each decorated their own bag for the swap as their craft for the day.  They also decorated 24 Valentine's to send with our Deacon to the nursing homes in the area to share with parishioners that now reside there.  The girls did a great job with these.

After the crafting, C-Sunshine lead the younger girls in some St. Valentine games that she had researched and got ready for the meeting.  Because she is the oldest in the group, she is more of a second leader.  She does a great job in this role.  All the girls really enjoyed the games.  She hid several hearts around in the classrooms that they had to find.  Then they played a HeartPotato game.  Passing the heart around like a hot potato.  I am proud of C-Sunshine.  She puts a lot of care into helping me.

We had a Valentine swap, snack, another game and then closed the meeting with intentions and prayer.  It was a very nice meeting even though we missed our two friends who were out sick.  

I think I want to do a craftier project for our next meeting and will be looking into the Little Flower Craft book  for one.  I also want to prepare prayer cards for the girls for the opening and closing.

Well, hope this helps someone plan.  I know how much I enjoy seeing what other LF leaders are doing.  Happy planning!

Our first Little Flowers Meeting

Well tonight was our very first Little Flowers Club meeting. We will meet once a month from October through June. We are actually meeting at our parish hall which makes it pretty convenient for us. I was a little nervous about the first meeting, but with the help of C-Sunshine who headed up the games, I think things went really well.

We had a total of seven girls ranging in age from 5-11. Our group is geared towards the 5-9 year old range, with C-Sunshine being the helper Little Flower. I am hoping to start a Little Women of Hospitality group for her next year. One step at a time.

The girls helped set up the room.



C-Sunshine organized some fun ice-breaker games.....



After having our introduction to Little Flowers, we discussed our virute of the month - Faith and our saint of the month - Saint Catherine of Sienna. Using the wonderful resources over at Shower of Roses, the girls scrapbooked a Faith page for their Virtue scrapbooks.



I attempted to make a delightful snack. These are sunflower cupcakes with a single sunflower seed in the middle. They looked "ok", but the girls LOVED them. So, I guess they were a hit. :)



We made flower windsocks that I purchased through Oriental Trading. They were listed over at Shower of Roses on her suggested crafts for Wreath One. I find such great ideas over at Jessica's and plan to go visit her blog often!



We had such fun with a great group of girls. We are all looking forward to next month.