Teaching Liturgical Colors

+JMJ+

Let's jump right in! Post #2.

Background info: I am one part of a two-family preschool co-op.  My daughter, S (a total ballerina sparkles girlie-girl) is three and a half and her classmate G is a four-year-old boy. We get together twice a week for handwriting/reading, math, religion, story-time and craft.  More on all of that later.

I was trying to come up with an easy way to teach the kids about liturgical colors when I found this great post up at Catholic Icing. Perfect! Now all I needed was fabric, ribbon, a cross and a base. Oh-- and paint. And glitter glue. And probably hot glue.

But the vestments in all of these pictures looked... sewn.
               WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT?!?!
So of course I grabbed FELT and didn't have to sew anything and here's how they turned out:

The complete set: Green, Red, White, Purple, Rose
Chasubles and stoles

Fancy white: Alpha/Omega, Chi Rho.
Do you see the grapes and wheat?

My color is off here-- it's definitely purple.
Jerusalem Cross. 

ROSE. Not pink. Don't you dare say pink.
Chalice and Host.

Celtic Cross, minus beautiful knotwork.
Glitter glue has its limitations.

Our "priest"

Not bad, if I may say so myself! It was actually rather fun to put them together and I think it probably took me about two hours of active work time to complete the project. The "priest" was made by taking a simple cross ($.79) and super-gluing it to a wooden base ($1.00). Then I painted the whole thing a rich, chocolate brown colour.

As you can see, the chasubles were made simply by cutting rectangles (I rounded my edges, but not necessary!), folding in half and cutting the diamond shape for his "neck" to go through.  Gold ribbon was hot-glued on for some, and the rest of the design was simply done with glitter glue and a relatively steady hand.

And, should you be interested, the lesson was very well-received by both children. We talked about the colors and the different symbols and then they took turns "dressing up" our priest for different days/seasons in the Church Year.  S's favourite were Gaudete/Laetare Sundays.  G liked red... because, you know-- blood.

Then they got to make their own little peg doll priests with vestments! The glitter glue was everywhere...

Next up: teaching about the vestments. Anyone want to sew me an alb??