Post date: Jan 25, 2015 9:30:31 PM

Dear Parents of Kindergarteners and 1st Graders,

Below is a summary of the lessons for the past few classes. We hope that you find this helpful when you discuss church school with your children. Please also remember to practice the Lord’s Prayer with your children during the week.

Photo: The children are making their own icons with stencils.

Lesson 5: We talked about icons in this lesson and discussed the following with the children:

What they are- image or picture of sacred persons (Saints, Jesus, etc.) and/or events (Crucifixion, The Last Supper, etc.) They show us the miracles of Jesus and what he did for us.

What they mean- They are a window that helps us look into heaven and they show what we believe as Orthodox Christians.

Where they are in our church, homes, car, etc.- There are icons all around us in church, in the narthex (the first place we come to when we enter the church),the Iconostasis on the altar, we place them in our homes where we can pray and remember Jesus and everything he did for us.

How they can make us feel- Icons make us feel that we are a part of God’s Family and we are not alone. We are living icons of Christ.

We also were able to go into the Church and up to the Altar and look closer at the icons on the Iconostasis and Father Nick also took the children into the Altar and they were able to see all the beautiful icons inside. The children really enjoyed getting to see the icons up close and they did an excellent job finding Jesus in the icons, finding angels, etc.

Lesson 6: For this lesson, we began with a craft to celebrate the children's namedays and begin discussing their baptismal names. We will be celebrating the children's namedays through-out the year, in groups, near their nameday month. We will discuss with them over time how Saints can be a source of inspiration for all of us to try to be more like Christ.

We then continued our discussion of what the Divine Liturgy is, and why is is important to pray at home alone and with our families, and also to come together as a Parish to pray at the Divine Liturgy. We talked about how we help each other when we are working together as a Parish. We introduced the word "Nave" which comes from a word for ship, and is the word to describe the place where we all sit together inside the Church. We discussed where we are all trying to journey together in this "Nave"/ship as a Parish, and discussed the very first line of the Divine Liturgy-"Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit..." Our goal is to work toward God's Kingdom which is Heaven, and we discussed how we can make our Earth more like God's Kingdom right now, by loving God and loving each other. We also contrasted God's Kingdom with the kingdom of fairy tales, and asked the children to look for the word "Kingdom" during the Lord's prayer, when they read their Bible with family, and at other times during the Divine Liturgy.

Please bring in your items for the Thanksgiving Food Drive to help SOS Community Services before November 16 :

Each Church School student should please donate one item based on their Grade as shown below:

Preschool: 1 can of Corn

K–1st Grade: 1 box of Potato Flakes

2nd–3rd Grade: 1 can of Green Beans

4th–5th Grade: 1 box/bag of Stuffing

6th–7th Grade: 1 can of Cranberry Sauce

8th–9th Grade: 1 can of Mixed Fruit

10th–12th Grade: 1 small box/bag of Rice.

A collection box with a sample food item has been placed in each classroom. All donated food items are due no later than the Sunday before Thanksgiving: November 16, 2014 Please try to bring your donated food item as early as possible.

It has been a pleasure to teach your children so far. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Have a Blessed week and we look forward to seeing you and your children on Sunday!

Maria Hochendoner

Andrea McRae, DVM

Margarita Bekiares

Dr. Karen Kolias