Conference Handouts

Conference Handouts

This past weekend, I was a vendor at the St. Emmelia’s Conference in Houston. For those of you who were unable to attend the conference and would like to download the handouts I had available at my tables, they are available below. A Brief Overview of Worship,...
Living Our Faith: The Nativity Fast

Living Our Faith: The Nativity Fast

Below, you will find several ways you can incorporate your family into the Nativity Fast this year. The calendar print-outs are provided as a count down to Christmas and as a way for your family to follow along with the lives of the saints during this time, as well...
Week 9: Icons in Our Narthex – Abraham and Isaac

Week 9: Icons in Our Narthex – Abraham and Isaac

This week’s goal was to learn about our icon of Abraham and Isaac in our church’s narthex. (Genesis 22: 1-19) In November, our parish has a “Youth Sunday” where our Sunday School students have an opportunity to do tasks around the church just like everyone...
Week 8: Icons in Our Narthex – Prophet Elijah

Week 8: Icons in Our Narthex – Prophet Elijah

This week’s goal was to learn about our icon of the Prophet Elijah in our church’s narthex. This is part 2 of 4 for our Youth Sunday project coming up in November. Week 8: In addition to the the teacher’s outline, you will need the following for this...
Week 7: Icons in Our Narthex – King David

Week 7: Icons in Our Narthex – King David

In November, our parish has a “Youth Sunday” where our Sunday School students have an opportunity to do tasks around the church just like everyone else. Each class is assigned something to do for that Sunday. This year, the 3rd/4th grade class was asked to...
Planning Our Upcoming Orthodox Church School Year

Planning Our Upcoming Orthodox Church School Year

This coming school year, I am thrilled to be returning to the church school classroom! I haven’t taught Sunday church school since having my youngest two children, so I’m pretty giddy about teaching again. I’ll be teaching 3rd and 4th grade at our...
How to Naturally Dye Eggs with Onion Skins for Pascha

How to Naturally Dye Eggs with Onion Skins for Pascha

Several years ago, I set out on a quest to successfully dye a batch of eggs red using yellow onion skins. My first two attempts failed to even come close to that desired deep red I was told could be achieved using them. I searched and searched online and was basically...
A Study of North American Saints

A Study of North American Saints

This past autumn, my kids and I embarked on a semester long study of North American saints, ignited by a love of Saint Herman of Alaska. My goals for this project were: to read about the lives of these saints, locate where each saint passed away (for consistency sake)...
In Our Garden: Panagia’s Tears

In Our Garden: Panagia’s Tears

A couple of years ago, I ran across a bracelet on Ancient Faith Publishing made of seeds called “Panagia’s Tears” or “Tears of the Mother of God”.  I found the story of the bracelet fascinating and ended up buying it for my daughter for...

traditions: Jordan Almond Favors

I had several people ask me to show them how I made the Jordan almond favors for my daughter and son-in-law’s wedding this weekend.  Honestly, they are much easier than they look and I’d be more than happy to share how I put them together over about four...
Teachable Moments from The Hunger Games

Teachable Moments from The Hunger Games

*This is a post I wrote three years ago as a guest author for another Orthodox website.  I’m re-posting it on Illumination Learning for those of you who have children currently interested in The Hunger Games series or would like to use it as a framework for a...
Journeying Through Great Lent to Pascha as a Family

Journeying Through Great Lent to Pascha as a Family

I spent the weekend preparing our home for our journey to Pascha as Great Lent is on our doorstep once again.  We received our Pascha Passports in the mail along with the new companion booklet, Raising Lazarus Project Booklet, which is intended to help prepare our...
Companion to “Special Agents of Christ”

Companion to “Special Agents of Christ”

This was part of my presentation at the last IL webinar.  For the foreseeable future, Illumination Learning will not be hosting anymore webinars.  As time permits, I will be archiving as many resources as possible from these past webinars on the website. The following...