Week 4: Annunciation, Nativity, and Presentation of Christ
Goal: to learn about the major feast days of the Annunciation, Nativity, and Presentation of Christ into the Temple
Notes for the Teacher: We decided to focus on some sequencing of the major feast days with our little ones this year. Kids learn the concept of “next” before they learn the concept of time. For instance, little ones will ask their parents, “Who’s birthday is next?” when they are trying to find out how much longer until their own birthday. They will ask, “What holiday is next?” to know how much longer until Christmas. We worked on, “Which feast day is next?” with the little ones, but we would specifically set up the activity with only two or three feast days that would be easy for them to be guided into realizing one happens before another. For example, if the child didn’t know which one came first, the teachers would ask, “Which happened first – Did the Theotokos find out she was pregnant or was Jesus born in a cave?” The teacher could continue, if needed, “Did your mommy find out she was pregnant with you before or after you were born?” This requires that the child recognizes and understands on a basic level the icons of the Annunciation and Nativity of Christ. This is why it’s so important to read the Bible along side of showing our kids the icons.
At the end of the year, I asked questions about icons with several of the kids in our church school. They learned a tremendous amount! This was achieved over the course of the year though, not in a single lesson.
Then I asked my youngest kids, followed by some of my nieces/nephew (who had not attended our church school), so that I could show the guiding questions we used this past year & what my kids had learned. The kids are ages 2, 4, 6, 7, and 8 year old. (See videos below)
Younger children – We focused on teaching them how to identify Christ and the Theotokos, identifying St. John the Baptist and the 12 Disciples (as a group), and most of the major feast days.
Older children – We focused on making sure all the children could identify key people in icons, tell us what event is happening (miracle, parable, feast day) and tell us as much as they could about the event.
My Forty Day Blessing Book
For our iconostasis file folder activity, I took a photo of our parish’s iconostasis and then used Photoshop to crop the icons for use in the activity. Afterwards, I attached the modified iconostasis to a file folder, laminated the icons, and placed coordinating velcro dots on the back of the icons and on the spots they belong.
Major feast day file folder activity
We also prepared a file folder activity for the major feast days. We laminated icons, but we used clear pockets instead of velcro dotes on this activity.
Intro to Icons with a 2 y.o. – Can they identify Christ, Theotokos, St. John the Baptist, and find the angel?
Intro to Icons with a 4 y.o. – Start by establishing what the child knows. Then you know what you need to teach them and when you can move on to the next concept.
Intro to Icons with a 4 y.o. Part 2 – It’s important for you to know what a child knows about icons and what they don’t. On your next lesson with them, you can focus on what they don’t know and expand their knowledge. When you’re teaching a group, it’s still important to know what the class knows as a whole and go from there.
Intro to Icons with a 4 y.o. Part 3 – Once we’ve established identifying people in the icon, then we can move on to learning about the event. Finally, we can teach some simple sequencing. This is going to happen over several lessons and by the end of the year, you will see a huge difference in their literacy of icons.
Intro to Icons with a 6 y.o. – I start by establishing what he knows, but I’m asking more detailed questions of him than the younger kids. Can he identify key people? He says, “Panagia” and I seize the opportunity to see if he can tell me anymore names for her, such as, “Theotokos.” All of this tells me his knowledge base before I would continue with additional lessons.
Intro to Icons with a 7 y.o. – Again, I’m establishing her knowledge base. Notice that I tease out information as she answers questions, “What’s another name for Mary?” Additionally, I don’t want to quiz her too much. She tells me what the feast day is about and I just tell her the name of the feast day as a side note. That’s something I can teach over the course of the coming lessons and at the end of the year I’d ask her for the name of the feast day and then have her tell me a summary about them.
Intro to Icons with an 8 y.o. – This is my youngest son who went through our church school program for the Gospel of Luke. I was not his teacher in class (my husband was) and was caught off guard with how much he would instantly volunteer to me in the first video I recorded of him. (Not shown) In this video (shown above), I moved on to more difficult concepts. This was beneficial to me as well because I could see where he misunderstood something and also the depth to which he could read the icons.
A note on evaluating how much the kids learned: We found that the 3rd – 5th grade kids were our prime ages for being able to see how much they learned this year.
Our middle school and older kids were more self conscious and not as forthcoming with information. We know they learned as well, but it was harder to see how much they had learned in a group setting amongst their peers.
Early Elementary Lesson
We created a couple of file folder activities for our youngest classes this year: 1) The major feast days and 2) Icons on our iconostasis. From our experience, I think the velcro dots on the back of the laminated icons work better for little hands who are still developing their fine motor skills than pockets, but use what works best for your children and what you have available to you. These file folder activities will be used over again next year as well.