Planning Ahead for Passion Sunday

I usually like to come up with a game plan for the crafts I do with my kindergarten CCD class a week or so ahead of time.  This past Sunday I dove into my St. Patrick's day after doing two rather involved crafts in the previous weeks. I'm trying to take a slightly more relaxed approach for the next two weeks.

My craft for this week comes from the text book, so it's nothing spectacular, but it has potential to be cute.  Using the craft that went with the curriculum took some of the pressure off of me to be creative and allowed me to plan ahead to Passion Sunday (or Palm Sunday, if you prefer to call it that).  Months ago when I brought myself a copy of The Big Book of Catholic Customs and Traditions for Children's Faith Formation I stumbled upon a cute and simple craft for Passion Sunday.  It's a paper plate with the child's handprint on it (a palm, if you will) and "Hosanna!" written across the top.  It's cute enough to be a nice Holy Week door knob hanger, and who doesn't want their little darling's hand print art decorating their home?

I decided I should test the project out for ease of use and mess assessment by using Ellie to make my class room sample.  The paint version that is described in the book came out nice, but I wasn't thrilled with the thought of having eight paint covered hands to contend with.  So I did a little brainstorming and decided that having the children trace their hands onto green construction paper could also work nicely.  Here are the two versions of the same craft.  One is low mess and will take longer because tracing, cutting and pasting are required, and the other will hardly take any time at all, but will potentially be very messy.  I think I'm going to go with the labor intensive low mess option for my class.