September 16, 2013

My Atrium~ 2013

Stephanie Catechesis of the Good Shepherd 5 Comments

Well today was the first day of our Atrium time for the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd for the year! It went really well. It turns out that I have a lot of little one (2-3) this year, so I am  interested to see how my toddler area works out. This area is not a traditional Atrium area, but with the wide ages of littler ones we have, I wanted something that they could work with easily! We also have a whole new set up from last year and so far the traffic flow seems better. I am really excited to start this new year with a new plan. If you want a quick peek at what it looked like last year, you can see it here. Do you want to see how it looks like this year? Well here is a tour!

We have lots of traditional Montessori work here. The goal is to make sure that the materials help the children think about God and his creation. I think it works!

I placed pictures of Mary under the puzzle pieces to add a bit of surprise!

Flower arranging for the little ones. The put the flower stems in the holes of the shaker.

I found this awesome tower on amazon. It has these sweet animals and add a nice element to our work area. I think that it will be a good one!

Here are our Practical Life shelves for the older kids. Right now they are FULL! As the weeks move on and we have more presentation, I will be adding more prayer work on the other shelves. For the first few times, we are trying to learn where things are, how to complete a work cycle, and what is expected. So having lots of practical life work to help with concentration, control of movement, and sharing is a great place to start! We also have some prayer time together for reflection and we sing some songs.

This work is alphabet block that spell out a word. The child needs to match the right sides to spell the word. Pup really like this and it was pretty challenging!

Sweeping

Matching big and little

Clipping flowers

Hmmmm…sorry about that picture.

Dry Pouring

Wet Pouring

Spooning

Tonging. These are small wood pieces that are moved from side to side. What I love about these buckets is that the kids cant pour this work!

Tracing

Hand washing station

Geography Area. There are more works that will be added to this as time goes on, but for now this is a fun puzzle!

This is our prayer table!

The Cenacle
(Here is a past post if you want to know more about this one)!

This wall of shelves is really emply right now, but I promise it will fill up! These will have Infancy works (Jesus Childhood) and parables. Right now they have puzzles!

I made this puzzle about the parables from a simple wooden shape puzzle! I love to repurpose these puzzles!

I made this one from a shape puzzle too! This one has matching picture underneath!

This puzzle here was a blank one that you can buy at the craft store! It matches the alter pasting work that we have.

This is our alter area and baptism areal. I love that it is in a little nook!

Finally we have our Good Shepherd! I try to keep him front and center since it is such a favorite work for everyone!

So there you have it! This is our atrium at our church! I think it is going to be a great place for the kids and I to learn from the spirit together! So far it looks like it is working so far and I cant wait to see how it goes with my next group on Tuesday! If you want more information on the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, make sure you stop here. You can find an atrium near you and find a training course if you are interested in that! Happy Prayer Time!