Photo Credit Annie Spratt – Unsplash
By Jane Korvemaker
Ah, it’s summer! Time for freedom, leisure, and sunny adventures, right? Right? Well, many of our kids are thinking this, even if, as adults, we’re not. One thing that typically marks September until June is routine. Breaks from routine can be good, but we also want to continue nurturing our children’s faith over the summer in the absence of those regular schedules.
Here are several ideas to foster your and your children’s faith over the summer.
Prayers for the Day
Connect together in faith before everyone heads out! We can use breakfast time as an opportunity to start the day with a quick family prayer (at least for those awake). Gathering to sing a short hymn, perhaps recite a psalm (psalm 100 is nice and short!), and offering an Our Father for the day is a wonderful way to start together.
For ones who sleep in, gathering at lunch to pray the Angelus can also be an opportunity to make sure that we connect in prayer. The chaplet of Divine Mercy is a little longer, but perhaps this is a good fit for your family mid-afternoon!
A different option for bedtime prayers could be adapting Night Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours. It can be accessed on Universalis and possibly on Divine Office.
Activity Prayer
The warmth of the bright sun, the built up heat inside, and maybe a youthful itch to be doing something fun drives many of our kids outside during these months. The outdoors can help us connect in faith too!
Pour some iced lemonade and read the first account of creation together (Genesis 1:1-2:3). Brainstorm what can be used from your yard (or nearby areas without trespassing) to act out or symbolize each of the days. For example,
Then God said: Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin, so that the dry land may appear. Gen. 1:9
I can imagine a hose or sprinkler, a big bucket or baby pool as a basin, and maybe some chairs turned upside down as dry land. Once the items have been identified, read the section slowly, pausing to get items in place and act it out as it comes up in the text. To make it shorter, this could be done over the span of a week or more, taking it one day at a time.
A few other Scripture passages that could be imaginative and fun to act out: Ezekiel 47:6-12, Matthew 7:24-27, the parables in Matthew 13. Listen on Sundays to see if there’s a passage that would be great to use!
Discovering the Saints
What saint memorials occur over the summer months? It’s easy to find resources online that share whose feast is when (links below). What symbols are associated with that saint? And what can we do to celebrate the saint on that day? For example:
St. Lawrence’s feast day is August 10th. He was burned on a grill and is allegedly known for telling his murderers, “Flip me over, I’m done on this side.” He is the patron saint of cooks, so read his story and turn on the BBQ and have a grilled supper!
Resources for finding saints of the day:
Franciscan Media (they have a very short audio clip summarizing the saint’s life as well)
Just a note that these are American resources, and there are some differences when we celebrate some of the feast days. For example, we celebrate St. Kateri on April 17th, but it is in mid-July for Americans. However, celebrating and remembering our heavenly family can truly happen anytime!
Gratitude Walk
Grab a water bottle and go for a walk with the kids! The mission: observe your surroundings as you walk and name everything you are thankful for that you can observe. Is it the way the breeze tickles the branches on the trees, and they sway? Maybe it’s the cluster of yellow flowers in the middle of a green space. Or the shapes that the clouds make as they dance amid the sunlight and sky.
Practicing naming that for which we are thankful can help us notice the things that give us joy in our immediate surroundings. Sometimes we are too busy to notice them, so being intentional and slowing down our pace to observe all that God has given us can help to bring out this joy wherever we are. Sketching these things, taking pictures with them, or writing poetry of our favourites can be a lasting way to enjoy these things over time as well.
May you and your family’s summer be filled with God’s joy!
