Back to School with Calendar Printables (and other stuff)

We're back to school this week! I'm really grateful for a return to routine, oh yes, I am.

We've returned to a mostly Charlotte Mason style again this year, although we're keeping many elements of the Waldorf program we used last year. Its hard, really hard, to make all the choices about what and how to teach and to feel confident you've made the right decision. But I'm really appreciating Ambleside Online this year, and I'm feeling more and more confident that what we're doing works well for us.

Calendar Cards sitting on our kitchen corner shelf

Last year, I shared these feast day cards, and as I noted at the time I had forgotten a few important feasts. We moved our school work from upstairs to the kitchen table (which has been great), and suddenly our feast day cards have a nice place to sit and are much easier to see and remember. This has worked really well for us as a Church Year Calendar, and our whole family has enjoyed them beyond school time.

Initially I kept the extras in my teaching folder, but now the entire stacks sits on this corner shelf. I flip the card to the back when the feast/fast is passed to see what's coming up next (being mindful of moveable feasts and feast days in the middle of a fast). You can download the updated file here.  There are 40 cards: one for the 12 major feasts, many popular saints, and fasting periods. Each card includes the date of the feast and the troparion (or other relevant hymn for fasts). I printed mine through fed ex printing on nice card stock (and they even cut the pages for me).

We're enjoying our Dormition Fast printable, and looking forward to celebrating the feast this weekend with lots of flowers!

I made some new animal bookmarks (sea animals and horses) for my girls. You can find the animal bookmark printables on my craft blog.

Happy New School Year!