Feast of St. Francis Xavier

I have a confession to make: I don't know anything about St. Francis Xavier. Well, ok, I know this: today is his feast day, he was a priest and a missionary.

I have learned one very important lesson in the past few years. In order to teach you need to know about the topic! So my little goal for today is to learn more about St. Francis Xavier. I think what we will do today is get some Naan (Indian bread since St. FX went to India) for an after school snack and read about this saint from The Book of Saints and Heroes. We can say a little prayer for missionaries and learn a little about the child we will be sponsoring through the Christian Foundation for Children and Aging.

I thought today I would share with you two resources to help you teach your children about the saints. The first is Saint Fun Fact Cards. These are free cards you can print yourself. I used them on occasion when teaching Religious Ed. and the kids always liked them. Here's one for you to check out (click on it to zoom):
Another site that has some information on the Saints, the church year and activities is Sadlier We Believe. It was the book our Parish used last year for Religious Education. I'm not one to use a book to teach but this web site has some good ideas in it. Click here to see the saints listed. Unfortunately they don't seem to focus on the saint closest to his/her feast day but by how it fits into their curriculum. I'm thankful for the resource and hope you can use it in your own way. What I do is to find as much information as I can and then figure out what will work for the children I am teaching. Yes, this is time consuming but I enjoy it.

Today I am volunteering in the Learning Support room at Nolan's school. I am very excited about this. Nathan will come along and I have given him work to complete on his own while we are there. I think I will dedicate this little service to St. Francis Xavier and pray that he will help me help others today just as he helped others in his missionary travels.