St. Nicholas/ Swiety Mikolaj

At this time of the year many people ask: "How do you handle Santa?" For us it's an easy answer. My husband and I agreed that we would celebrate the feast of St. Nicholas. My husband dresses up as St. Nicholas - the bishop and we tell our children that we give, parents them gifts because we want to remember the goodness and spirit of St. Nicholas and imitate him. We celebrate many feast days in our homeschool so our children are used to commemorating the lives of the saints. This year we experienced something really funny. On the feast of St. Nicholas we were at a party and there was a man who dressed as "Santa". Only for some reason his mustache ended up on his nose rather than under it. When we came back home our four year old daughter said: "I knew it wasn't the real Saint Nicholas because he had this thing on his nose." We all laughted and then our seven year old daughter said: "I knew it was not real Saint Nicholas because his body is buried in the ground and his soul is in heaven with God." I couldn't be prouder of both of them.

W czasie Adwentu wiele osob pyta: "Co wy mowicie Waszym dzieciom o Swietym Mikolaju?" Odpowiedz na to pytanie jest dla nas bardzo latwa. Moj maz i ja postanowilismy swietowac ten piekny dzien Sw. Mikolaja mowiac naszym dzieciom, ze tatus przebiera sie za Swietego Mikolaja Biskupa i przynosi im prezenty od mamy i taty. W naszej domowej edukacji wspominamy wiele Swietych, wiec nie jest to dla naszych dzieci nic obcego czy niezwyklego. W tym roku przydarzyla sie nam bardzo smieszna historia. W Swieto Swietego Mikolaja uczestniczylismy w polskiej Wigilii. Pan, ktory przebral sie za Mikolaja zakladajac brode polozyl wasy na swoim nosie zamiast pod nosem. Kiedy bylismy juz w domu nasz czteroletnia coreczka powiedziala: "Ja wiedzialam, ze to nie byl prawdziwy Swiety Mikolaj, bo on mial to cos nas nosie". Bardzo sie wszyscy z tego powiedzenia siemlismy. Nasza siedmioletnia corka dodala: "Ja wiem, ze to nie byl prawdziwy Swiety Mikolaj, bo jego cialo jest pogrzebane, a jego dusz jest w niebie z Bogiem". Bylam z nich bardzo dumna.

Discoveries On Our Journey To Bethlehem... Chapter 1/ Odkrycia w drodze do Betlejem ... Rozdzial 1

It's hard to belive that we only have a few more Advent days left during this Liturgical Year. We have been very busy and ... peaceful. In addition to our regular schoolwork we have been focusing on peace education, which turned out to be one of the greatest treasures this season.

I challenged myself to do all the Christmas presents shopping before the beginning of Advent so that I could spend more time at home rather than beating the crowds at different stores. And what a blessing it turned out to be. It freed my evenings to do a lot of beautiful peace education works. I introduced the PEACE CANDLE. We light it every time we do a work in our peace corner. My two year old son often asks: "Mama, peace candle" and she really enjoys singing This Little Light Of Mine when we light the candle. I also intoduce the PEACE TREE. It is a Norfolk Pine. We decorated it with flowers circles, which I made on the computer, printed them out and threaded some strings in them. They were blank on one side and each family member wrote some of his/her hope on the blank side. We hung them on the PEACE TREE. It turned out to be a wonderful work for us. We have been doing many works. One of my most favorite ones is our PEACE FLAGS. Each one of us got a piece of felt and decorated it so that it reflected the idea of PEACE. We hang them up in our living room so that we can see them everyday.

All of these works provided a lot of descoveries for all of us - discoveries of our feelings, thoughts, experiences, likes and dislikes.

Nasz Adwent okazal sie wspanialym czasem pokoju. Ja zdecydowalam skompletowac wszystkie prezenty Bozonarodzeniowe przed rozpoczeciem Adwentu - Nowego Roku Liturgicznego, abym nie spedzac mojego cennego czasu w kilometrowych kolejkach i tlumach. Tak bardzo sie ciesze z tego osiagniecia, mialam bowiem wiele czasu na edukacje pokojowa w duchu montessori. Jak zawsze zrobilismy wiele projektow. Przedstawilam SWIECZKE POKOJU, ktora bardzo polubil szczegolnie moj dwulatek i prosil mnie, abym ja zapalila i abysmy spiewali This Little Light Of Mine (To Male Moje Swiatelko).

Przedstawilam tez nasze DRZEWKO POKOJU. Udekorowalismy je kwiatkami z brystolu, na ktorych napisalismy nasze nadzieje.

Moja najulubiensza praca tego Adwentu byly FLAGI POKOJOWE. Nauczyly nas wiele o nas samych i naszym pojeciu pokoju. Zawiesilismy je w naszym "salonie". Bardzo lubie na nie patrzec, bo pokazuja mi wiele, o tych z ktorymi mieszkam - moim mezu i dzieciach.