Liturgical Calendar

    
 2018 Revision

This photo is the corrected version of my Liturgical Calendar since writing this article five years ago.  Big difference and I like it so much more now.  It's much easier for the children.
I glued a very small shint of wood on the board to separate the large arcs separating "The Christmas Cycle" from the "Easter Cycle"  Where you see the "1st Sunday of the year" is where it's placed.  It's so helpful to the children so they understand the calendar.  Also, underneath the arrows I've painted the colors you see in the control above the calendar.  

   To present this work, I use plastic food storage containers and I'll ask each child to take out a certain number of green prisms making sure there are some for each child to place in their container.  I explain that the Calendar represents the Sundays we go to mass and explain the colors.  Then I have each child place their prisms back on the calendar.  This gives them the practice to do the work.  The containers make all the difference for efficiency and so they use them while they do this work independently.   I find that even Level I will try to do this with the containers while working alone.  Otherwise it's confusing and very awkward. 

There is also an artwork drawing of the calendar that they can color we keep under the table.  I have found that this year 2019 there are eight more "Ordinary time" (green) weeks before the "Preparation time" (purple) before Easter.  It apparently changes from year to year and this year it happens to be eight.  This was the direction we received to make this liturgical calendar to make only five.  I believe that I've seen there are a few more "Ordinary time" (green) weeks in the Easter Cycle as well.  I was disappointed when we realized this because it was so much work for my husband.  It isn't an easy project to make.  However, it gives the basic idea to the children.  I like to show them which green week we're on as we approach Lent and point to it as it is to the right of our prayer table.

I stained the entire project with an oak stain before painting the colors.  If you take the colored prisms out of the puzzle, it looks identical to the control calendar in the lid.