Preparing for Candlemas

The first of our new year's homeschooling get together's starts on Tuesday, the day after Candlemas day. We were looking for an activity to do together as a group in honour of this feast.

I posed the question over at 4 Real and was given many great ideas! The one I thought would be best for us was Charlotte's wonderful Candlemas light screens. It is thanks to her imagination and talent that I have been inspired to make this candlemas craft. (While you are visiting Charlotte, read the beautiful tribute she wrote about her grandfather, a man of faith.)

It had to be kept simple, with children colouring in their 'screens' rather than drawing them, making sure the screens were already cut out and ready to go as time goes quickly during these communal gatherings. All the children need do is colour, glue the tracing paper to the screen frames (there are three of them) and then sticky tape the screens together to create a triangle for the candle to sit neatly in the middle of.

I wanted the three screens to have a different theme as Mary had said over at 4 Real she had made candlemas candles with her children so that they would have them for Lent as well as Easter. I wanted to do something similar and I thought Charlotte's idea with the screen was the best way to do that.

Each screen has an image - I found three pictures from colouring books - a Marian picture - A lenten picture - a Eucharistic/Easter picture. When the children light the candle for devotions during lent, easter or a marian feast day, the screen with the matching image can be the side facing out to the family.

So I scanned the images, cut and pasted them into a word document and shrunk them down to a size that would fit perfectly inside the screen frame. I bought tracing paper, so that when the candle was lit, the images would glow like a stained glass window.

It wasn't easy printing onto the tracing paper. In fact I had to sticky tape the tracing paper top and bottom to a piece of normal printing paper and make sure I put the tracing paper side down for receiving the image when I pushed 'print'. It worked!

The images are cut and glued behind like so. The frames are sticky taped at each end, as seen.

Then each image was coloured with coloured pencils.

I found some beautiful but inexpensive candles down the street. I will take them to Mass tomorrow morning for the Candlemas feast and have them blessed on everyone's behalf.

Here are some photos of the screens glowing from the candle behind, it creates a beautiful effect!

So heavenly... I can see it will be so practical to rotate the sides for whatever season or marian feast we are in, over the next few months. I think it would be good to make a new screen later in the year for other specific feasts as well. I'm sure this won't be the last of our liturgical candle screen making...

The candle in the middle, safe in it's glass, so as not to heat the delicate tracing paper too much. Looking forward to our craft with the children on Tuesday!

This little sweetie's baptismal day tomorrow...she had been baptised on the feast of Candlemas last year. I was very sick that day and all those weeks around it, so I'm especially thankful to God for my health today and this beautiful blessing to show for it all!

Editing to add our Candlemas Candle Cake!