Borrowing Ideas- Prayer Tree

One of the best parts of being a DRE is working with volunteer catechists.  All of my catechists are awesome, and they all bring something different and powerful to their classrooms and encounters with their students.  Some of them are incredibly hands on, some give their kids great real life experience, some are super crafty, but they are all talented and all use their gifts to serve God and his children in the Church.

Allow me to brag on one of my catechists for a bit. With her permission (:)) here are a few photos of her room.  I am glad that I snapped these last year, because this year her room is completely different and even better.

Here are the prayers that she works on with her students throughout the year, right there so that they can practice them together.

Her curriculum focused on God's Law in the Old and New Testaments, so she made giant posters to keep the Beatitudes and Ten Commandments easy to reference.

She worked in last year's theme of My Soul Magnifies the Lord.

But really, my favorite thing that she did last year was her prayer tree.

She started with a (lovely) old metallic Christmas tree which is probably about three feet tall.  She has it sitting up on a table in the corner of the classroom.

Then she took copies of the prayers that students at her grade level need to know from the curriculum guidelines that our Diocese provides, cut them out, and made these cute ornaments with bright colorful paper.

She topped it all off with a cute tree topper.

Not only does this cheer up the room, but I am sure that it provides a more creative way to choose prayers to use at the opening and closing of each class, as well as helps the catechist ensure that she is introducing the kids to a variety of prayers.  I love it, and I think that I might just need to go thrift store shopping for a metallic Christmas tree!