The Feast of the Annunciation and Spiritual Adoption Activities: Repost

Here is a repost from March 2012 because we are starting up another nine months of Spiritual Adoption in our CCD program from the Feast of the Annunciation to Christmas.  I thought it might be inspiration for you!  Lots of resources below on Spiritual Adoption and teaching kids about being prolife.

Happy Solemnity of the Annunciation!
In the middle of this season of preparation and penance of Lent, it is cool to remember the bigger picture and story of Christ's life.  I love the that Church organizes a year that allows us to recapitulate the story of Jesus, fully God and fully Man.  Today we remember the visitation of the Angel Gabriel to the Blessed Mother, changing her plans completely.

Some of her story sounds very familiar...

Young woman.
Unwed.
Had her own dreams and plans.
Unexpected pregnancy.
Faced opposition and persecution.
Chose life.

How different the world would be if each woman looked at each pregnancy with the value that Mary saw in Christ.  Until then, we can continue to pray for a renewal for respect of life.

On that note, our parish pro-life coordinator is organizing a cool project for our CCD kids.
They are each spiritually adopting an unborn baby for the next nine months.  They all got a magnet with Fulton Sheen's Spiritual Adoption Prayer on it and we talked about the connection between the Annunciation and being pro-life.  The kids will be doing activities, learning how the babies develop, etc.  It should be a very cool series of lessons.  Here are a few of the resources that we have/will be using if you wanted to do your own Spiritual Adoption:

Spiritual Adoption Bookmarks with the prayer written by Venerable Fulton J. Sheen:

Postcards to kick off the adoption as well as to update the kids on the babies' development each month.

A Youth Group Discussion Guide, using a song and a movie to drive home the points:

Creating a Culture of Life Youth Group Discussion Points

JJ Heller, What Love Really Means:

99 Balloons:

Go here for links to post cards that already have labels running from March 25th to December 25th, as well as blank dates (so you can start the spiritual adoption at any point).

Go here for how we have used the Touch of Life Fetal models to drive home the true development of unborn babies.