Review of Once Upon A Joyful Time
Suggestion about how to use the unit study:
- activities are perfect for month of Oct or during Advent
- use all activities provided with each lesson, they were designed to be a complete lesson
- each lesson contains - scripture search - activities to further explore the faith story - activities to help children apply the faith story to their lives - use this as an opportunity to practice and reinforce the Our Father and Hail Mary - activities can be used as fill in lesson after lunch - each lesson ends in a prayer
Each section is a 4 page booklet. The first one is the introduction that begins, "Once upon a joyful time ... God asked a young woman named Mary to become the Mother of Jesus." It opens to a 2 page illustration of the Rosary with the prayers and pictures illustrating each mystery. The back page has "Method of saying the Rosary". The next booklet is how to say the Rosary for the first time. There is a booklet for each of the 5 mysteries: The Annunciation - read Luke chapter 1 verse 26-28. There is a yellow sheet in each mystery with parent instruction. The activities for the Annunciation are a fill in the blank, draw one of Gabriel's wings, a color by number and a "God made me special, too" page. The parent page lists objectives, evaluating your lesson, setting the stage, name the experience, make a faith story of their own, help child grasp accurate account of our Catholic beliefs, discovering the message and finally praying together. For this mystery it is suggested to pray for all women who would like to have a baby. The other four mysteries are very similar in their structure. Some of the other activities are word finds, word scrambles, mazes, connect the dots, and drawing their own illustrations.
Available from Family Rosary
Reviewed by Nannette Halliwell
7/2000