Fishers of Men: the bare bones plan

Ah, what a wonderful opportunity is Lent! A call to slow down, simplify, reflect…doesn’t our dear Church know her children and their needs so well?

Superboy and I finally got around to brainstorming our Lenten activities. As I said in an earlier post, we were inspired by the video, Fishers of Men, to focus on some very basic symbols of Lent: Fish, bread and wine, and the priesthood.

So, here is what we would like to do, and this is not so much a “plan” but a bare bones list of questions we have, and some activities that may provide our answers:

Fish:

• Copywork: Biblical references to fish, fishermen
• learn the anatomy, both external and internal, through dissection.
• Taxonomy (chondrichthyes, osteichthyes, aganatha, and become familiar with some major families)
• Behavioral observations (of fish in aquarium)
• Ecology (”lets learn the zones, the zones, the zones…”)
• Development (life cycle of Salmon-fascinating stuff!)
• Experiment (based on behavioral observations)

Priesthood:

• Copywork: quotes from Popes
• Chair of St. Peter (did this yesterday-how timely!)
• lives of Popes Benedict and John Paul II
• How are Popes chosen?
• How does one become a priest? (education, the process, steps, etc)
• The sacrament of Holy Orders
• What do priests do (aside from the obvious) ? (interview our parish priest)
• How much choice does a priest have in his assignments (mission, parish, etc)?
• Clothing: Roman collar, robes, vestments, etc

Bread and Wine:

• Copywork: references to bread and wine in the Bible and in the Mass
• Transubstantiation
• History of wine and breadmaking
• Bread and wine around the world
• lots of baking
• fermentation

We will most likely make a trip to the local trout hatchery, we’ve been there before, but it always a fun trip and with nice hiking trails. And perhaps we will even go to the new Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. We’ve been wanting to go there since it opened and have not got around to it yet.As I said, this is just the bare bones list. I will flesh it out more with actual resources as time rolls on, and he will be notebooking it all. So far he has done the dissection and learned the external (yesterday) and internal (today) anatomy of a fish, he has colored the Papal Crest, and done illustrated copywork on Matthew 4:18-20

18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” 20At once they left their nets and followed him.

And here is a photo of Superboy beginning that dissection!

Just in time for the Knights of Columbus Fish fry tonight! Yum!