At an age-appropriate level, we discuss at length three critical questions: 1. Were saints people like us? 2. Can we attain sainthood? 3. What can we do to become saints?
I read them short stories about the lives of the saints. Not only do the children enjoy listening to these stories, they also try to emulate the lives of saints by helping the poor, feeding the hungry, and treating each other with kindness and respect. We also encourage our students to show concern for the environment and to learn to care for God’s creatures and nature, just like the Saints.
OLA students are made aware of the CPRs of life as a means to sainthood. C-Community, P-Prayer, R-Reformation. In connection to the CPRs, we learn that helping the Community at large and being a vital part of one’s community by attending Mass regularly and Praying with gratitude throughout the day leads us to Reformation which, in turn, leads us to sainthood. This lifelong learning takes place throughout all grades.
Finally, as a culmination activity, the kindergartners come dressed up as their favorite saint and attend Mass for the very first time as a class. Usually this occurs on All Saints Day, but since All Saints Day falls on Saturday this year, our kindergartners will attend the first Friday Mass in November dressed in their saint attire. After Mass we visit each classroom, introduce the saint our children represent, and say a few sentences about the saint of their choice so that all our OLA students may learn from the youngest among them. This helps our kindergartners internalize what they have learned and affords the rest of our students the opportunity to mentally revisit the saint they dressed up as when they were kindergartners!