Spring!
All of a sudden my throat infection turned into “just a cold” and the weather is beautiful! The flowers my dad brought me on Friday are in full bloom and I’ve even had the window open for a couple of hours.
Now for a proper posting reason: some time ago I found the Bead By Bead Rosary Books site by accident, and since I’m slightly obsessed by the rosary, I gave it a look. My experience with kids praying the rosary isn’t very extensive, but during the camps I used to co-lead (they’re mixed camps run by seminarians, who need girl leaders to assist, for obvious reasons) we always had an “hour with Mary” during which we could observe that kids like praying the Rosary, but keeping track of where you are can be difficult for them, and contemplating the Mysteries beyond the second Hail Mary seems almost impossible.
This book (they currently have only the Joyful Mysteries, but are working on the others) seems to fix all that: every double page is dedicated to one bead only. There’s a little text on the “Our Father”-pages, introducing the Mystery, and a full-colour image for each Hail Mary bead. And also majorly cool: on each left page is a full rosary with a golden bead indicating “where we are” (you should still use it with a bead rosary, of course, if only because they rule – but I think it also helps to get used to the feel of the beads as you work past them).
Rundown: I like them :) Too bad they don’t come in Dutch (yet).
Off topic: I have just posted on Richard Feynman at Catholic Commentary. First part of four.
On topic: each October, during our first Friday Eucharistic Adoration, we pray the Rosary with the children and families. For one family, who pray the Rosary at home, if is very affirming. I keep forgetting to find a LARGE rosary to use at the front, so the children can easily see where I have got to on the beads. Last October, it was quite moving to watch one or two of the parents helping their young children to follow the place on the beads – I hope they then carried on doing the same at home!
I was at a crafts-like market in Assisi and they had rosaries that almost looked like belt rosaries – only probably too big. The beads must have been around an inch in diameter… I would have picked it up for sheer coolness if I’d had any idea what to do with it :) But as an example rosary, it would have been excellent!
What I’ve seen done at some parishes is that they let the children make their own rosaries by stringing cheap plastic beads together. They have ten different colours in every decade, and each decade has them in the same order, so you can say “we’re at the blue bead now” and everybody would know where they’re supposed to be. It works well as a system, but the rosaries are quite hideous…