Our Day to learn about St. George

Our St.George Feast Day fun began with a finger print painting of St. George slaying the dragon!  I thought it would  be easy for my builder to do, but turns out….not so much. He had fun for about 10 minutes, then was bored and frustrated when it didn’t look the way he wanted. I am glad I made him stick with it, it’s is growing on me! I think it is cute, who cares if St. George looks green ;)  I got the finger print concept from this book that I checked out at the library.  This book is lots of fun and is easy if you stick to the ideas in the book.  After we did the dragon theme, the kids had much more fun doing whatever they wanted! I have to remind myself to stop standing over them and telling them gently reminding them what would look nice or how to remember this day. Most of the time I let them do what they want, but if they start a project with a certain idea of what they want, I like for them to stick with the plan and follow the theme. 

Again, I chose the simple way to make a cake. I can’t turn down free cake mixes.  Read this post that tells how I get them free. Though I only had a lemon cake left, so it should be white instead of yellow, but it didn’t look too bad. We used twizzlers for the crosses. This cake is our yummy reminder that the English flag bears the symbol of St. George, dating back to the 11th century but, wasn’t considered the national flag until the 1600’s. It is a red cross on a white background. It was also Georgia’s flag ,(not the state) which now bears a similar flag but with 4 additional crosses.  This was actually very interesting for my boy and I to research the history and find how the French and English once used the same flag even though they were rivals. (because it was also a crusaders flag). The rivals finally settled their differences and the English kept it as their own. Click here to learn some of the interesting details! This picture came from that link.

We learned a lot about this day! There is even a painting about it in Builder’s Seton handwriting book that we turned back the pages to admire;)  We also learned that there was once a feast day for the 14 Holy Helpers. This Feast was dropped after the 1969 reform of the Roman Calendar.  St.George was one of the 14 Holy Helpers who were invoked for their prayers during the Black Plague in Europe in the1340’s. Read more about St. George and the 14 Holy Helpers here and here.

St. George, please pray for all of us to be as brave as you when our time comes to slay the dragon(symbolic for the devil) in our lives. May we stand up for Christ and be the brave soldiers we are called to be either as a witness or a martyr in Christ’s name.