See the introduction here.
See step one here.

The next step in the Living Liturgy project is the Monthly Planning Sheet. Once you have some broad areas on the Area of Focus planner, the Monthly Planning Sheet (MPS, right? Because all of that is a mouthful to type every time.) will help you to focus and make a plan each month. Let’s take a look at how.

The sheet begins with a place for the month and year. My idea for these is to keep them from year to year to use as a reference. Since I want to build simple traditions that are meaningful to my children, keeping the planning sheets will help me to remember what I have done. So the month and the year at the top facilitates a future filing system.
Next there are spaces for three separate liturgical events. Do you have to do three? No, do less if three overwhelms you. What if you want to do more than three? Print a second page, you go-getter you. I did three because three seemed do-able to me. I want these to be things that we actually do, not just things I plan and never execute. (anyone else? anyone?)

Under the date and name of the liturgical event I left a space for the activity you want to do and then even more important a place for resources and supplies. This is where the execution begins. What do you need? Where can you find it? What things need to go on a grocery list or be collected from a craft cabinet? Do you need to print a recipe and staple it to your planner? Do you need to buy a piece of green felt? The more you (read: I) do now to get everything ready and eliminate the variables, the better the chance that this plan will come to fruition.

Finally at the bottom are two little areas that are not to be overlooked. First on the right is a handy-dandy fill in calendar. Before you even begin with the rest of the sheet, fill in the little dates for the month. You know which days of your week are regularly busy. Once you are a-twitter with ideas for a specific saint’s day, a quick look at that calendar will tell you it falls on Tuesday this year and Tuesday is your busiest day. That will allow you to adjust your expectations (and activity) accordingly.

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What is a morning basket?

The left-hand side may be the most important area of the entire sheet. In that little box choose one of your Areas of Focus from your AOF planner and write it in — along with something concrete you are going to do this month to work in that area.


My November Planner

I sat down today to work on a November plan for my family, so I am going to use that as an example of how this works. The first thing I did was print out the 10 Activities for Catholic Families printable from Many Little Blessings. I really like the simplicity and meaningfulness of Angie’s activities each month. I have always been horrible about doing them, but I do like them. In fact, I chose all of my activities for this month from the planner. Looking at my calendar and thinking about what would appeal most to my kids, I chose to focus on St. Albert on the 15th, St. Elizabeth of Hungary on the 17th, and St. Cecilia on the 22nd.

For St. Albert we will be doing a few science experiments since he is the patron saint of scientists. I quickly searched up some easy ones on my computer. They all use household items we have on hand in the kitchen, so I simply printed out the directions and made sure I knew the science behind each one. A quick internet search revealed a St. Albert prayer and a brief bio for kids on Holy Spirit Interactive. My kids love, love, love science experiments, so this will be right up their alley. St. Albert — coolest saint ever.

Baking bread for St. Elizabeth of Hungary seemed like a way to extend charity to others. We will bake a couple of different kinds and share them with some friends we know. That will be a perfect Sunday afternoon pastime. We can also read about this saint in our Loyola Kids Book of Saints over a piece of warm baked bread. I needed nothing for this activity — all of the ingredients are already in the kitchen.

Finally I decided that a Snack Time with the Saints and sing-a-long would be good fun for St. Cecilia. Friday’s are pretty low-key for us, so in the afternoon we can have a snack (probably nothing related to St. Cecilia at all — maybe pumpkin muffins), read her story, and then sing some favorite childrens’ songs. We used to sing a lot more when the big kids were small. Thomas gets short shrifted when it comes to kids’ tunes so this will be a good chance to belt out some favorites. Once again, no special activities are needed.

I think I am going to put in an extra activity and make an easy king’s cake for Christ the King Sunday. All I will need to do is pick up some canned cinnamon rolls and sprinkles (double-duty with the holiday season approaching) at the grocery.

For the monthly area of focus I wrote in “prayer: morning prayer from the LOH.” That is my personal goal this month; if I do nothing else towards any of my other areas of focus, that is the one I want to hit.

Now it’s your turn. I uploaded the Ordinary Time MPS if you want to jot a few things down for November like I did. If you just want to start planning now for next month and Advent, then skip right to the Advent MPS. Those are the ones we will be sharing in our plan link-up on November 22. Have fun!

Ordinary Time MPS
Advent MPS

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