Ways to observe the anniversary

As the celebrations begin to occur in commemoration of Our Lady’s appearance to three children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, here are some suggestions for deepening your understanding of her message and for encouraging an understanding of its relevance within the family setting.

 

• Create easy, beaded handmade rosaries with your little ones

• Make Fatima prayer cards using cardstock

• Have a Fatima movie night: Watch a Fatima children’s movie

• Print Fatima coloring pictures. Color them and deliver them to a nursing home with cookies or sugar-free candy

• Make Immaculate Heart cookies: create heart shaped cookies and frost them red. Invite the older ones to become more creative

• Read a version of the story of Fatima

• Host a Fatima theater play

• Make your own grotto for Mary with sticks, stones and cardboard

• Make a sun snack with a circle PBJ and apple slices for rays

• Go on a Marian pilgrimage. Find a statue of Our Lady of Fatima or of Mary in your area and go pray a rosary there. 

• Sing the Salve Regina prayer as a family 

• Make an Immaculate Heart cake 

• Make mini-cupcakes for an edible rosary 

• Pray the Fatima Decade Prayer around the dinner table after saying grace

• Pray the rosary daily or pray a decade of the rosary each day for five days of the week

• Invite your priest or a religious to dinner to share about Our Lady

• Wear blue on Fridays in honor of Our Lady

• Create a rosary prayer chain: Every time you pray a rosary as a family, add a paper chain link. After every 10, use a different color paper so that, in the end, you are creating a rosary. Try to complete the rosary by the end of the year.

• Host a family crazy hair day: Buy temporary blue hair die and let your kids have blue hair one day in honor of Our Lady

• In the winter, build Fatima snowmen: one for Mary and one for each of the three children. They may not be Michelangelos, but this will help teach kids to allow their faith to enter all areas of life.

• 100 suggestions to offer up, in a 100 suggestions box: Do one each day for 100 days 

• Pray this prayer: My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love you. I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love you.

• Intentionally pray for the conversion of sinners

• Plant a garden for Mary, with her statue in the center 

• Host a walk and rosary across town: Pause to pray a decade of the rosary in five different locations

• Create a Marian garden at your church, school or home

• Read a Marian book: Have a book discussion

• At Halloween, create a pumpkin carving of the Immaculate Heart

• Contribute to #FatimaFridays on Twitter and Instagram

• Paint peg dolls to be Our Lady of Fatima