Tuesday, October 27, 2015

12+ Ideas for Celebrating All Saints Day

Who is ready to learn and pray and party on All Saints Day this Sunday!  There are so many fun ways to celebrate this Solemnity.  I am enjoying discussing Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day with my students as we prepare this week.  I've gathered up some of the activities that we are doing (or have done in the past) that might help you celebrate with your kids as well.

1. Here's a new Happy All Saints Day coloring page: (Click on image for the file)
2. Litany of the Saints prayer cards:
We are using these for the first time this year, and my students really like them.  I took the general opening/closing for most litanies and put it on one side of the prayer cards.  On the other side they get to create their own "All Star" cast. Oh, and we'll be listening to this song this week as well.
These print four per page and are two sided. Click on the image below to go to the file:

3. We love this All Saints Day art project.  This year they will be on display at our whole parish All Saints Day celebration.  Click on the image to go to a post with step-by-step instructions and ideas:

4. If a whole art project won't be in the works this week, I have several Saints coloring pages you can use instead. The growing list of coloring pages can be found under this tab and then under the Saints heading.


 5. You could quickly make these easy Saint shrines.  This one features St. Joseph, but you could have each student pick a different Saint and then display them all together.  Click on the image for the post with details:

 6. Practice some writing skills and intercessory prayer with these All Saints and All Souls Day Letters.  Click on either image to go to the post:

 7. You could play this Beatitude and Modern Saints game, which is modeled after the idea of Old Maid, but introduces kids to facts about eight modern Saints and the Beatitude they exemplified.  And instead of the "Old Maid" card, there is a "Bad-Attitude" card in the mix.  (Get it? Be-attitude, bad-attitude...I know, groan.)  Click on the image to go to the post:

8. Here's a whole playlist of videos on YouTube about Saints or the Canonization process.  Click on the image to go to the post:

9. Tying All Hallows Eve in with All Saints and All Souls Day has been a part of my curriculum for several years.  This post has a mini coloring book and many coloring pages about those topics. Click on the image to go to the post:

In that post, there is an All Saints Day page with a list of great Saints who can be intercessors in kids lives.  I love to introduce them to new Saints and give them some heavenly heroes to look up to and be inspired by. They also love using the Saints Name Generator to learn about new Saints and chose patrons.  Click on the image to go to the post:


10. An easy and cool art project is to make giant Saint medal using tin foil and a coloring page of a Saint (or student drawing).  I always have the kids make Miraculous Medals like this during our St. Maximilian Kolbe unit, but this year I had several early finishers ask if they could make a Saint medal too.  Here we have St. Max:

Sts. George, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Hubert, and Christopher:

And St. John Paul II. Click on any of those images to read about our Miraculous Medals and you can use the same technique for Saints.

11. This post gives you seven ideas for celebrating a Patron Saint Day (ours is St. Joseph) but many of the ideas would transfer to All Saints Day as well.  Click on the image to go to the post:

12.  We aren't actually doing this on All Saints Day, but this year my class is making a point to celebrate the specific patron Saints of each class with them throughout the school year.  So on St. Vincent de Paul's feast day, we sent 2nd Grade a card, and on St. John Paul II's feast day we sent one to 3rd grade, etc.  You wouldn't have to wait all year though- using a list of classroom Saints, have your class send each of them a card on All Saints Day.

So there you have it!  Tons of options, so don't let this great Solemnity pass you by! :)
How will you be celebrating All the Saints with the kids in your life?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

Linking up with the Blessed Is She blog for the topic The Communion of Saints!

6 comments:

  1. I love your idea to make giant saint medals with tinfoil!!!!!!! I so want to do that sometime!!!!!!!

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  2. Thanks so much for sharing these resources! I just started teaching sixth grade CCD, and some of these activities are really helpful!

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    1. Yay! So glad they will be helpful for your 6th graders!

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  3. I love the Blessed Pier coloring page! He is one of my favorites. What a great quote!

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    1. I'm so glad! I have a few more too- You can see them in this post: Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati

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